Automated printing

Scanpacker can be configured to automatically print documents or labels at certain points in the shipping workflow. For example, this feature can be used for:

• Printing a paper invoice after starting to pick the order.
• Printing a packing slip after packing.
• Printing an instruction document for a particular product.
• Printing warning labels for hazardous products.
• Printing a generic address label for the order just packed.
• Printing a courier company’s shipping label for the order just fulfilled.

The documents or labels will be sent to the printer automatically through the Printer Connect desktop application. This means that the user will not need to manually print the document. The user can continue scannin g and shipping within Scanpacker while the document is being printed.

Prerequisites

• You have installed and connected the Scanpacker Printer Connect application to your Scanpacker account.
• You have selected a physical printer from your Scanpacker User Preferences. See Selecting Printers for more information.

Setting up an autoprint rule

1. Go to Settings > Automated Printing.
2. Click New Automated Printing.
3. Choose when to print — the event that triggers printing (see below).
4. Choose what to print — either a print template or a URL (see Print modes).
5. Make sure Enabled is set to “Yes”.
6. Click Create to save.

When to print

Each autoprint rule is triggered by one of these events:

• When shipping starts — Prints when a team member begins the shipping step (after picking is complete).
• When a fulfillment is created — Prints after Scanpacker creates the fulfillment in Shopify.
• When an order is tagged — Prints when Scanpacker tags an order (e.g., as “packed”).
• When an external fulfillment is created — Prints when a fulfillment is created outside of Scanpacker (e.g., by a shipping app). See External fulfillment printing below.

Print modes

Template mode

The default mode. Scanpacker renders one of your print templates (such as a packing slip or shipping label) and sends it to the printer. Choose the template from the Print template dropdown when creating the rule.

URL mode

Instead of rendering a template, Scanpacker downloads a PDF from an external URL and prints it. This is useful when your shipping labels or documents are generated by a third-party service that provides a PDF download link.

Enter the URL in the URL template field. You can include these variables, which Scanpacker replaces with actual values at print time:

For example: https://labels.example.com/print?order={{order_id}}&tracking={{tracking_number}}

When using URL mode, you also need to select a printer class to tell Printer Connect which physical printer to use.

External fulfillment printing

The “when an external fulfillment is created” event lets you print automatically when a fulfillment is created by another app or service rather than by Scanpacker itself. This is useful when you use Scanpacker to pick and verify orders but rely on a separate shipping app to create the fulfillment and generate labels.

The workflow:

1. Pick and verify the order in Scanpacker (tagging it as “packed” instead of creating a fulfillment).
2. Use your shipping app to create the fulfillment in Shopify.
3. Scanpacker detects the new fulfillment, matches it to the order you just picked, and prints automatically.

Picked within minutes

For external fulfillment printing, you can set a picked within minutes window (5, 10, 15, 30, 60, or 120 minutes). Scanpacker only prints if the order was picked within this time window. This prevents printing for old orders that happen to get fulfilled later.

The default is 30 minutes.

Example: Automatically print packing slips

1. Go to Settings > Automated Printing.
2. Click New Automated Printing.
3. Set “when to print” to when a fulfillment is created.
4. Set “print template” to your packing slip template.
5. Make sure Enabled is set to “Yes”.
6. Click Create.

From this point on, Scanpacker prints a packing slip for each order as soon as the fulfillment is created.