Buying labels through Ship&co

Ship&co is a Kyoto-based shipping platform that connects Japan’s domestic carriers — Yamato, Sagawa, and Japan Post — alongside DHL, FedEx, UPS, and Japan Post EMS for international parcels. Connect it to Scanpacker and you can buy labels from those carriers on the ship page, with the Japanese size classes, delivery time slots, and customs paperwork handled for you.

This guide covers what the integration does and the few things that are specific to Japanese carriers. For the shipping workflow itself, see Shipping label purchase.

Ship&co support is in beta. If you’d like to use it, email support@scanpacker.com and we’ll help you get set up.

What you can ship with

Scanpacker offers whichever carriers you’ve registered in your Ship&co account:

• Domestic: Yamato (TA-Q-BIN, Nekopos, and the other B2 services), Sagawa Express, and Japan Post Yu-Pack, Yu-Packet, and Yu-Mail.
• International: Japan Post (EMS, Small Packet, Air Packet, Parcel Post, and Printed Matter), DHL Express, FedEx, UPS, and Yamato International TA-Q-BIN.

Each carrier needs its own credentials in Ship&co — your Yamato B2 key, your Japan Post post-payment agreement, and so on. Japan Post international is the exception: a regular account needs no credentials at all. Ship&co’s carrier guides walk through each one.

Setting up

1. In Ship&co, go to Carriers and register the carriers you ship with. While you’re there, check each carrier’s Print settings: that’s where the label’s paper size is chosen (see Label sizes below).
2. In Ship&co, go to API and click Create a new token. Copy the token. Creating a new token stops the old one from working, so if you’ve already connected another app, use the token that app has rather than making a new one.
3. In Scanpacker, go to Settings → Shipping Labels, choose Ship&co, paste the token, and click Save Changes.

[Screenshot: The Shipping Labels settings page with Ship&co chosen, showing the access token field and the “Create test labels” checkbox]

Scanpacker loads your carriers and their services as soon as the token is saved. If you register another carrier in Ship&co later, click Reload carriers and services on the same page.

Test labels. Tick Create test labels to have Ship&co make free dummy labels instead of real ones. They can’t be posted, which makes them a safe way to try the workflow. Ship&co offers test labels for DHL, UPS, Sagawa, and Yamato, but not for Japan Post — a Japan Post label is always a real one.

Buying a label

Buying works the same as with any other platform: set the parcel size and weight, fetch rates or pick a preferred service, and buy. A few things are specific to Ship&co:

• Rates come back in yen, or in whichever currency Ship&co quotes for the carrier.
• Size classes. Japanese carriers price domestic parcels by size class — 60, 80, 100, and so on, which is the three sides added together in centimetres. Scanpacker works the class out from the parcel dimensions you enter, so measure the box rather than guessing.
• Delivery date and time slot. If your checkout collects a delivery date or time slot, Scanpacker reads it from the order and puts it on Yamato, Sagawa, and Yu-Pack labels. It looks for order attributes named 配送希望日, お届け希望日, 配達希望日, or Delivery date, and 配送希望時間, お届け希望時間帯, 配達希望時間, or Delivery time. Times like 午前中, 14時〜16時, or 14:00-16:00 are matched to the carrier’s slots. If the order asks for a date that has passed or a slot the carrier doesn’t offer, the label goes out without one and the ship page tells you so.

[Screenshot: The ship page showing quoted Ship&co rates for a domestic order, with a note that the order’s delivery time couldn’t be matched to a slot]

Label sizes and printing

Ship&co labels are PDFs at whatever paper size you’ve chosen for that carrier in Ship&co. Most carriers default to A4; Japan Post international is always A4; Yamato, Sagawa, DHL, and FedEx can be set to thermal label sizes instead.

Scanpacker checks the size of each label it buys. Full-sheet labels (A4, A5, or Letter) print with the Carrier Generated Forms print type, so they go to your document printer. Smaller labels print with the 4x6 Shipping Label (PDF) print type as usual. Make sure both print types have a printer on each station.

Customs documents

For Japan Post international, everything comes in the one PDF: the dispatch note (the label itself), the CN23 customs declaration, two copies of the commercial invoice, and the sender’s copy with the post office receipt. Print it, sign each page where marked, and hand the set in at the counter in the EMS pouch.

DHL, FedEx, and UPS send their commercial invoice as a separate file. Scanpacker keeps it with the label and prints it with the Carrier Generated Forms print type.

Things to watch out for

International labels need Latin letters. Japan Post won’t accept kanji or kana on an international label. Scanpacker takes care of the prefecture, and it drops any non-Latin characters from the product names on the customs form (falling back to the SKU if nothing is left), but it can’t translate your address. Make sure the Shopify location you ship from has its street and city in Latin letters, for example 1-1 Chiyoda, Chiyoda-ku rather than 千代田区千代田1-1. Domestic labels are fine in Japanese.

Voiding a label. Scanpacker doesn’t yet void Ship&co labels. If you buy one by mistake, delete the shipment on Ship&co’s Shipments page.

Yamato’s maintenance window. Yamato doesn’t issue labels between 01:00 and 04:00 JST, and until 07:00 on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month.

Ship&co’s own Shopify app. If you also use Ship&co’s Shopify app, it syncs your orders into Ship&co independently. Buy each order’s label in one place or the other, not both.

Troubleshooting

Ship&co’s messages come through word for word, so the table gives the part of the message to look for.