Shipping Reports: Fulfillment Visibility for Shopify Merchants

Why are Shipping Reports Needed?

Shipping reports ensure that the e-commerce merchant has granular visibility into whether the product is being shipped and reaching the customer within the scheduled time frame. With detailed shipping reports you as an e-commerce merchant can gain from:

1. Inventory Management

Tracking products that have been shipped can help in optimizing stock levels such that you scale inventory according to customer demand. This helps prevent stockouts and storing excess inventory for longer periods than required, which leads to shipping delays or loss of business and inventory costs respectively. 

2. Logistics 

As shipping is a significant aspect of the e-commerce logistics process, shipping reports can offer detailed insights into how you can enhance shipping effectiveness by managing carriers, and routing shipments better. Shipping reports can act as official records for the logistics process that are easily accessible when required. 

3. Helps in Spotting Trends

One clear function of shipping reports is to look into shipping process efficiency to shorten delivery times and increase supply chain responsiveness thereby reducing shipping costs and enhancing customer service.

4. Dispute Resolution 

In some cases when the product is not delivered to the customer or faces delays or other issues, the shipping report acts as an official record to see what went wrong. You can find when the product was shipped, and its intended destination, which will help in resolving any disputes that may arise.

Shipping Report Terms 

To get a better understanding of shipping you will need to know these terms related to shipping:

Shipping label 

A shipping label usually contains the recipient's address, origin address, and barcode and is meant for the logistics providers along with an itemized list of the products within the order. This is the information that is used by shipping carriers to ensure a shipment is delivered correctly. It also refers to the cost of shipping that is paid by e-commerce merchants to ship the product to the customer. 

You can buy shipping labels directly from shipping carriers, from third-party apps, or your Shopify admin using Shopify Shipping. 

Packing slip

A packing slip is a document that includes shipping and billing addresses, and product information such as SKU number, weight, or quantity. This is meant for the customer that the e-commerce merchant serves.    

In-house Logistics

In-house delivery involves a company managing its own last-mile delivery using its staff and fleet, allowing for better control over delivery times. While this method offers advantages, such as avoiding reliance on third-party services, it also presents challenges such as the need for elaborate physical infrastructure and labor and any additional costs that come with them.

Third-Party Logistics ( 3PL )

Also known as 3PL, third-party logistics manage everything from inventory to product delivery, freeing up the time of business owners to focus on more mission-critical tasks. Most small businesses might have a great product but might not have the resources to ship their product themselves. In such cases, the businesses rely on Third-party logistics. 

3PL services cover everything from transportation and warehousing to inventory management and reverse logistics.

Native Shopify Reports for Shipping

Shopify does provide a few Shipping reports that offer visibility into your store’s Shipping to help you streamline your logistics.

1. Fulfillment, shipping, and delivery times

The report for Fulfillment, shipping, and delivery times tracks order fulfillment time from receipt to delivery. It plots the number of orders completed hourly or daily and shows the median completion time for each stage.

2. Shipping labels over time

The report for Shipping labels over time tracks Shopify Shipping label purchases, excluding returns, cancellations, voids, adjustments, and non-Shopify Shipping labels. All costs are shown in your store's currency.

3. Shipping Labels

This report shows Shopify Shipping label purchases, excluding returns, cancellations, voids, adjustments, and non-Shopify Shipping labels. Costs are shown in your store's currency.

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4. Shopify Shipping Integrations

If you use Shopify Shipping you will be able to access Shipping reports and related data along with FedEx, USPS, UPS, and DHL. However, to track shipping costs with regard to the mentioned carriers it is best to use the courier’s API as opposed to the data available on Shopify for higher accuracy.

But if you use any other 3PL service you will not be able to get the desired Shipping reports and data to ensure that the products reach your customers in time. 

Report Pundit Shipping Report Examples

Report Pundit offers e-commerce merchants a detailed look into how their shipping works and enables them to keep their customers coming back for more purchases, more often. Here are a few reports provided by Report Pundit. 

1. Shipping Report

A comprehensive report for analyzing shipping operations, offering information on orders, products, pricing, quantities, supplying vendors, as well as shipping and fulfillment details.

With the Shipping Report, you can get a bird’s eye view of your shipping operations, enabling you to track orders, products, and fulfillment details effectively. You will also be able to access detailed information on vendors and supplier relationships helping in inventory sourcing. Using the pricing and shipping details in the report you can better manage shipping costs and streamline fulfillment. 

Report Pundit provides integrations to these 3PL applications:

• Easy Ship
• Printful
• Ship Bob
• ShipHero
• Shipping Easy
• Shippo
• ShipStation
• Veeqo

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You can make use of these integrations to get accurate shipping information from your e-commerce store. Merchants can create reports in the same format as the Shipping Report adding more fields as required for the integrations mentioned above using Report Pundit. As with the other reports you can customize the reports according to your unique business requirements.

2. Partial Shipping Report

When you need visibility into orders that are fulfilled in part with products being shipped in different shipments and/or on different dates, you can use the Partial Shipping report. This is needed when the customer's order cannot be fulfilled in one go, for reasons such as:

• Inventory limitations
• Transportation capacity constraints 
• Cost optimization
• Lack of product availability 
• Urgent customer requirements, or in some cases
• Regulatory requirements

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In these cases detailed and timely shipping reports that are easily generated become essential.

It is important to note that two products within the same order can have two addresses and shipping dates along with essential details about whether the product has been shipped.

3. Shipping Label Cost Report

The Shipping Label Cost Report involves the total cost of shipping a product to a customer and shipping costs are a part of these costs along with any other shipping-related costs. 

With this report, you can track which aspects of shipping costs are affecting your net profits and change or modify your shipping partner’s services accordingly. 

Wrapping Up

Shopify does offer Shipping reports helping merchants keep track of their shipping costs and their logistics process as a whole. While they are great for businesses that are still in the beta phase, to gain higher visibility into their shipping operations you will need to leverage reporting applications such as Report Pundit designed to dig deeper into the data and offer actionable insights.