Parcel Shipping

This guide is for vendors who ship orders by parcel carrier (USPS, UPS, FedEx) through CSAware. It covers turning shipping on, setting item weights so rates are accurate, how buyers choose a shipping method at checkout, buying and printing labels at fulfillment, confirming orders and shipments, and how shipping costs appear on your LocalHarvest statement.

Parcel shipping is powered by an integrated carrier-rating service. You do not need your own carrier account: labels are bought through LocalHarvest's shipping account and billed back to you, and your store is automatically registered as the merchant-of-record on every label.

Shipping setup is on your Options page; day-to-day fulfillment is on your Pack the Truck page (its Parcel Shipped view).

Availability: parcel shipping is rolling out as an experimental feature. If the rate selector does not yet appear at checkout for your store, it has not been switched on for you yet.

1. Turn On Parcel Shipping

On your Options page, check Parcel Shipping. This reveals the shipping settings panel. Saving the page with Parcel Shipping checked registers your store with the shipping service using your store address as the ship-from location.

The settings panel has three controls:

Parcels ship from your store address. Make sure your store address is correct and deliverable before turning shipping on; the shipping service validates it during registration, and an undeliverable address will block setup.

2. Set Products to 'Shipped by Mail'

By default, your catalog items are set as for 'Local Delivery'.  Parcel-Shippable products need to be indicated as such by checking the "Shipped by Mail" checkbox in their product page.

3. Set Item Shipping Weights

Rates are calculated from the total weight of the items in the order, so every shippable item needs a shipping weight. Weight is entered in ounces.

• Store products / SKUs: on your Products page, edit the SKU and set Weight ("Shipping weight of one unit, in ounces").
• CSA Items: on your CSA Item page, set Weight. The weight field is hidden when the item's unit is itself a weight (lb, oz, etc.), because the weight is derived from the unit in that case.

If an item has no weight, rating falls back to a default parcel weight, which will usually be wrong. Set real weights so buyers are quoted — and you are billed — accurately.

Parcel dimensions are not yet configurable; every parcel is currently rated using a standard default box size. Only weight affects your rates today.

4. How Buyers Choose a Shipping Method

When viewing an item for adding to their shopping cart, buyers select the product SKU and schedule, and search a zipcode or address as normal in the "delivery options" block. If the product is parcel-shippable, a "Parcel Shipping" option will be shown in the "Select delivery options" block. If you have other drop sites within range of the entered search, those options will appear alongside the parcel-shipping option.

If the buyer select "Parcel Shipping", and proceeds to checkout, they will be asked for complete shipping address as part of their checkout. CSAware will then compute order weighs, request live rates from the carriers you allow (filtered by your Max Delivery Time), and show the buyer a list of shipping options, cheapest first. The buyer picks one; that rate is added to their order total and paid at checkout.

The chosen rate is locked to the address it was quoted for. If the buyer changes the shipping address after getting rates, they are asked to recalculate and pick again — this protects you from an address change producing a rate that no longer matches the destination.

5. Buy Shipping Labels (Fulfillment)

From your dashboard's top menu, select Deliveries / Parcel Shipments, which will take you to the Parcel Shipped view of your Pack the Truck pages.

 

This page lists standalone orders and CSA boxes scheduled to be shipped on the given date, with three tabs:

Buying a label and confirming shipment are two separate actions. Buying a label gets you the postage; it does not move the order to the Shipped tab. The tabs track each order's shipment status, which you set with Confirm Shipment (section 5).

Standalone orders awaiting shipment are listed at the top, with shipping CSABox subscriptions underneath.

Buy in bulk

When the date has orders with shipping quotes that haven't been purchased, a Purchase Shipping Labels button appears. Click it to see a confirmation — how many labels and the total — then confirm. You are billed the carrier rates for the labels you buy.

After purchase, a summary shows how many labels were bought, the total, and any failures (with the reason per order). A Print Labels button produces one merged PDF with every label, one per page.

Buy / print one at a time

In the Label column, each order shows a printer icon once its label is bought (click it to print that single label as a PDF). Orders with a quote but no label yet show a dash.

Buying a label is safe to retry: an order whose label is already bought is never charged twice, and clicking again simply gives you the printable label.

Labels

Labels are 4×6 PDFs suitable for a thermal label printer or plain paper. They are fetched fresh from the carrier each time you print, so you can reprint a label any time after purchase.

6. Confirming Orders and Shipments

Confirming the order

Order confirmation works the same for shipping as for any other delivery method:

• Orders a member places themselves (not while on impersonation) need to be confirmed as usual. Confirming tells the member you can pack and deliver the order, and signals your payment gateway to settle the transaction.
• Orders an admin places while impersonating a member do not need to be confirmed — for shipping, pickup, or home delivery, and for standalone items or subscriptions alike. Placing the order on the member's behalf already implies the communication and the ability to fulfill, which settles the transaction.

Confirming the shipment

Shipping adds one more step: Confirm Shipment. This is how you tell CSAware an order has actually gone out. Do not confirm shipment until you've shipped the order.

From the For Shipping tab, click the order number to open the order, then click Confirm Shipment.

Confirming shipment marks the order's parcel items as shipped, stamps the ship date as today, and moves the order off the For Shipping queue onto the Shipped tab for that date. Orders you haven't confirmed stay on For Shipping and keep appearing on future delivery dates until you confirm them.

Confirming shipment is independent of buying the label: you can buy and print a label first (section 4) and confirm shipment when the parcel actually leaves.

7. Tracking

When a label is purchased, its carrier and tracking code are recorded on the order. Tracking status is updated from the carrier as the parcel moves.

8. Reports

You can download reports — the packing list, packing slips, and labels — from the parcel shipping view via the left menu, as usual. The harvest list and packing summary include all orders (shipping and non-shipping, subscription and non-subscription): the harvest list shows the full week, while the packing summary is a per-day view broken down by drop.

9. How Shipping Appears on Your Statement

Shipping uses a pass-through billing model:

1. Buyer pays the quoted rate at checkout. That amount is part of the order total they pay you, the same as any other order revenue.
2. You buy the label at fulfillment. LocalHarvest's shipping account pays the carrier the actual label cost.
3. The label cost is billed back to you on your monthly CSAware statement, combined into a single Parcel shipping line.
4. Carrier adjustments (for example, a USPS weight/size correction made after the label is used) are reconciled onto that same line — a charge if the carrier billed more, a credit if it refunded.

So if the rate quoted to the buyer matches the actual label cost, shipping is a wash for you. If the carrier charged more or less than the quote (often because an item's weight was off), the difference is yours — which is why accurate item weights matter. The Parcel shipping statement line shows the label count and notes when carrier adjustments are included.

10. Daily Workflow

1. Keep item weights current. Set a shipping weight on every shippable SKU and CSA Item.
2. Go to Parcel Shipped on your shipping date. Open your Pack the Truck page, and switch to Parcel Shipped.
3. Confirm member-placed orders that still need confirmation.
4. Buy labels. Use Purchase Shipping Labels for the whole date, or the per-order printer icon for one order.
5. Print and apply labels. Use Print Labels for the merged PDF, or print individually.
6. Confirm shipment once each order actually ships. Open the order from For Shipping and click Confirm Shipment to mark it shipped and clear it from the queue.
7. Reconcile on your statement. Review the monthly Parcel shipping line for label costs and any carrier adjustments.

11. Troubleshooting

Buyers don't see shipping options at checkout.
Confirm Parcel Shipping is turned on for your store and saved, your store address is valid, and the buyer entered a complete shipping address. Also confirm the feature has been switched on for your store (see Availability, top).

No rates are returned for an address.
The carriers you allow may not service that destination within your Max Delivery Time. Try widening the delivery-time limit or enabling more carriers.

A rate looks too high or too low.
Rates are driven by item weights. Check that every item in the order has a correct shipping weight in ounces.

Setup won't save / store can't be registered for shipping.
The shipping service rejected your store address as undeliverable. Correct the store address and save again.

The label cost on my statement differs from what the buyer paid.
Expected. The buyer pays the quoted rate; you are billed the actual label cost plus any later carrier adjustment. Accurate item weights keep the two aligned.

I bought a label by mistake.
Reprinting is free, but a purchased label is a real carrier charge. Contact LocalHarvest support for a label refund; carrier refunds can take two weeks or more to process.

12. Quick Reference

Print a label from the Pack the Truck page: the Print Labels button (after a bulk purchase) for a merged PDF, or the printer icon on an order for a single label.

12. Glossary