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This page discusses how to force Woo to use “flat-rate padded envelope” for the book Oppedahl on PCT Forms and PCT Docketing.
When you are trying to fulfill an order that contains only the book Oppedahl on PCT Forms and PCT Docketing, Woo will probably try to print a mailing label that uses “priority mail medium flat-rate box”. This is fine, but the fact is that this book will fit into the “priority mail flat-rate padded envelope”.
There are two problems with this situation:
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- The postal clerk is trained these days to scan the mailing label, and then to scan a bar code on the actual USPS packaging. The cash register then checks to see whether the customer screwed up by paying the postage for a type of USPS packaging that does not match the actual USPS packaging being used. So for example if you place the book into a “priority mail flat-rate padded envelope”, the clerk will scan a bar code says “PS00001000016” which means “priority mail flat-rate padded envelope”. But if you generated the shipping label by paying the postage for “priority mail medium flat-rate box”, then the cash register may squawk and the postal clerk may refuse to proceed with the scanning-in process, because the amount of postage that you paid will not match the actual USPS packaging that you actually used for shipping the book.
- We may end up “leaving money on the table” by paying the postage for the more expensive “priority mail medium flat-rate box” when we only actually needed to pay the postage for the less expensive “priority mail flat-rate padded envelope”.
This page discusses how to force Woo to print a mailing label that pays only the smaller amount of postage for the “priority mail flat-rate padded envelope”.
A first step is to go and look and make sure that we have an available “priority mail flat-rate padded envelope”. This envelope is mostly red colored. What we do not want to do is accidentally select “priority mail express flat-rate padded envelope” which is mostly blue colored. And we do not want to go to all of the trouble of printing a mailing label and then finding out that we alreaday ran out of priority mail flat-rate padded envelopes.
We slip the book Oppedahl on PCT Forms and PCT Docketing into the red “priority mail flat-rate padded envelope” and it just barely fits. We seal it up.
A next step is to make sure that we have the special label paper for printing a shipping label. We load a sheet of the special label paper into our printer.
Now we go to Woo and we start at the “orders” page and we see that we have an order with a status of “processing”. The dollar amount of the order is $99.20 and this tips us off that the order must be for a single item, namely the book Oppedahl on PCT Forms and PCT Docketing, and that the customer picked “USPS – priority mail flat rate” for the type of shipping.
There are two places where you could click next to open up this order:
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- at left is the order number and customer name; and
- in the middle, the eyeball (if you hover over the eyeball, it says “preview”).
We click on the order number and name. We see, against all common sense, that the system thinks this book will fit into the “small flat rate box”. The amount of postage quoted is $10.20.
Create shipping label. We click on “create shipping label”. This brings us to “destination address”.
Destination address. Woo of course suggests changes to the destination address, and Woo “selects” the “suggested address” . Maybe the only changes are:
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- change the five-digit zip code to a nine-digit zip code, and
- force most of the address to be all upper-case letters, and
- force awkward abbreviations for things like “street” and “suite”.
If those are the only changes, then yes we should “use selected address”.
Now we get to the important part which is “packaging”.
Packaging. We see the drop-down menu for “package details” and “please select a package”. This seems a bit odd since on an earlier screen it looked like Woo had already selected a package namely the small flat rate box. But anyway we click on “please select a package” and we select “padded flat rate envelope”. Next we click on “use these packages”. Now we find ourselves at “Shipping rates”.
Shipping rate. We see two radio buttons, one of which is “USPS – Priority Mail” with a postage amount of $8.80. We tick the radio button for “USPS – Priority Mail” with a postage amount of $8.80.
Now what? We cannot go any lower on the page. Where do we click? The answer turns out to be that we have to scroll back to the top and look to the top right and there is a button “buy shipping label”. So click the button and we buy the shipping label.
We print the shipping label. We look closely at the printed shipping label and sure enough, it says “FLAT RATE PDD ENV”. We win!
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