Adding a QR code to your shipping labels is an easy way to give your customers additional information. A QR code can contain a consignment note, a link to your website or other relevant information.
Important: It is always your responsibility to get approval from the carrier if you add your own information to a label. Failing to get approval may cause extra shipping costs and you risk the shipment being rejected. |
This tutorial will show you how to add a QR code to your shipping labels. We will put the QR code in an overlay file that will be printed on top of the original label:
- In Ship On-premises, go to Setup and open Custom Labels and Documents. If the item has not been added yet, then right-click in the right-hand side pane and select New > Custom Labels and Documents.
- Go to the Overlay Labels tab and click Add.
- Enter a name for your file. We recommend naming your file in a way so you can remember what it is used for, e.g. "DHL extra barcode", "UPS QR code". Choose Create Empty Overlay Label and click OK.
- Make sure the file is selected and click Edit.
- An editor will open with a blank overlay label. This is the canvas where you can add your content. Drag a barcode from the Toolbox and drop it to the canvas.
- Click on the barcode to see the properties. Change the Type to QR Code.
- Now you need to set the data type which determines what type of data the QR code should be based on. Make sure the Data Type is set to Variable.
- Adjust the Max Length if your data will be longer than 20 characters.
- Click the "..." next to the Variable field to define which variable to use.
- Select the desired variable and click OK. You can enter a search word to filter the list. Select a field corresponding to the information you want in your QR code. In this example, we will use Custom Field 1 but you can use any field from the list. The selected variable will now appear under Properties.
- Position the QR code where you want it on the label. It should correspond to the position where you want it printed on the original label.
- Save your overlay and close the editor.
- Click OK to close the Custom Labels and Documents window.
- Navigate to the level in the setup tree where you want to apply the overlay with the QR code. Right-click in the right-hand side pane and select New > Overlay Labels.
- Select your overlay in the column with Available overlay labels and click the arrow to move it to the Enabled overlay labels and click OK to save.
- Your overlay file is now active and a QR code will be printed on your carrier label the next time you make a shipment. The QR code will contain the information from the field you set as the variable in step 6. We added https://nshift.com to Custom Field 1 on the example label below, so the QR code contains the URL to our website.