Print FedEx Shipping Labels in Multiple Sizes in WooCommerce

fedex-shipping-label

This article has been curated for you to help you with printing FedEx shipping labels right on your WooCommerce. It will guide you through all the necessary specifications and details required to print the shipping labels using our plugin.

Printing the FedEx shipping labels can sometimes prove to be quite a hefty job for many WooCommerce store owners. They have to manually go to the FedEx website to generate and print the labels for every order. This complete process of label generation consumes quite a lot of time, which is not healthy for your business. So, a plugin that fetches the shipping details from the order and generates labels for you, would be the perfect solution to this problem.

The WooCommerce Shipping Plugin for FedEx with Print Label is one such plugin that does it. It is really simple to configure and use this plugin. By using this plugin, the postage for your labels is automatically paid using your FedEx account. However, before going into the features, it is important to understand how the label generation works and how it can be configured to print the correct shipping labels for your orders. Let us quickly dive into the article.


Label size and type offered in the plugin

There are quite a lot of options for you to print the required shipping labels for your business. Let us first see the various label sizes available.

Label size

  • PAPER_4 x 6: Generates labels with a size of 4 x 6 inches
  • PAPER_4 x 8: Generates labels with a size of 4 x 8 inches
  • PAPER_4 x 9: Generates labels with a size of 4 x 9 inches
  • PAPER_7 x 4.75: Generates labels with a size of 7 x 4.75 inches
  • PAPER_8.5 x 11_BOTTOM_HALF_LABEL: Generates labels with a size of 8.5 x 11 inches at the bottom half of the paper
  • PAPER_8.5 x 11_TOP_HALF_LABEL: Generates labels with a size of 8.5 x 11 inches at the top half of the paper
  • PAPER_Letter: Generates labels with a size of 8.5 x 11 inches

For Thermal printers, the following are the label sizes available –

  • STOCK_4 x 6
  • STOCK_4 x 6.75_LEADING_DOC_TAB
  • STOCK_4 x 6.75_TRADING_DOC_TAB
  • STOCK_4 x 8
  • STOCK_4 x 9_LEADING_DOC_TAB
  • STOCK_4 x 9_TRADING_DOC_TAB

Thus, if you are using a thermal printer to print your FedEx shipping labels, then it is recommended that you go for the STOCK sizes. Doing this will produce optimized labels that include all the label data without any formatting errors


Label/image type

There are in total five types of image formats available for you. Following are the options.

  • PDF: It is a Portable Document Format that is used to present documents in an independent manner of application, software, hardware, and operating systems.
  • PNG: The full form is Portable Network Graphics. This format has a raster graphics file format that supports lossless data compression.
  • DPL: It is the short form of Datamax Programming Language. Only DPL-supported printers can decode this type of image format.
  • EPL2: Eltron Programming Language is a type of printer control language. It is the older version of the ZPL format and is still widely used.
  • ZPLII: It is the Zebra Programming Language which is a type of page description language that is widely used by many printers.

How to configure the FedEx shipping labels in the plugin

If you have a valid FedEx account and have successfully installed the FedEx plugin into your WooCommerce store, then configuring the label printing feature is a very easy task. To do that, you would have to go to the FedEx settings page and scroll down to the following section.


label print size

Here, you can choose the size of the label as well as the image format. However, you should choose the appropriate combinations for the sake of better label quality in general. For example, if you want to print the PAPER_4 x 6 option, then you should choose the image type as PNG. Following is an example of the above combination.


label png

This format is well-suited for a lot of FedEx shipping labels as there are many types of FedEx boxes that can adjust this label size.

Now, you need to go to the following section to enable the generation of the labels automatically. The options are self-explanatory and you can refer to the following screenshot.

label generation - advanced settings

How to print the FedEx shipping labels

If you have performed the above steps correctly, you can easily print the shipping labels as soon as the shipments are created. In order to do that, you have to open the received order and scroll down to the section as shown in the image below.

print fedex labels

As soon as you click on the Create Shipment option, the screen will refresh and you would be able to see the print label option as shown in the image below.

print fedex label

If you click on the Print label button, the PDF file for the shipping label will be downloaded and the image will look something like below.

shipping label

 


Print labels based on the type of label printers

Often, online store owners ponder before selecting the right label printing machines for their business. They have to make sure that it meets their budget and satisfies their business needs as well. And being a WooCommerce store owner, you should make sure that the label generation process is simple.


Thermal Printers

Thermal printers are best suited to print any label that is 4 x L, where L may contain any value. Moreover, the labels are always in vertical form. Thus, by looking at the various sizes offered in our plugin, you can print the following sizes using any thermal printer.

  • STOCK_4 x 6
  • STOCK_4 x 6.75_LEADING_DOC_TAB
  • STOCK_4 x 6.75_TRADING_DOC_TAB
  • STOCK_4 x 8
  • STOCK_4 x 9_LEADING_DOC_TAB
  • STOCK_4 x 9_TRADING_DOC_TAB

Moreover, you have to make sure that you do not select PDF as the image format if you are using thermal printers. It is not that it will not print the labels, the issue is that the format of the printed labels might not be perfect.

Keeping these things in mind let us check out the two types of thermal label printers available for you.

Thermal transfer printers

Thermal transfer printers are the most widely used label printers. They are known for their high-quality and long-lasting labels. There are a variety of thermal printers available that can range from low cost to high cost. Usually, costlier printers are used by bigger industries or companies in order to print a high volume of labels. These printers come with ink ribbons that are used to print high-quality labels. The ink ribbons are usually made of wax and resin.

These printers are a bit costlier than other types of printers, but the maintenance is quite budget-friendly. These printers are built to last longer and tend to work pretty well. They could be a very good choice for your business if you’re looking for better-quality labels.

Direct thermal printers

These types of printers do not require an ink ribbon. Getting into specifications, the labels used contain a special layer of chemicals beneath the surface of the label and react to the heat. This is how the letters and images are formed on the labels. This results in a decrease in the cost per label. Direct thermal printers are very easy to set up and use as your daily label generators. Moreover, some Direct printers can switch back and forth between thermal and direct transfer printing.

However, the labels used in the printers are a tad expensive because of the chemical used on them. This increases the maintenance cost which might not be good for your budget. On the other hand, some cheaper printers produce low-quality labels that tend to fade away with time.


Normal printers

Laser and Inkjet printers come under this category. These types of printers are more economical and make an excellent choice for on-demand printing. They can be easily used as a home or office printer. Moreover, the maintenance cost of these printers is quite low and their durability is also outstanding. But, despite offering such great features and being cost-effective, these printers cannot print multiple labels at a time. This makes them slow which is not good for any online business.

Now, let us check out the types of supported formats for normal printers.

  • PAPER_7 x 4.75: Generates labels with a size of 7 x 4.75 inches
  • PAPER_8.5 x 11_BOTTOM_HALF_LABEL: Generates labels with a size of 8.5 x 11 inches at the bottom half of the paper
  • PAPER_8.5 x 11_TOP_HALF_LABEL: Generates labels with a size of 8.5 x 11 inches at the top half of the paper
  • PAPER_Letter: Generates labels with a size of 8.5 x 11 inches

While using a normal printer, you should choose the image type as PDF for better quality and format. These printers print 2 pages at maximum and thus, are best suited for 8.5 x 11 sized labels.


Printers for other formats

For other formats including DPL, EPL2, and ZPLII, you have to have printers that support those formats. For example, if you have a printer that supports DPL printing, you should choose the image type as DPL and then proceed with the label generation process.

Moreover, you should choose the right format size based on the type of printer. Thus, if the EPL2 thermal printer supports 4 x 8 inches labels, then you should choose STOCK_4 x 8 as the label size and EPL2 as the image type.


Live example…

Let us take an example where a WooCommerce store owner needs to use the STOCK_4 x 6 size for his labels and use a ZPLII thermal printer. To do that, he has to go to the FedEx settings page and choose the above combination. Now, as soon as an order is received he can create the shipment to print the shipping labels for them (refer to the steps in the earlier section).

As soon as he prints the label, a . ZPLII file will be downloaded. It would look something like this.

zpl format

But now imagine that he wants to change this file into a PNG file and then print the shipping label. He can do that by going to a website called Labelary. Here, he would see the following interface.

zpl viewer

Now to configure the label format, he has to open the ZPLII file by clicking on the Open file button and selecting it. You can refer to the following image for that.

change format

By doing this, he would be able to see the change in the image on the right side of the screen. He can further save that label image by manually clicking the right mouse button on the image. The saved image would look something like below.

shipping labels

Similarly, you can convert any ZPLII label file into PNG using this online web tool.


We hope this article will be been useful to you. Feel free to get in touch with our Customer Support team if you have any queries to ask.