Dispatch Lane

The Dispatch Lane is where orders become shipments. From one table you assign a fulfillment location, rate the order against your carrier accounts, assign a service, buy the label, and print packing slips, individually or in bulk.

Open it from Dispatch Lane in the sidebar (under Shipping). It needs the shipments.read permission to view and shipments.write to buy labels.

The lane at a glance

The landing page shows counts for orders ready to rate, with a service assigned, and ready for labels, plus labels created and failed today. Each card links into the relevant view.

Rate & dispatch

The Rate & dispatch table lists orders that are candidates for shipping, with their order number, customer, destination, item count and SKUs, assigned fulfillment location, assigned service, and status.

Filters

• Status pills: All, Ready for labels, Needs service, Assigned, Blocked, each with a live count.
• Location dropdown: filter to a warehouse or to Unassigned.
• Search: matches order number, customer, or SKU.

Selecting orders

Tick the checkbox on each row, or the header checkbox to select the page. When more orders match than fit on the page, a banner offers Select all N matching so a bulk action applies to the entire filtered set.

Eligibility and reason codes

An order that can't ship yet shows one or more reason badges instead of Eligible:

Reason	Meaning
Dispatched to WMS	Already sent to fulfillment
Cancelled	The order is cancelled
Label purchased	A label already exists
No destination address	Shipping address is missing
Invalid address	Address is present but incomplete
No default warehouse	No fulfillment location or org default is set
No shippable items	The order has no line items
Needs package info	Weight/dimensions aren't known yet (non-blocking)

Only Needs package info is non-blocking, it flags that you'll enter a weight when rating, but the order still appears as eligible.

Fulfillment locations

Every order can carry a fulfillment location, the warehouse it ships from. The location sets the ship-from address for rating and label purchase and is passed through to your WMS.

Assign it in bulk: select orders → Assign location → pick a warehouse (or Clear location). Orders with no location fall back to your default location (set under Locations). Rating and label purchase always use the same origin, so quoted and charged prices match.

Rating and assigning a service

An order needs an assigned service before you can buy its label.

One order

Click Rate & assign on a row to open the rating panel:

1. Enter the package weight (ounces) and, optionally, dimensions.
2. Press Get rates. Orderly quotes the order against every eligible carrier account, your own accounts and Orderly-managed accounts.
3. The quotes list is filterable by account and carrier and sortable by cheapest, most expensive, or fastest. Managed accounts are highlighted and starred as Orderly account.
4. Click a quote to assign that service. The order moves to Ready for labels.

In bulk

Select orders → Rate & assign cheapest. Enter a fallback weight, then each order is rated on its own summed item weight (falling back to the weight you entered when its items carry none) and assigned the cheapest available service. Orders that don't return a rate are skipped and reported.

:::info Managed vs. own accounts

For Orderly-managed accounts the customer price comes from Orderly's rate card, never the carrier's negotiated charge. For your own accounts the live carrier rate is used. Either way the price is locked into the assignment and re-checked at purchase.

:::

Buying labels

Once a service is assigned:

• Per order: click Buy label on the row.
• In bulk: select ready orders → Buy N labels.

Label purchases draw down your prepaid label credit balance. The charge is reserved when the purchase begins and captured on success, so concurrent buys can never overdraw the balance; a failed purchase releases the reservation. See Billing for balance and top-up.

Packing slips

Generate a packing slip for any order, from the Packing slips page (enter an order and template) or directly from a row once its label exists.

Print batches and collation

The Labels + slips bulk action produces one print-ready PDF for the whole selection:

• Collated: each package's label and slip are interleaved ([label, slip, label, slip…]) so a package's paperwork prints together.
• Separated: all labels first, then all slips.
• Packing slips only: no labels.

The default (collated or separated) is set in Order Settings → Dispatch; a batch can override it.

Templates

Packing slips render from a template. The Orderly default works with no setup; create your own under Templates → New template.

Use a real order UUID or order number as the preview source. Typing {{ in a text line opens the field picker, which includes order, customer, address, shipment, total, note, page, and organization fields from that order.

The editor is a stack of lines you drag to reorder:

• Add line for text. Set font size, bold, alignment, formatting, and an optional visibility rule.
• A right-aligned line immediately after a left-aligned line uses the same PDF row by default. Choose New line when it should start below. Hidden conditional lines collapse completely instead of leaving empty space.
• Add image uploads a PNG or JPEG of up to 5 MB.
• Configure the item table by adding, removing, and reordering columns. Every column header can be renamed. You can also control prices, grouping, page-splitting, per-cell formatting, and per-cell visibility rules.
• Choose a page size (US Letter, A4, or 4×6 label).
• Preview renders the working template against a real order before you publish.

Formatting and conditions

Formatting is deliberately limited to a safe built-in list:

• short, medium, or long date formatting;
• uppercase; or
• lowercase.

Dates are parsed from ISO date values and rendered in en-US using UTC, so the same template is deterministic across servers and time zones. Invalid dates are left unchanged.

Visibility rules support has a value, is empty, equals, and does not equal. Comparisons are exact string comparisons. A header, body, or footer line that does not match is removed from the layout; subsequent lines move up. For an item-table column, the rule is evaluated for each item and hides only that item's cell.

The editor provides a fixed set of fields, formatters, and condition operators so templates render consistently in previews and generated PDFs.

Custom fields

Custom order fields use metadata.custom.<field>. Custom SKU fields use item.custom.<field> and are populated from the line item's imported properties or custom object.

Save draft keeps working; Publish makes a version available for generation. Templates are versioned, so published slips are reproducible.

Managing labels

The Labels view lists every purchased label with tracking, carrier, service, cost, and status. From here you can open or reprint a label and void one that hasn't shipped. Voiding a managed-FedEx label cancels it and credits your balance immediately; an EasyPost void is submitted as a refund and credited once the carrier confirms.

Plans and limits

Some capabilities depend on your plan, for example bulk label purchase and custom packing-slip templates. Monthly label and packing-slip volumes may also be capped. When a limit is reached the action is blocked with an explanation of your plan and usage. See Billing & plans.