Overview

Despatch Bay is an intermediary company associated with Yodel. They allow internet and mail order retailers create and manage shipments through Yodel. Linnworks integrates directly with the Yodel service, allowing you to create shipments, generate labels and update Tracking Numbers from within our software with the selection of the 'Print Shipping Label' option.

Setup and configure

Requirements

• Active DespatchBay account http://www.despatchbay.com
• DespatchBay API key and password
• Adobe Reader 9.0 or higher

Configure services

• You can add all available courier services by clicking the 'Create Default List' button in the DespatchBay Config screen, found in 'Settings', 'Shipping Services'. This operation will get the list of all available services from DespatchBay and add them into the Linnworks Postal Service list.
  
  
• Alternatively you can add already existing services by clicking the 'Add' button and selecting the service you want to allocate to DespatchBay from the list
• The list of allocated services represent postal services defined in Linnworks and their mapping to a Despatch Bay service. You can change the allocated service by clicking the 'DespatchBay Service' column and selecting the appropriate service from the drop-down list
  
  
• If you set the service as a Splittable, this will instruct the system to check if the order contains more than one item and prompt you to split the order during the label printing
• Label format – double click to choose from 1 label on A4, 2 labels on A4 and 1 label on A6.
• Click Save when finished to save all the settings

Printing Labels

• If an order is allocated to a postal service which is mapped to a Despatch Bay service, the system will automatically send the Shipment request to Despatch Bay, generate a label and record a tracking number (or multiple tracking numbers in case of a split order package)

• To print a label from the 'Open Orders' screen, select the order(s) you would like to print (you can select multiple orders in one batch). Right click > Print > Print Label
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• Linnworks will generate a PDF file with all the  labels merged in one document (if you have mixed paper sizes A4 and A6 – this will result in A6 label embedded in the A4 array of pages. During the printing your printer will grab the page from the correct tray or fail to print – depending on the make of the printer.
  
  
• If a label printing resulted in error you will see an error sign next to the order. Move the mouse over the error icon to see the error message
  
  
• All the tracking numbers for the shipment will be recorded against the order. You can view it in View Order screen.
  
  

Splitting packages

• If the service you allocated to the order is configured as Splittable and an order contains more than one item, Linnworks will prompt you to split the order's packaging at the point of printing
  
  
• Click on the Split cell to bring up the order packaging splitting screen
  
  
• To split the order drag and drop the order items from the grid onto the space provided at the bottom.Dragging onto a empty space will create new "Bin". Dragging onto existing "Bin" will result in adding the dragged item into the selected bin.To drag only certain number of items into a bin, specify how many items you would like to add in the Move Quantity field before dragging the item.