Print your Shippo shipping labels automatically

Shippo generates your carrier shipping labels. Through Zapier, the label PDF goes straight to your label printer the moment Shippo creates it, so nobody has to download it and print it by hand.

An Expedy cloud receipt printer, XPDY80, HSPOS or Star Micronics, cannot print a carrier label: it is a receipt printer. Carrier labels always go through a Raspberry Pi or a Cloud Print Box USB adapter driving a label printer.

What you need

  • An Expedy account with an active Raspberry Pi print server or Cloud Print Box USB adapter. Not set up yet? See Add a Raspberry Pi print server to your account
  • Your own label printer, connected by USB to that Raspberry Pi or adapter, with its port set to LABEL
  • A Shippo account and a Zapier account
  • Your API SID, API TOKEN and API Printer UID, on the printer page of the Expedy console, in the API Keys & UID card

Why a label printer

A carrier label is a PDF in a fixed format, most often 100 x 150 mm. A receipt printer cannot render it at the right size, so the job goes to a label printer driven by a Raspberry Pi or the Cloud Print Box.

On the printer page, run a USB scan and set the port that carries the label printer to LABEL, not ESC/POS. See Installation on Raspberry Pi.

Build the Zap

  1. In Zapier, create a Zap and pick Shippo as the trigger app
  2. Choose the event that fires when a label is created
  3. Add Expedy Print as the action, then Create a Print Job
  4. Connect your Expedy account with your Expedy SID and your Expedy TOKEN
  5. Enter the Printer UID of the label printer
  6. In the message field, map the label PDF URL returned by Shippo

Step by step on the Zapier side: How to integrate Expedy Print with Zapier

What to send

A label printer takes the PDF URL on its own, with no tag:

https://example.com/label.pdf

On an ESC/POS receipt printer the same URL has to be wrapped in the <PDF> tag instead. Both forms are detailed in PDF printing.

Test it

Create a test label in Shippo and check that it comes out at the right size. If nothing prints:

  • check the Printer UID, it must be the label printer, not the receipt printer
  • check that the USB port is in LABEL mode after the scan
  • check that the PDF URL is reachable without authentication, Expedy fetches it from its own servers

Depending on the connector or the software you use, this setup may be handled by your partner or your agency. Check with them before you start.

Need help?