On your shipments page, the manifests tab is where you can create and print end-of-day manifests for supported carriers.
What is a manifest?
A manifest is a form documenting all of your day's shipment details for your carrier and is also known as an "end of day" or "SCAN form".
Are manifests required?
For Australia Post and Canada Post, manifests are mandatory. Canada Post will refuse to accept un-manifested packages while Australia Post will charge an AU$45 fee per package for accepted but un-manifested packages.
For USPS, manifests are not required. Your driver must accept your packages regardless of there being a manifest available but they are not required to scan them individually at the point of pickup.
For UPS, the labels generated by SKULabs and any other modern shipping software are "pre-scanned and pre-paid" and it is impossible to generate a UPS end-of-day report for these packages. Our UPS partner manager is interested to speak with any driver or UPS manager who is not aware of this fact.
For FedEx, the labels generated by SKULabs and any other modern shipping software are transmitted electronically and do not require a manifest.
You can only generate Amazon Buy Shipping SCAN forms for USPS within seller central.
How to start making manifests
Before your driver arrives, stop shipping for that carrier and click "Create Manifest" to create a manifest for the day for that carrier.
It can take anywhere from 30 seconds to over 30 minutes to generate a manifest depending on the time of day you're generating your manifest and the carrier involved. You are not waiting on SKULabs for this process to complete, you are waiting on your carrier.
How can I keep shipping for tomorrow after I print my manifests?
This is called a shipping cut-off time. You will want to configure this in SKULabs and reserve any packages printed after this cutoff for tomorrow. Depending on your carrier's recommendations, you should not release packages you printed after the cutoff time even if your driver is late as this could prevent a manifest from being generated the next day if those packages are already scanned in.
See our article on how to future date your orders with a cutoff time.
I forgot to manifest my shipments, can I manifest them still?
For many carriers you can generate a back-dated manifest covering the shipments from that day. For others such as the USPS and Royal Mail this is impossible and there is no way to generate a retroactive manifest. Future date your shipments to avoid this issue if you planned on shipping these packages at a later date.