How to set up your default shipping settings

Purpose: Default shipping settings let you pre-fill shipping details for your orders. These settings are applied automatically unless your Shipping rules or the Dynamic Checkout say otherwise.

You can configure your defaults in Shipping > Shipping defaults.

Default weight

Sets the total shipment weight if none is provided. This may affect available shipping methods, as many carriers use weight classes and some also consider volumetric weight. Check your carrier’s shipping conditions before setting a default.

Preferred shipping method

Choose your most-used method. It will be assigned automatically when an order arrives. If it’s unavailable (e.g., weight too high/low, unsupported destination), another eligible method will be selected.

Default export reason (customs shipment type)

Required for shipments outside the EU to generate correct customs documents. Select your default from the dropdown menu.

Delivery notes

You can set a default Delivery note that will automatically appear on your shipping labels if supported by the carrier. You can only choose one default note type.

The following options are available:

• None

• Order number: Uses the order number as the delivery note. If supported by the carrier, enabling this will print the order number on the label.

• Customer notes: Automatically adds the customer’s message imported from the checkout or your shop (for example, “Leave at the door”).

• Items SKU: Automatically adds the SKU codes (on the label) of the ordered items along with their quantity, such as SKU123[1], SKU456[5]. The quantity appears inside the brackets.

Delivery Notes via Edit Order View (Delivery Instructions)

For supported carriers, you can add a custom note directly in the Delivery notes field in the Edit Order View (EOV), available in both Incoming Orders and Pack & Go.

If “delivery notes” is enabled, EOV will pre-fill the note with the order number by default. You can overwrite this with your custom note:

General limitations

• All parcels in a multi-parcel (multicollo) shipment will have the same note.
• You can automatically send Shop or API notes by enabling the default setting and selecting Customer notes.
• Notes must be one single line; multiple lines are not supported.

Carrier-specific behaviour

• DHL Freight – We send up to 512 characters. Only 120 characters are printed on the label; the remaining text is received in DHL Freight’s internal systems and may be shown to the driver on their PDA.
• BPost – Prints up to ~50 characters on the label.
• Other carriers in the future may display these notes only on the driver’s PDA rather than printing them on the label.

Show the “postage paid” logo (letter shipments)

Adds the postage paid logo to unstamped letter labels, replacing the need for a physical stamp.

Show QR code on unstamped letter labels

if you want a QR code to show on your unstamped letter labels, you can select this box. Sendcloud doesn't have a purpose for the QR, which is why we don't show it by default. However, we know that some of our users have created their own system that's linked to these QR codes.

Use order number as invoice number on customs documents

When you ship outside of the EU, your customs documents need certain information. The invoice number is part of the required information. If preferred, you can select this option to automatically fill in the order number in the invoice number. This way, you don't need to manually add the invoice number every time. This is only applicable if you want the invoice number to be the same as the order number.