Why I built Quick pack: scan one order, check it, ship it
Pickadoodl started as a batch tool: pick 50 or 500 orders in one walk, pack them, fulfill them together. That's the right shape for a team. It turns out to be the wrong shape for a lot of the stores that install it.
The store I kept meeting
A lot of new Pickadoodl installs aren't warehouses. They're one or two people, 10 to 30 orders a day, packing at a table in the back room as orders come in. They don't think in batches. They think: here's an order, put the right things in the box, ship it, next.
For them, "make a batch first" is a step that gets in the way of the part they actually care about, which is not sending the wrong thing. Every pick and pack app I looked at in November leads with the same thing: scan an order, check it, fulfill it. Shopify's own batch fulfillment can scan-check too, but only once you've built a batch. So that's what I built.
What Quick pack does
- Scan the slip. Every Pickadoodl packing slip now has a barcode of its order number. Scan it, or type the number, and the order opens.
- Scan every item. A wrong item is refused on the spot. A line with several units can take a typed count after the first scan. Barcode aliases, packing notes, reminder rules and photo rules all apply.
- Fulfill, then next. Fulfill in Shopify, and the scan box is waiting for the next slip. On the Pro plan you weigh it and buy the label in the same flow.
The part I'm proudest of is what happens before the order opens. Quick pack checks the order in Shopify first: cancelled, on hold, already fulfilled or already in a batch, and it stops you with the reason. A partly fulfilled order only asks for what's left. Flag something and the order can't be fulfilled until the flag is cleared, so a problem order can't slip out on a busy afternoon. Underneath, it's the same engine as the batches, so every scan counts in Analytics and the accuracy numbers.
It shipped alongside packing slips in the customer's language. If your store sells in Dutch, German or French, each slip now prints in the language the customer shopped in, one per order, even in a mixed print run.
Who it's for, honestly
If you pack orders one at a time, Quick pack is for you, and it's on the free plan (75 orders a month). If you already build batches in Shopify and pack them as a batch, Shopify's own scan check is free and fine. And if a team picks for you, Pickadoodl's batches are still the better tool. Quick pack doesn't replace them; it's for the hours when it's just you and the slip.
Read more
I wrote three guides to go with it, useful whether or not you use the app:
- How to check every Shopify order before it ships: what a wrong order costs and a seven-step packing routine.
- How to set up a packing station for a small Shopify store: the layout, the gear, and what it costs.
- Packing slips in your customer's language: for stores that sell across borders.
Want to try it? Install Pickadoodl free on the Shopify App Store. If anything about it trips you up, tell me. I read every message.