Peak season shipping tips to help you fix what matters first

Let’s follow a shopper’s journey from checkout to doorstep.

At 11:47pm on Black Friday, a shopper in Sydney buys a linen shirt in medium and a soy candle, and pays extra for express delivery. For her, the hard part is over. For your team, it has just begun.

Between that click and her front door sit a dozen small decisions. Which shirt comes off the shelf. Which box it goes in. Which carrier takes it, and at what price. What she's told while she waits. On an ordinary day, each decision is easy. At peak, her order is one of thousands, and every decision is made under pressure.

That's the reality of peak season. As orders, carriers and locations increase, there's more work behind every order and more pressure to get it right. When one decision goes wrong, the cost doesn't stay at the packing bench. It follows the parcel out the door, as a customer enquiry, a replacement or a return.

At each stop, you'll see where orders like hers tend to go wrong, and what to fix first so they don't. The advice applies to any fulfilment operation. If you use Starshipit, you'll also find how to set up each fix.

Contents

• Which peak season shipping fixes should come first?
• Prevent errors before parcels leave
• Keep dispatch moving as order volumes rise
• Manage delivery enquiries before they build up
• Peak season shipping FAQs
• Choose your next improvement

Which peak season shipping fixes should come first?

Not every stop on the journey needs attention before peak. Start with the one creating the most repeat work.

Look at recent packing corrections, orders that missed dispatch and the reasons customers contacted you. Choose the issue causing the most rework, then test one improvement with the people who handle it every day.

• Wrong or missing items: start with item validation and a clear picking-to-packing handover.
• Orders waiting to leave: check for repeated address fixes, packaging selection, carrier decisions or queues at shared equipment.
• Repeated delivery questions: check whether customers can find a working tracking link and understand the latest update.
• Stock that can't be found or trusted: review inventory and location control, including whether a warehouse management system (WMS) would address the underlying problem.

If peak is close, prioritise changes your team can configure, test and learn before volumes rise. Give larger warehouse changes enough time for data preparation and training.

If the large goes in her box, nobody will know until she opens it. By then, the cost of that two-second slip has grown into a return, a replacement and a customer deciding whether to order from you again.

The answer isn't asking people to slow down. It's making the right item the only option to pack.

Validate each item at the packing bench

Packing Validation checks the products being packed against the order. It's especially useful when similar colours, sizes or variants are easy to confuse, like that medium and large.

In Starshipit, open Workflows → Packing Validation, then scan or search for the order. Scan each product's barcode or enter its SKU. A mismatched item sets off an error message and a warning sound, and Complete Packing becomes available once all items are marked as packed. Check package and service details before printing, according to your configured workflow.

Before your team starts:

• Check that product barcodes and SKUs match the order data.
• Test a wrong variant and an order containing more than one of the same item.
• Show staff how to resolve a mismatch and when to ask for help.

Make item scanning part of the normal process. Manual marking is available, so a completed packing status alone doesn't prove every item was scanned. Follow the Packing Validation setup guide.

Keep orders identifiable between picking and packing

Her shirt and candle live in different aisles, and at peak they may be picked by different people. Each handover is a chance for an item to drift into the wrong order, or for a complete order to sit waiting because nobody is sure it's ready.

When several people handle an order, the handover needs to be clear. Use labelled totes or a consistent staging area so picked items stay together until they're packed.

Starshipit's Pick & Pack app supports barcode scanning and tote workflows. Choose a picking-and-packing, picking-only or packing-only process that fits your team, then practise the handover with seasonal staff before they handle a full queue.

Jewellery brand Luna Rae saw 80% faster fulfilment after moving to mobile workflows.

Start with the Pick & Pack guide.

Resolve address exceptions before the dispatch rush

Her apartment has a unit number. If it's missing from the order, the time to find out is now, while you can still email her, not when the courier is standing in her building's lobby.

Review addresses early enough to contact the customer if details are missing. Use address validation to help identify and correct address issues, then review anything that remains unresolved.

An address check doesn't guarantee delivery. Agree who owns exceptions and where those orders wait, so the packing team can keep working through orders that are ready.

Reduce repeated packaging and carrier decisions

Watch a few orders move through the packing bench. Repeated clicks and searches often reveal the best place to start.

• Packaging selection: configure package barcodes so staff can scan to assign a saved package. This selects packaging. It doesn't check the products inside or measure the packed parcel.
• Carrier selection: use shipping rules for routine decisions. A cheapest-carrier rule applies as orders import, so create it before your sale starts. Check that the services it can select meet your delivery requirements. Remember, she paid for express. A rule that only looks at price shouldn't be able to send her order the slow way.
• Printing: test printers, label supplies and the scan-to-print workflow before an extra shift starts. Keep each printed label with its matching parcel.

You decide how you fulfil: use the carriers that suit your business, use your own negotiated rates and pay no extra fee per label.

Use the package and carrier barcode guide for setup, and test representative destinations, package sizes and service choices before applying a changed process more widely.

Review opportunities to consolidate orders

On Saturday morning, she's back. She orders a second candle, as a gift for her sister, to the same address. Her first order hasn't shipped yet.

Starshipit's Suggested Merges identifies orders with the same destination address so you can review and consolidate them. Select Suggested Merges on the orders grid, choose the orders to combine and select the parent order. Merged orders can't be unmerged, so check each group first.

Check the recipient, delivery requirements and whether all items are ready before merging. The same address can serve more than one person. A combined parcel also needs suitable packaging and accurate weight and dimensions. Consolidation won't always be the cheapest or fastest option.

Her case shows why the check matters. Her first order is paid express. Before combining it with a second order, make sure doing so won't delay the delivery she paid for. Make the review part of order preparation, before packing begins, and avoid holding a ready order past its dispatch commitment while waiting for another.

Read more about order consolidation and shipping costs.

Use a WMS when stock control is slowing fulfilment

Go back to that shirt. Before anyone can check it at the packing bench, someone has to find it. If your system says there's a medium on the shelf in aisle four and the shelf is empty, the order stalls before packing starts. And if the last one has already gone, you may have sold a shirt you can't send.

That's a sign the problem sits in stock control, not packing. Watch for these patterns:

• Pickers regularly search for stock or arrive at empty locations.
• Quantities in your system don't match what's on the shelves.
• Orders are cancelled or delayed because stock you thought you had isn't there.

Packing checks can't fix any of these. They call for a warehouse management system (WMS): software that records where every product is and tracks it as it moves, from the moment stock arrives to the moment an order leaves.

Starshipit WMS adds that control to Starshipit itself, so your stock and your shipping run on the same data. It includes:

• Stock levels by SKU, location and warehouse, with a full history of every stock movement
• Mobile receiving with barcode scanning, and guided putaway
• Single, batch and tote picking, validated by barcode
• Replenishment triggered by low stock
• Stocktakes and cycle counts on mobile or desktop

The result is more capable fulfilment, without another system to manage.

Where to start depends on your setup:

• Already using a WMS? Before peak, check the processes it depends on. Are deliveries received and put away accurately? Is replenishment keeping pick locations stocked? Do your location records match what's on the shelves?
• Considering a WMS? Plan for setup time. You'll need to prepare product and location data, check that your integrations are supported, test stock movements and train the team. If peak is close, start the groundwork now and go live when volumes settle.
• Stock is accurate, but packing is the problem? You may not need a WMS yet. Start with the scanning and order checks earlier in this guide.

Already a Starshipit customer? You can try WMS free for seven days from inside your account and test it with your own products before you commit.

New to Starshipit? You can activate WMS as part of a 30-day free trial.

Make tracking easy to find and understand

Customers need to know what has happened to their order and what to do next. Review your shipping notifications and tracking experience from a customer's point of view.

• Check the message: distinguish order preparation from carrier collection. A printed label doesn't mean a parcel is in transit.
• Check the link: make tracking easy to find and confirm it opens the right shipment.
• Check the handover: give customers a clear contact route when tracking has stopped or delivery needs attention.

Starshipit supports automated shipping notifications and branded tracking pages that send customers to your own website, not your carrier's, to check their order. Configure the delivery events and messages available for your setup, then test them with a sample order. The information customers see depends on the tracking events available from the carrier.

Organic Cotton halved its "where's my order?" queries.

Give your support team a clear exception process

Agree who investigates late or stalled parcels, when to contact the carrier and how to update the customer. Use the same delivery expectations in checkout messaging, shipping emails and support replies.

During peak, review the main reasons customers contact you. If the same question keeps appearing, improve the message or process causing it. Track delivery enquiries alongside order volume so a busier sales week does not disguise whether the experience is improving.

Choose your next improvement

Pick one recurring problem, make a change and test the result. Check whether packing corrections fall, more orders leave on time or delivery enquiries become easier to resolve. Keep the process simple enough for the whole team to follow on a busy day.