As of 7pm on January 13th 2023, Royal Mail temporarily halted international postage. This guide covers some of the changes to the way you use ChannelShipper that you may temporarily experience as a result.
For further information, please keep an eye on your user messages within ChannelShipper and updates on the main Royal Mail website.
Important note: All of the changes detailed below are for international orders orderly only. All domestic (UK or Channel Islands) orders are unaffected and you will be able to process them as usual.
Creating manual international orders
If you create a manual order to an international destination, at the point of applying postage, you will see that there are no services matching the criteria and you will not be able to apply postage to those orders until international postage has been enabled again.
Importing and despatching international orders via spreadsheet
If you attempt to import international orders via manual spreadsheet import, Dropbox, or ChannelShipper Desktop, the following will occur:
- If your data contains the information necessary for orders to import in a 'Postage applied' status, including weight, package format, and shipping service, then your import will fail, and orders will not be imported. This is because the shipping services are currently disabled.
If you import a spreadsheet containing order and shipping service data for both international and domestic orders, the domestic orders will import into Click & Drop and the international orders from the spreadsheet will not. - If your data does not contain the information necessary for orders to import in a 'Postage applied' status, including weight, package format, and shipping service, your orders will import into Click & Drop in a 'New' status. You will not be able to apply postage to those orders until international postage has been enabled again.
You can check the status of your imports by navigating to Orders > Import > Order Import History
Importing and despatching international orders via API
- If your data contains the information necessary for orders to import in a 'Postage applied' status, including weight, package format, and shipping service, then your import will fail, and orders will not be imported. This is because the shipping services are currently disabled.
If you import data containing order and shipping service data for both international and domestic orders in a single Create Order call, the domestic orders will import into Click & Drop and the international orders will not. - If your data does not contain the information necessary for orders to import in a 'Postage applied' status, including weight, package format, and shipping service, your orders will import into Click & Drop in a 'New' status. You will not be able to apply postage to those orders until international postage has been enabled again.
Importing and despatching international orders via eCommerce channels
International orders will still import from your eCommerce webstores and/or marketplaces, but any shipping rules that apply international services will not function at this time. As such, your orders will import in a 'New' status and you will not be able to apply postage to those orders until international postage has been enabled again.
Creating new shipping rules
At present, it is not possible to create new international shipping rules while international services are disabled. You will be able to create international shipping rules as usual once international postage has been enabled again. Domestic shipping rules are unaffected.