About Shipment Labels

The Shipment Label service enables your organization to purchase postage and retrieve a label image for a given carrier and ship method. To establish preferred label settings, you can refer to the Label Configuration documentation, which provides guidance for setting up label preferences and any desired label augmentations in the Shipium Console.

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Test mode for label generation
Including testMode = "true" in your call to the Shipment Label API enables generation of labels for testing purposes, so that your account will not be charged.

This guide provides the use cases, with links to technical documentation, for the Shipment Label API. You can read more about our shipping APIs on our website. For a list of the carriers in our network, see Supported Carriers.

Use the Shipment Label service

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Set up your account
To use the Shipment Labels service, you must first set up your Shipium account. You can find out how in Get Started with Shipium.

Use cases and sample calls are outlined in the Shipment Label API documentation:

Create a shipping label (primary use case)
Retrieve details of a previously created label
Retrieve a label image only
Void a label
Manifest a label

Label formats

Shipium supports multiple label formats to accommodate different printing requirements and use cases. You can request one or more formats in the labelFormats array during label generation.

Traditional label formats

pdf. Standard document format suitable for printing on regular printers
png. Image format that can be embedded in web pages or emails
zpl. Printer control languages used by Zebra thermal printers at different resolutions

Printerless label format

printerless. Generates a QR code or barcode instead of a traditional shipping label; customers can scan the code at carrier drop-off locations without printing a physical label.

The printerless label format is applicable for return shipments where customers may not have access to a printer; this is currently supported for Canada Post returns. You can find more information in the Return Labels documentation.

To request printerless labels in your API calls, request the "printerless" format in the labelFormats array and provide the printerlessParams configuration specifying the type ("qrcode") and image format ("jpeg"). The response includes the QR code image and the URL encoded within it.

Configuration requirements

printerlessParams.type. String. Required. The type of printerless label
printerlessParams.imageFormat. String. Required. The image format for the printerless label

Multi-format requests

You can request both traditional and printerless formats in a single request (e.g., ["zpl", "printerless"]). Each format appears as a separate document in the documents array.

Additional options for shipment labels

Some cases require additional consideration, such as customizing a shipping label to include organization-specific information. These use cases are described below. For use cases that exceed the guidance provided in this documentation, please reach out to your Implementation or Customer Success team member.

Label configuration

Label configuration. Configure what kinds of labels are used in your organization's fulfillment network.
Label customization. Add or modify information on the shipping label that is returned from the carrier.
Print from the console. Print labels directly from the Shipium Console.

Label testing and printing without costing

Label test mode. Retrieve labels for validation and testing without being charged by the carriers.
Labels without costing. Generate shipping labels without having to provide costing information like carrier service method rates.

Returns and voids

Return labels. Provide a return shipping label to enable your customers to send back products.
Void a label. Call the cancellation API endpoint to void a label, or to void a label, cancel a shipment, and cancel carrier selection all at once.

Resources

Your Shipium team member is available to help along the way. However, you might find these resources helpful: