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Understanding Swap Label Printer

An overview of Swap Label Printer — what it is, what to prepare before going live, and how to use it day-to-day to generate shipping labels and commercial invoices.

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Written by Jemma O'Leary

This article explains what Swap Label Printer (sometimes known as Orders Hub) is, what you need in place before going live, and how to use it day-to-day to generate shipping labels and commercial invoices.

Swap Label Printer (SLP) is Swap's own label printing software. It generates shipping labels and commercial invoices via the Swap portal, giving Swap full control over customs documentation to keep you compliant when shipping internationally.

Setup is handled entirely by Swap. To get started, contact your Swap onboarding or account manager — they will create your account and configure everything for you.


Prerequisites

Before Swap Label Printer can be set up, ensure the following are in place for your products:

  • HS codes configured

  • Country of origin configured

  • Product weights set (required for international shipments)

If you already have compliant customs descriptions, share these with your onboarding or account manager so they can be uploaded to the portal.


How Swap Label Printer works

Swap Label Printer is fully set up and managed by the Swap team to ensure accuracy and compliance.

Portal setup

Your Swap onboarding specialist will:

  • Create and configure the label portal

  • Connect the portal to your Shopify store

  • Add and configure the relevant shipping carriers

End-to-end testing

Once setup is complete, the Swap team will run a full cross-border test order. This includes:

  • Creating a test international order in Orders

  • Verifying that the shipping label renders correctly in your chosen format

  • Verifying that the information on the shipping label and commercial invoice is correct

  • Confirming that tracking propagates as expected through your store or WMS workflow


Day-to-day usage

Once live, your warehouse team can generate labels directly from the Swap portal.

  1. In Orders, select the order or orders you want to ship

  2. Click Generate label

  3. Print the label

This can be done for individual orders or in batches. Commercial invoices are automatically generated by Swap and sent electronically to the carrier.


Common causes of label generation failures

If a label fails to generate, it is usually caused by one of the following:

Invalid or incomplete shipping address

Labels will fail if the shipping address is missing required fields (street, city, postal code, or country). Update the address in the Swap portal and retry.

Items with zero value

Labels cannot be generated for orders that include items with a zero value. Assign a non-zero value to each item in the Swap portal and retry.

Carrier and service limitations

Some carriers do not service all origin or destination combinations. If a label fails for this reason, switch to an alternative carrier (such as UPS or FedEx) and regenerate the label.

For a full list of carrier-specific errors and how to resolve them, see the Label errors section of the help centre.


Common pitfalls to avoid

  • Missing HS codes, country of origin, or product weights for international shipments

  • Incomplete or non-compliant customs descriptions

  • Address characters not supported by certain carriers

The Swap team is on hand to support you with any label-related issues.

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