Know what every parcel will cost before you set a price

Each product gets one postage size from its own data: its weight plus packaging weight, and its packed size. The sizes are large letter, packet, small parcel, medium parcel and large parcel.

• A product with no weight or no packed size is listed as missing. It is never given a size by default.
• You can set a size by hand on a product, and it warns you if the product is over that size's limits.
• The starting limits come from Royal Mail's published formats. They are marked "starter value, not confirmed" until you check, edit and confirm them. The packet size has no limit until you enter one.
• Every answer says why, for example "100 g, 10 x 7 x 2 cm fits Large Letter".

The size, the destination country and what the order needs pick the cheapest service that is allowed to carry it. A service only counts if it:

• carries that size, weight and girth, and covers the country
• is tracked, for marketplace orders
• can arrive by the delivery date, where you have entered its transit days (in working days, Monday to Friday; bank holidays are not known)
• is linked to one of your shipping methods
• If nothing qualifies, the order is flagged for a person. It is not guessed.
• A "Why this service?" panel lists every option with its cost ex VAT and inc VAT, and every service ruled out with the reason.
• For orders outside the UK, no service is chosen until you have entered and confirmed the VAT and duty rules for that country. Duty and VAT on the goods are not worked out for you.

Upload the prices your courier gave you as a CSV or Excel (.xlsx) file. Nothing is saved until you have checked it.

• The upload wizard reads every sheet, guesses which columns are weight bands, zones and surcharges, and remembers your column choices for next time.
• It checks the file before saving: overlapping or missing weight bands, missing or zero prices, unknown countries and a country listed in two zones.
• It copes with weights in g or kg, sizes in cm or mm, prices in pounds or pence, prices with or without VAT, and a fuel surcharge that is added or already included.
• A new card starts as a draft. Before you switch it on you see how prices change against the current card and how many of your products are affected.
• Cards are dated. An order is costed with the card in force on the day it was placed, and withdrawing a card puts the previous one back.
• Starter layouts for Evri, Royal Mail Click & Drop, DPD and Parcelforce show you the columns. They contain no prices, and the system refuses to load one unchanged.
• Only CSV and Excel (.xlsx) files up to 5 MB are accepted. Formulas are not run and files with macros are refused.

Once a product has a size and a country, the postage cost chosen for it feeds the numbers that depend on it:

• the floor price the repricer works out
• profit per order and per product, shown as an estimate until the real label cost is known
• margin and loss reports
• the courier rules that pick a service for each order
• The cost used in margin sums is ex VAT, with the VAT-inclusive price shown beside it.

For parcels whose label was bought outside the system, for example in Amazon Seller Central, on Royal Mail Click & Drop or on a courier's own site.

• Add the carrier, service, tracking number and cost to the order, and the label PDF if you want to keep it. The order is marked despatched and stock moves from reserved to sold.
• The cost goes into that order's profit, so it stops showing as an estimate.
• Evri parcels are followed automatically, and DHL parcels once DHL is connected. Other carriers are followed by hand: you set the status (dispatched, in transit, delivered or problem).
• Tracking is sent back to the marketplace for normal carriers. It is not sent again for Amazon Buy Shipping, because Amazon already has it.
• Added the wrong one? Remove it and the order goes back to the status it had. Every change is logged.

Coming soon Buying Amazon Buy Shipping labels from inside MarketplaceHQ 365 is not available. It depends on Amazon approving that access, and that has not happened yet. Until then, buy the label in Seller Central and record it here.