ShipEngine Carriers

With ShipEngine Carriers you can start shipping your orders right away! ShipEngine Carriers provide immediate access to multiple carriers with our pre-negotiated preferred rates. There is no need to open and manage your own separate carrier accounts (but you can do that, too). Additionally, you'll purchase all ShipEngine Carrier labels using the funds in your ShipEngine Balance. Instead of managing payments for multiple postal accounts, use just one balance for all labels!

Once you activate ShipEngine Carriers, you can create labels using any of the available services immediately.

Requirements

  • Activate ShipEngine Carriers in your ShipEngine account

  • Add funds to your ShipEngine Balance

Each carrier may also have specific requirements for shipping with them. Review the ShipEngine Carriers US, ShipEngine Carriers Canada, or ShipEngine Carriers UK articles for details about each carrier's requirements, services, and available features.

Activate ShipEngine Carriers

To start using ShipEngine Carriers, you must activate it by adding the payment method you wish to use for your labels. Log into ShipEngine and do the following:

  1. Follow the on-screen instructions to select a subscription plan and add your billing details.

Once complete, your available carriers will be visible in the Setup > Carriers section, where you can find each carrier's unique Carrier ID. You can also make a List Carriers call to view all of your Carrier IDs and available services.

Carriers Setup up with Carrier ID column highlighted for ShipEngine Carrier Accounts

ShipEngine Carrier accounts for a US-based account.

Next, you'll want to add funds to your ShipEngine Balance (see the next section for details).

Add Funds to Your Balance

After activating ShipEngine Carriers, you must add funds to create labels. All labels you create with ShipEngine Carriers will use funds added to your ShipEngine Balance.

To add funds to your ShipEngine Balance:

  1. Log in to ShipEngine.

Enable Auto-Funding

We recommend auto-funding to ensure your postage balance never falls below a set threshold amount. This will help you avoid interruptions to your workflow when creating labels.

To set ShipEngine to auto-fund your balance:

  1. Go to the Auto-Funding tab and toggle auto-funding On. Set the minimum balance before more postage is automatically purchased.

    Add Funds pop-up with Auto-Funding toggled "On" in and balance amount fields filled in

    For example, if you wanted to purchase $250 any time your account balance is below $25, set the When balance falls below amount to ‘25’ and set the Add the following amount to ‘250’. Then enter the maximum number of times ShipEngine can automatically purchase postage in a day.

  2. Click Save.

About Auto-Funding

  • This feature tells ShipEngine to add funds when we detect the ShipEngine Balance has fallen under your set threshold at the time of your label purchase.

  • The minimum purchase amount is 10. The maximum purchase amount is 10,000.

Void & Refund ShipEngine Carrier Labels

You may need to void a label if, for example, a shipment was canceled or a label was created by mistake. Go to our Void Labels guide to see how to use the void label endpoint.

After a void request is accepted, the label fee will be refunded to your ShipEngine balance. Please note, a label cannot be unvoided. However, you can create a new label if needed.

Label Refunds

When voiding ShipEngine Carrier labels, the label fee will be instantly refunded to your ShipEngine Balance. To receive a refund for labels created with ShipEngine Carriers, you must meet the following criteria:

  1. The label must be unused. This means that the label was not scanned by the carrier.

  2. You must void the label within 28 days of generating the label.

Errors are generally returned by the carrier when the label has passed the void deadline or the shipment was already delivered to its final destination.

Post-billed Carrier Accounts

Post-billed carrier accounts, like UPS and FedEx, do not charge for shipping labels that are not used and scanned into the carrier's system.

Voiding labels for a post-billed carrier is not necessary if the labels are unscanned. Labels can still be voided for these carriers for reporting purposes if desired.