Royal Mail OBA Integration

Learn more about how to connect ChannelGrabber to your Royal Mail Online Business Account to print 2D Barcode Labels

Clare Cormican avatar
Written by Clare Cormican
Updated over a week ago

Applying for a Royal Mail Integration

Firstly, you will need to fill in the below application form, which will require you to have a Royal Mail Online Business Account (OBA).  If you do not currently have a Royal Mail OBA account, you will need to contact Royal Mail directly in order to set one up.  Once you have successfully set up your Royal Mail OBA account, you can then fill in the form below:

Once you have submitted your form, after approximately 2 weeks ChannelGrabber should receive an email from Royal Mail with your Live Credentials.  Once we receive these we will enable the Royal Mail integration on your account for you and will let you know once it is ready to use.
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Important Note:

Unfortunately, NetDespatch, who we rely on to connect with Royal Mail OBA, are not currently accepting new account registrations at this time.  As we understand it, this is a result of an internal dispute between NetDespatch and their parent company Royal Mail, and unfortunately our contacts at both NetDespatch and Royal Mail are unable to provide us with any indication of when this will be resolved.

Sorry if this causes you disappointment!  It is a frustrating situation for us as well, but unfortunately it is completely beyond our control.

If/when this situation is resolved between NetDespatch and Royal Mail, we will endeavour to work through any backlog of applications from our side as swiftly as possible.
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Map Shipping

Once your Royal Mail integration is set up, you can use the Map Shipping section in ChannelGrabber to let the system know which shipping methods relate to which Royal Mail service, to make printing your Royal Mail labels more efficient later.

  1.  Please navigate to Settings > Shipping > Map Shipping and click on + New Shipping Mapping:

2.  A new mapping profile line will be created, and in the Shipping Methods section, you will be able to see all shipping methods that are currently available to map (a shipping method will only display here if there is an order in ChannelGrabber with that method on it, therefore you may find new shipping methods appear from time to time, whenever an order comes in with a shipping method that hasn’t been received before).

3.  a) Select the first shipping method that you want to map by clicking on it (if you want to map more than one shipping method to the same shipping same and courier service, hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and you will be able to select multiple methods at once):

b) Enter a Shipping Name for the methods you have selected.  This will be the display name for these shipping methods on your main Orders page:

c)  Select Royal Mail OBA as the Courier from the drop-down menu:

d)  Lastly, select the Royal Mail service that you want to map to your Shipping Name from the drop-down menu:

4. If you wish, you can add more detail for your own reference, such as Delivery Time and other details and a "Lost After" time, and this can also be used to populate an estimated delivery date and lost after date on the orders within ChannelGrabber (and also the invoice design or customer notifications module if required):

5. Repeat these steps to create as many different shipping mapping profiles as required, then when you are done, click the Save button on the lower left of the page:

On top of these Map Shipping options, you can also set default Royal Mail service formats / package types per product, to define whether an item is a Letter, Large Letter, or Parcel.  Please see our Default Service Formats / Package Types guide for more detail on this process.
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Printing Royal Mail Labels 

Please note:  in addition to generating and printing your Royal Mail labels in ChannelGrabber, it is CRUCIAL that you also generate a manifest for each day's shipments once you are ready to dispatch them.  More detail can be found on this below in the Generating a Manifest section of this guide.

1.  Navigate to your Orders page in ChannelGrabber:

2.  Select your chosen orders (you can use the advanced filters to select orders with a certain shipping method now that you have mapped them if you wish), then click on the Bulk Actions drop-down menu, and select Print Courier Labels, then click the Go button:

Review Orders

3.  Once you click Go, you will be re-directed to a new page where you can review your orders and select which courier and service to use to ship each order. 

You will see the Buyer, Shipping Country, Post Code and Order ID in the first column, the shipping method that the customer has chosen for the order in the second column, then you can select the courier and service in the third and fourth columns and the item(s) are shown in the fifth column.  If you have already mapped the relevant services in your Shipping settings, then these will be pre-populated for you already, but you can always change these if necessary:

4.  When you have checked/selected all the couriers and services for your orders, click the Continue button at the top right hand side of the page:

Booking Stage

5.  Once you have moved into the booking stage, each separate courier will have its own page where you can choose the relevant information that courier requires, before printing the label and booking in the order.  If you have more than one courier, select Royal Mail OBA from the list on the left hand side:

6.  For each order you will be able to choose the Package Type.  To save time, you can set default Package Types at the product level, which will then automatically be pulled into the OBA booking stage – see separate guide:  Royal Mail OBA: Default Service Formats / Package Types :

7.  If you have entered the weight of the item at the product level in ChannelGrabber, then the Weight fields in the Booking stage will automatically be populated.  The weight is always in kilograms, so if you have entered your weight in grams on the product, these will automatically be converted into kilograms for courier usage.  If you have never entered these details in ChannelGrabber, you can enter them in the courier page and they will be saved to your product for future use, so you won’t have to enter them again next time an order is placed for the same item:

8.  You can click to select any Add-Ons (eg. signature) if required:

9. Once all the details have been entered for an order, click the Create Label button at the end of the row. This will generate a PDF label:

10.  The PDF label is ready once you see the PDF logo where the Create Label button was.  Click the PDF logo to launch the PDF in a new tab/window, then you can print the label when ready.  You can also cancel the label from here too:

Alternatively, complete all the order details, then instead of clicking the Create Label button at the end of each order row, you can click the Create All Labels button at the top right of the page, to process all orders for all couriers at once.  When ready, buttons for Print All Labels and Cancel All Labels will become available at the top right of the page, so you can use these to bulk print or bulk cancel your labels all together, or you can click the PDF logo for each order to print them individually:

Adding More Services

When requesting an integration with Royal Mail via Channelgrabber, you would have been asked to select the services you wish to use. If at any point you would like to add more or change the existing ones, then you would need to contact your Royal Mail Account Manager. Once the service has been added, they will let you know when it is ready to use.

Reprinting Labels

If you need to re-print a label at any time, simply repeat the previous steps in the Printing, Review and Booking sections and if you have already created a label, the same label will be re-generated again for you to re-print.

Generating a Manifest

At the end of each day, you will need to generate a manifest in order to book your parcels in for delivery with Royal Mail.  

You will need to do one manifest for all the domestic services that you are using, and a separate manifest for all the international services you are using, which will mean you need to login using your domestic account credentialsat https://emea.netdespatch.com for the manifest for the domestic services, and then log out and log back in with your interntional account credentials for the manifest for the international services.

If you have registered for the NetDespatch account using ChannelGrabber's application form (above), then you will receive both your domestic and international login credentials from our Support Team during the integration process.  If you are unsure about your login credentials, you can contact Support via the Intercom live chat icon or on support@channelgrabber.com

For further details on generating manifests within NetDespatch, please read this PDF guide from NetDespatch: “Producing a Manifest for Royal Mail”.

Printing your Royal Mail Label on your Invoices

Similar to printing your PPI impression on your invoices, you are able to print your Royal Mail Label on your invoice in ChannelGrabber, once the label has been generated following the steps above. 

Please Note:  The Royal Mail Labels are significantly larger than the PPI stamp, therefore it is likely that this will require new integrated label paper. You can find links to compatible integrated label paper on the PDF invoice designer page. We recommend this style as a popular option:  Forms Plus Single Label FPS-15
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  1.  Go to Settings > Company > PDF Invoice Designer.

2. Add the new tag {{courier_label}} (portrait orientation) or {{courier_label_90_anti_clockwise}} (landscape orientation) to the relevant place on your A4 page - the tag will need to be positioned in the top left corner of where your label will be positioned.

3. Save the invoice.

4. You are now free to print your invoices as normal. 

Please note, you'll need to generate your labels as normal using the steps above BEFORE generating an invoice. Once you have generated a label it is saved in ChannelGrabber and will be shown on any subsequent invoices for that order. 

 

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