Have you ever gone to the post office with a bunch of packages to drop off, only to be asked for a scan sheet?
Let me tell you a funny story about what happened to me. I used to ship a lot of packages from my house, around 300 items in one day, and I had a note in my mailbox for the post office lady to pick them up. But it took her over an hour to individually scan all the packages and it filled up her little mail truck. That got me a visit from the local postmaster who told me I couldn’t do that anymore because they didn’t have enough manpower for it. So I started taking my packages to the post office myself, but then they didn’t want to scan them by hand either. They told me I needed a scan sheet, but I had never used one before, so I had to look it up and figure out how to do it.
It turns out that if you ship on Amazon, you can create a scan sheet which is basically a sheet with one master number. When they scan that number, it checks in all the individual packages, so they only have to do one scan. You can also do this with other services like Pirate Ship, eBay, and Etsy, but I found that it doesn’t work with Facebook Marketplace or Mercari. However, a workaround for Mercari is that you can ship on your own and include that number on your scan sheet if you’re using Pirate Ship.
Another thing to note about scan sheets is that if you’ve already printed one out for the day and you have more orders coming in, you can print another scan sheet and it will only include the packages you’ve added after the first one. So you can have multiple scan sheets, which is not a problem compared to individually scanning hundreds of packages. Also, if you ship after hours, you can change the shipping date on Amazon and Pirate Ship to the next day, and it will be included in that day’s scan sheet. However, you don’t want to toss any packages that are not on the scan sheet, as they won’t get scanned until further along in the system.
Using scan sheets can help keep you in good graces with your local postal workers if you’re a high volume shipper, and I personally like using Pirate Ship because I buy all my postage for eBay and Etsy through them and can print them all off on one scan sheet.