What "sending an order to your carrier" actually does
It is not an email or a spreadsheet. eGrow is connected to your shipping company through its API, so when you send an order, eGrow creates a real parcel record in the carrier's own system β customer name, phone, address, city, items and the amount to collect β and the carrier answers with a tracking number, which eGrow writes back onto the order.
From that moment the parcel exists on both sides: your courier sees it in their dashboard and can pick it up, and you can follow it in eGrow without logging into their platform.
eGrow supports 68 shipping companies directly, and any other one through a Custom Webhook.
Before you can send anything
- Connect the carrier. Open Integrations, find your shipping company, and add a connection with the API credentials they gave you. Each carrier's exact fields are covered in its own guide β see Shipping & Delivery.
- Check your cities. This is the single most common reason a parcel is refused. Carriers only accept city names from their own list, spelled their way, while customers type kech, mrkech, marra kech. Set up City Corrections so eGrow rewrites those into the exact name the carrier expects, per carrier, before the parcel is created.
- Make sure the order is ready. A parcel needs a name, a reachable phone number, an address, a city the carrier serves, and the amount to collect. Confirming the order first is what catches missing or wrong details β see Confirming Orders: the Complete Guide.
The three ways to send
| Method | Best for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| One order | A single shipment, a special case, a retry after a failure | The order's Delivery section |
| In bulk | Your daily dispatch β everything packed and waiting for pickup | The Shipping Center |
| Automatically | Steady volume, one main carrier, no one watching the queue | An automation |
Method 1 β Send one order by hand
- Open the order from your Orders list.
- Scroll to the Delivery section and click Add Parcel.
- Choose your courier from the list, then Next.
- Choose the connection for that courier (you may have more than one account), then Next.
- Review the parcel details. You can still correct the customer name, phone, address or city here β this is your last chance before the carrier sees it.
- Click Send.
A success message confirms the parcel was created, and the tracking number appears on the order. If it fails, the error comes from the carrier β see the failure list further down.
Method 2 β Send your whole dispatch from the Shipping Center
The Shipping Center is the workspace built for this. Every order that has been packed and marked ready in the Processing Center collects here, waiting for a courier.
- Open the Shipping Center and filter to the orders you are dispatching today.
- Select them β the search box is barcode-friendly, so you can scan parcels at the desk to pull each order up.
- Use the bulk Send to shipping action to create every parcel at once. Tracking numbers come back onto the orders.
- Print the labels and the picking list as PDFs for the courier's pickup.
The center has a table view and a kanban Pipeline view β in the kanban you can drag orders (several at once) between stages instead of using the bulk menu.
Method 3 β Send automatically, with an automation
If most of your orders go to one carrier, stop clicking Send altogether. An automation watches for orders reaching a stage and creates the parcel on its own, within seconds, day or night.
The quick way: install a ready-made template
Many carriers have a pre-built template β pick it, connect your accounts, and it is running. Look under Automation templates and Send parcels β automatic in Shipping & Delivery for your carrier.
Building it yourself
- Trigger: eGrow → Order Stage Updated.
- Condition: the stage is the one that means "ready to ship" for you β usually Confirmed, or a packed/ready stage if you pack before dispatching.
- Action: your carrier → Add Parcel. Map the customer name, phone, address, city, and the amount to collect from the order.
Add Parcel is available on about 55 of the 68 supported carriers; roughly 40 also offer Get Parcel Tracking, and a few can print labels.
What comes back from the carrier
- A tracking number, written onto the order the moment the parcel is created.
- Status updates. Around 35 carriers can push status changes back to eGrow through a trigger such as Status Changed or Parcel Status Changed. Build a second automation on it to move the order along automatically β delivered, returned, refused β instead of checking the courier's dashboard.
- Nothing else. The carrier does not know your prices or your customer history; it only knows the parcel you sent it.
From here the order lives in the Delivery Center until it is delivered, refused or returned.
After the parcel exists: what eGrow can and cannot change
This is the part that costs people money, so it is worth being exact about.
| What you do | Does the carrier see it? |
|---|---|
| Send the order to the carrier | Yes β the parcel is created in their system |
| Edit the address, phone, items or amount in eGrow after sending | No. The carrier keeps the details from the moment you sent it |
| Cancel the order in eGrow, or move it to a cancelled stage | No. The parcel stays live and the courier will still deliver it |
| Delete the order in eGrow | No. The parcel is untouched at the carrier |
| The carrier updates the delivery status | Yes, the other way β around 35 carriers push status changes back into eGrow |
The reason is simple: nearly all carrier APIs accept a parcel and report its status, but expose no endpoint to modify or cancel one. eGrow cannot send a request that does not exist.
The habit that avoids all of this: confirm the order and get the address right before you send it. That is exactly what the confirmation step is for β see Confirming Orders: the Complete Guide.
When a parcel is refused β the real reasons
- The city is not recognised. By far the most common. The carrier's list does not contain the spelling on the order. Fix it with City Corrections rather than editing orders one by one.
- A required field is empty. Usually the phone number or a street address. Confirmation is where these get caught.
- The connection is not authenticated. Credentials expired or were changed on the carrier's side β reconnect the integration.
- The carrier account itself is blocked. Unpaid balance or an API limit on their side. eGrow will report their error, but only they can lift it.
- The parcel already exists. Sending the same order twice creates two parcels at most carriers. If a send looks like it failed, check the order for a tracking number before retrying.
The error text shown in eGrow comes from the carrier, so it is worth reading literally β it usually names the exact field they rejected.
Which method should you use?
- A few orders a day. Send them by hand from the order. Nothing to set up.
- A daily dispatch batch. Work from the Shipping Center: filter, select, send, print labels and picking list in one pass.
- Steady volume through one carrier. Automate it, and keep the Shipping Center for exceptions β split shipments, a second carrier, or parcels the automation could not create.