Amazon SKU labels: the packing-table guide
By Mohit Shyani, Founder of Pixelspiece Solution8 min read
The problem with a plain Amazon label
Look at an Amazon shipping label and try to work out what goes in the box. You will find the customer, the AWB number, the sort codes and the route, and not a word about the product. That makes sense for the courier. It makes no sense for whoever is packing, who has to open the invoice for every single order, find the item line, and then go and find that item on the shelf.
With ten orders a day that is a small annoyance. With a hundred it is the slowest part of your dispatch, and it is where the wrong product goes into the wrong box. I built this tool so the answer is printed right on the label: the SKU and how many to pack, in large bold type, on every label.
Why you cannot just crop the Amazon PDF
When I opened a real Seller Central label file to build this, the first thing I checked was where the text was. On the label page there is none. Amazon puts the whole 4x6 label on the A4 page as a single picture. Your PDF reader can show it, but no program can read the order ID or anything else off it.
The details live on the page after it: the tax invoice. That page has real text, and every item row ends with the ASIN and your SKU in brackets, followed by the quantity. So the tool reads each invoice, takes the SKU and quantity from it, and pairs it with the label page that belongs to the same order. Then it crops the label to the exact edges of Amazon’s 4x6 image and writes the SKU into the label’s own blank space, so nothing is shrunk.
How to use it
1. Download the right file
In Seller Central, go to Manage Orders, select the orders you are shipping and choose to print the tax invoice and shipping label together. That one PDF has everything the tool needs. A file with only labels will not work, because the SKU is not on the label.
2. Drop it in
Drag the PDF onto the tool, or several PDFs at once if you downloaded your orders in batches. In a few seconds you see every order, what will print under its label, and the quantity. Read down the list once. If a row is highlighted, the tool could not match that label to an SKU, and it tells you why.
3. Pick your options
- Layout: 4x6 for a thermal printer, or four labels on one A4 sheet for a regular printer.
- What to print: SKU and quantity, product name and quantity, or all three.
- Sort by SKU: every order of the same product comes out together, so you pick the stock once and pack a run.
- Separate multi-qty orders: you get two files, one for single-item orders and one for orders that need more than one item.
4. Download and print
Click Download SKU labels. If you need the invoices for the boxes, click Download invoices only; they come out in the same order as the labels, so the first invoice belongs to the first label. Print the labels at 100% or Actual size on 4 x 6 inch paper.
Why sorting by SKU speeds up packing
Amazon hands you orders in the order they came in, which is random as far as your shelf is concerned. Pack in that order and you walk to a different rack for every box.
Sorted by SKU, the labels come out in runs. All twelve of the blue bottles, then all seven of the marker sets, then the rest. You take twelve bottles off the shelf once, pack twelve boxes and stick on twelve labels. It sounds like a small thing. On a busy day it is the difference between finishing before the pickup and asking the rider to wait.
Multi-quantity orders: where mistakes happen
Most packing mistakes I hear about are not the wrong product. They are the right product, one short. The customer ordered two and got one, and now you have a complaint, a refund and a bad rating for something that took two seconds to get wrong.
That is why any order with more than one item gets a solid black QTY box on its label, and why you can split those orders into their own file. Pack all the simple one-item orders first, fast, then slow down for the multi-quantity pile with your full attention.
When a label says SKU NOT FOUND
I would rather the tool admit it does not know than guess. A guessed SKU on a label is worse than no SKU, because a packer trusts what is printed. So if something does not line up, the label still prints, with SKU NOT FOUND - CHECK ORDER underneath, and it goes to the end of the file where you will notice it.
The usual reasons are:
- The file has labels but no invoices. Download the combined invoice and label PDF instead.
- A page is missing from the middle of the file. Download the batch again.
- The labels and invoices were downloaded as separate files. Each label needs its invoice in the same PDF, so download them together.
When the tool does match things up, it pairs each label with the invoice right after it. If a file lists all the labels first and all the invoices after, it pairs them by position, but only when the counts match exactly. If they do not, it flags them instead of shifting every SKU after the gap onto the wrong label.
Your customers’ data stays on your computer
An Amazon label file has names, home addresses and phone numbers in it. Some label tools upload that file to their own server to process it. This one does not. The PDF is read, paired, cropped and written by your own browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, and you can check that yourself: open your browser’s developer tools, watch the Network tab and run a file through. No upload appears.
Printing tips
- Paper size 4 x 6 inches (100 x 150 mm), scale 100% or Actual size, never Fit to page.
- The label prints at full size. The SKU box goes into the blank space between the seller table and the sort codes, and the tool checks each label for that space first, so it never covers anything. A label with no room gets a strip below it instead.
- If the SKU text looks faint, raise the darkness setting on your thermal printer one step.
- No thermal printer yet? Use the 4 per A4 layout and cut along the dashed lines.
If your Amazon file does not work the way this page says it should, send it through the contact page with a note on what went wrong, and I will look at it. Amazon changes its layouts now and then, and a real file from a real seller is the fastest way for me to keep up.