Dispatchio - Advanced shipment Tracking for WooCommerce Free documentation

Dispatchio adds shipment tracking to your WooCommerce orders. When you add a tracking number to an order, Dispatchio can set the right order status, email the customer a tracking link and show the shipment on their order page under My Account.

The plugin adds four optional order statuses: Shipped, Partially Shipped, Updated Tracking and Delivered. Each one is a real WooCommerce order status with its own customer email. You can add as many tracking numbers to an order as you need, ship part of an order, add a short shipping note and mark a tracking number as a return. It comes with built-in carriers that already have tracking URLs, and you can add your own.

Dispatchio is for WooCommerce store owners and fulfillment staff who want a simple shipping routine. It also imports tracking from a CSV file and offers REST API endpoints. The free plugin makes no outbound network requests and needs no account with a tracking service.

Dispatchio is a free plugin on WordPress.org. It needs WooCommerce, so install and activate WooCommerce first.

When you activate Dispatchio for the first time, a setup wizard opens automatically. It is shown once.

Use it to:

• pick the carriers you ship with
• confirm the order statuses you want

You can change these choices later on the General and Shipping Carriers tabs under Dispatchio > Settings.

Open an order in WooCommerce and use the Dispatchio box on the order edit screen. You can add as many tracking numbers to one order as you need. Shipments you already added show above the form, with their tracking link and estimated delivery date.

Finding orders by tracking number

With Orders list column turned on, the WooCommerce orders list shows a Tracking column. To find an order from its tracking number:

• With High Performance Order Storage, choose Tracking number in the search dropdown next to the search box, then search.
• With the classic order tables, the normal order search already matches tracking numbers.

Go to Dispatchio > Settings and open the General tab. The same screen opens when you click Dispatchio in the admin menu. Click Save Settings when you are done.

Order Statuses

Each status is a real WooCommerce order status with its own email. Turn off any you do not need.

• Shipped status: the normal end state for a fulfilled order.
• Partially Shipped status: used automatically when some items have tracking and some do not. The order moves to Shipped by itself once the last item is covered.
• Updated Tracking status: for a shipment that gets a replacement tracking number after it has already gone out, so the customer is told about the new number.
• Delivered status: marks an order as arrived and sends the Delivered email. In the free plugin you set this status yourself.
• Rename Completed: shows the standard Completed status as "Shipped" to staff and customers. The underlying status does not change, so reports and other plugins are not affected.
• Tracking update email: sends the Updated Tracking email when tracking changes on an order that is already shipped, even if the status stays the same.

Tracking in Emails

Dispatchio adds a tracking block to the WooCommerce emails you tick here: Processing order, Completed order, Customer invoice, Customer note and Refunded order. Untick an email to leave it exactly as WooCommerce sends it. This is separate from Dispatchio's own shipment emails.

Display

• My Account: shows tracking on the customer order pages. Turn it off only if your theme shows tracking its own way.
• Orders list column: adds a Tracking column to the WooCommerce orders list.
• Carrier auto-detect: suggests a carrier from the tracking number format. It only fills an empty carrier field, so it never overwrites your choice.
• Estimated delivery: shows an expected arrival date, worked out from the ship date plus the Est. days value of the carrier.

Maintenance

• Logging: writes import and tracking activity to WooCommerce > Status > Logs. This is the first place to look when an import behaves oddly.
• Delete data on uninstall: when on, deleting the plugin also removes its settings and tables. Tracking numbers stored on orders are always kept.

Go to Dispatchio > Settings > Shipping Carriers to choose the carriers you ship with. The table lists each carrier with its Carrier name, Country, Tracking URL, Est. days and Type (built-in or custom).

• Tick Active for the carriers you use. Only active carriers appear in the carrier dropdown on an order. If you untick a carrier, it does not appear anywhere. A short list makes fulfillment faster.
• Use Search carriers... to filter a long list.
• Click Edit on a row to change a carrier.
• Click Add Custom Carrier to add a carrier that is not in the list.

When you edit or add a carrier, you can set:

• Carrier name: what staff and customers see. If you rename a built-in carrier, it keeps its original name underneath, so imports that use the official name still match.
• Tracking URL: the link pattern. Use %number% for the tracking number, and %postcode% or %phone% for carriers that need them.
• API aliases: other spellings of this carrier, comma separated. For example, if your warehouse CSV says usps-priority and you call the carrier "USPS", add the alias here so the import matches.
• PayPal carrier code: only used by Dispatchio Pro when it syncs tracking to PayPal. You can leave it alone.
• Estimated delivery days: typical transit time in days, used for the estimated delivery date. 0 means no estimate is shown.

Go to Dispatchio > Settings > CSV Import to add tracking to many orders at once.

1. Prepare a CSV file with a header row. The columns are order_id, tracking_provider, tracking_number, date_shipped, status_shipped, sku and qty.
2. For status_shipped, use 1 for shipped, 2 for partially shipped or 0 for no status change.
3. Click Choose File and select your file.
4. Click Preview first. It shows the first rows exactly as Dispatchio read them, so you can catch a wrong delimiter or a shifted header before anything is written to your orders.
5. When the preview looks right, click Import.

Rows that share an order and a tracking number are merged into one shipment. Use the sku and qty columns for per-item tracking. The import has duplicate protection. Uploaded files are size-capped, checked, stored in a folder that blocks direct web access and deleted once processed.

The tab shows a sample file you can copy:

order_id,tracking_provider,tracking_number,date_shipped,status_shipped,sku,qty
1001,UPS,1Z999AA10123456784,2026-07-01,1,,
1002,USPS,9400100000000000000000,2026-07-01,2,t-shirt-blue,1

The Tools tab under Dispatchio > Settings covers moving from another plugin, the REST API and developer hooks.

Moving from another tracking plugin

Dispatchio reads and writes the same order meta key used by other popular tracking plugins. Tracking numbers already on your orders show up straight away. Deactivate the old plugin and your tracking history stays intact. There is no import step.

REST API

These endpoints are authenticated with standard WooCommerce REST API keys:

• GET/POST /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/{order_id}/shipment-trackings
• GET/DELETE /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/{order_id}/shipment-trackings/{tracking_id}
• GET /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/shipment-trackings/providers
• POST /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/shipment-trackings/bulk

Developer hooks

• dispatchio_tracking_item_added: fires after tracking is added to an order
• dispatchio_tracking_item_deleted: fires after tracking is removed
• dispatchio_add_tracking_number( $order_id, $number, $carrier ): public helper function
• dispatchio_manage_capability: capability required to manage the plugin

The full reference is on the Documentation page.

Each Dispatchio order status has its own customer email. You edit them under WooCommerce > Settings > Emails, like any other WooCommerce email. For example:

• Shipped order is sent when the order status changes to Shipped, including tracking details.
• Partially shipped order is sent when the order status changes to Partially Shipped.

For each email you can turn it on or off and set the Subject, Email heading, Email content, Additional content and Email type. The Email preview shows how the email looks, and Send a test email sends a copy to you.

You can use these placeholders in the subject, heading, email content and additional content:

• {tracking_number}, {carrier_name} and {tracking_url}, which use the most recent outbound shipment on the order
• {order_number} and {customer_first_name}

For example, a subject could be Your order #{order_number} is on its way with {carrier_name}.

Dispatchio has a built-in help page under Dispatchio > Documentation. It explains every setting in the order you meet it in the plugin, plus the CSV format, shipment emails, the REST API, developer hooks, privacy and data, and troubleshooting. It also includes a side by side comparison of the free plugin and Dispatchio Pro.

Dispatchio does not add anything to your shop or product pages. Customers see tracking in two places:

• My Account: when My Account is turned on in the General settings, the customer's order page shows the carrier, the tracking link, the ship date and your shipping note. An estimated delivery date is shown when Estimated delivery is on and the carrier has an Est. days value.
• Emails: the Dispatchio shipment emails, and the WooCommerce emails you tick under Tracking in Emails, include the tracking details.

The tracking link is an ordinary link to the carrier's tracking page. Nothing is sent to the carrier unless the customer clicks it.