Dispatchio - Advanced shipment Tracking for WooCommerce Free documentation

Dispatchio adds a Shipment Tracking box to every WooCommerce order. Choose a carrier, type or scan the tracking number and press Add Tracking. Dispatchio then sets the right order status, emails the customer a working tracking link and shows the shipment on the customer's order page under My Account.

The plugin is for WooCommerce store owners and fulfillment staff who ship physical parcels and want a repeatable workflow. You get four optional order statuses (Shipped, Partially Shipped, Updated Tracking and Delivered), partial shipments by product and quantity, return labels, a list of built-in carriers with ready-made tracking links, your own custom carriers, estimated delivery dates, CSV import and REST API endpoints.

Everything runs on your own site. The free edition makes no outbound connections and needs no account with any tracking service. If you already used another tracking plugin, Dispatchio reads the same order data, so tracking numbers already on your orders appear straight away.

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

The first time you activate Dispatchio, it opens the Welcome to Dispatchio wizard. It has three steps:

1. Carriers: "Which carriers do you ship with?" Tick the carriers you use. Only these appear when you add tracking to an order. You can add custom carriers later.
2. Workflow: "How should orders flow?" Choose whether to use the Shipped status (adding tracking marks the order Shipped and emails the customer), Partially Shipped (for orders that go out in more than one parcel) and Delivered (sends customers a Delivered email). All three are ticked by default.
3. Done: links to Go to Orders, Review Settings and Read Documentation.

If you would rather set things up yourself, click Skip setup. You land on the settings page with a welcome message. Every choice in the wizard can be changed later under Dispatchio > Settings.

Open any order under WooCommerce > Orders. The Shipment Tracking box sits in the right-hand sidebar. Shipments you already added are listed at the top with the carrier, the tracking number (a link to the carrier's tracking page), the ship date, the estimated delivery date and the shipping note.

The add tracking form

• Shipping Provider: choose one of your active carriers. Choose Custom Provider for a one-off carrier. Two extra fields then appear: Provider Name and Tracking URL (use %number%). The custom provider is used for this shipment only and is not added to your carrier list.
• Tracking Number: the number from the label. With Carrier auto-detect turned on, Dispatchio suggests a carrier from the shape of the number as you type or scan it, and shows Detected: followed by the carrier name. It only fills an empty carrier field, so it never overwrites a carrier you chose.
• Date Shipped: defaults to today. Customers see it, and Dispatchio uses it to calculate the estimated delivery date.
• Shipping Note (optional, shown to customer): a short line shown next to this tracking number, for example "Sent in two parcels".
• Select products for this shipment (partial shipment): tick this to attach only some items and quantities to this tracking number. Dispatchio remembers what earlier shipments already covered, so the remaining quantity shown is what is still left to ship. Items that are already fully shipped are marked as such. Virtual products are not listed.
• This is a return shipment (customer sending items back): records an inbound return label. A return never changes the order status. It is labelled Return for you and the customer, and an order note is added.
• Change order status to: what the order becomes once you save.

Order status choices

Click Add Tracking to save. The new shipment appears in the list straight away. To remove a shipment, click the × next to it and confirm.

If the order already has the status you chose, for example you add a second tracking number to an order that is already Shipped, the status does not change. When Tracking update email is turned on in the General settings, the customer then receives the Updated tracking email instead.

Duplicate tracking numbers on the same order are refused. Tracking numbers are not copied to renewal orders created by WooCommerce Subscriptions.

Dispatchio adds several tools to WooCommerce > Orders:

• Shipment Tracking column: shows each shipment's carrier and tracking number as a link, so you can see what has shipped without opening each order. Turn it on or off with the Orders list column setting on the General tab.
• Quick status buttons: a Shipped button appears on orders that are Processing, Partially Shipped or Updated Tracking. A Delivered button appears on orders that are Shipped, Partially Shipped, Updated Tracking or Completed. The order preview window offers the same status changes.
• Bulk actions: for each status you enabled, the bulk actions menu gets a Change status to ... entry, for example Change status to shipped.
• Search by tracking number: with High Performance Order Storage, choose Tracking number in the dropdown next to the search box, then search. With the classic order tables, the normal order search already matches tracking numbers. Both also find tracking numbers added by a previous tracking plugin.

The custom statuses count as paid statuses, appear in WooCommerce reports, allow "Order again" and keep download permissions for paid orders.

Go to Dispatchio > Settings > General. The tab has four groups. 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. All four are on by default.

• Shipped status: the normal end state for a fulfilled order when you use Dispatchio.
• 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 when a shipment gets a replacement tracking number after it has already gone out, so the customer is told rather than left with a dead link.
• Delivered status: marks an order as arrived and sends the Delivered email. In the free edition you set this status yourself.
• Rename Completed: shows the standard Completed status as "Shipped" to staff and customers. The underlying status stays Completed, so reports and other plugins are unaffected. Off by default.
• Tracking update email: sends the Updated tracking email when tracking changes on an order whose status does not change. Off by default.

Tracking in Emails

Dispatchio appends a tracking block to the WooCommerce emails you tick: Processing order, Completed order, Customer invoice, Customer note and Refunded order. All are ticked by default. Untick an email to leave it exactly as WooCommerce sends it. The Dispatchio shipment emails always include tracking, and the admin New order email never does.

Display

• My Account: shows tracking on the customer's order pages. Turn it off only if your theme shows tracking its own way.
• Orders list column: adds the tracking column to WooCommerce > Orders.
• Carrier auto-detect: suggests a carrier from the tracking number format as it is typed or scanned.
• Estimated delivery: shows an expected arrival date, worked out from the ship date plus the Est. days you set for that carrier. A carrier set to 0 shows no estimate.

Maintenance

• Logging: writes import and tracking activity to WooCommerce > Status > Logs. It is the first place to look when an import behaves oddly.
• Delete data on uninstall: off by default. When on, deleting the plugin (not just deactivating it) also removes its settings and tables. Tracking numbers stored on orders are always kept, because they are order history.

Go to Dispatchio > Settings > Shipping Carriers. The table lists every carrier with its Active tick, Carrier name, Country, Tracking URL, Est. days and Type (Built-in or Custom).

Choose your active carriers

Tick Active for the carriers you ship with. The change saves as soon as you tick or untick, with no save button. Only active carriers appear in the Shipping Provider dropdown on an order. A short list makes fulfillment faster. A carrier you untick is not offered on orders. Out of the box, UPS, USPS, FedEx and DHL Express are active. Use Search carriers... to filter the list by name.

Edit a carrier

Click Edit on any row. The Edit Carrier window has these fields:

• Carrier name: what staff and customers see. Renaming a built-in carrier 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. Some carriers also need %postcode% (the order's shipping postcode, or the billing postcode when there is none) or %phone% (the billing phone number).
• API aliases (comma separated): other spellings this carrier goes by. If your warehouse CSV says usps-priority and you call the carrier USPS, add the alias here and imports will match it.
• PayPal carrier code: only used by the Pro edition 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.

Click Save Carrier, or Cancel to close without saving.

Add a custom carrier

1. Click Add Custom Carrier.
2. Enter a Carrier name and a Tracking URL that contains %number%, for example https://example.com/track?num=%number%.
3. Optionally add API aliases, a PayPal carrier code and Estimated delivery days.
4. Click Save Carrier.

A new custom carrier is active straight away and is listed with the country Custom. Custom carriers have a Delete link. Built-in carriers cannot be deleted, but you can untick them.

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

File format

The file needs a header row. These columns are recognised:

The tab shows a sample:

order_id,tracking_provider,tracking_number,date_shipped,status_shipped,sku,qty

Import steps

1. Click Choose File and select your .csv file (10 MB maximum).
2. Click Preview. Dispatchio shows the first rows exactly as it read them. This catches a wrong delimiter or a shifted header before anything is written to your orders.
3. If the preview looks right, click Import.
4. Read the result: Imported: and Skipped: counts, plus a list of issues with a reason for each skipped row.

A row whose order already has that tracking number is skipped rather than duplicated, so running the same file again is safe. Up to 10,000 rows are processed per file. Uploaded files are stored in a protected folder and deleted once they have been processed. A summary of each import is written to WooCommerce > Status > Logs when Logging is on.

Dispatchio registers four customer emails with WooCommerce. You edit them under WooCommerce > Settings > Emails, like every other WooCommerce email:

Each email has these settings:

• Enable/Disable: turns the email on or off. On by default.
• Subject and Email heading: leave them empty to use the default wording shown in the field.
• Email content: the intro text shown above the tracking details.
• Additional content: text shown below the main content.
• Email type: Plain text, HTML or Multipart.

Subject, heading, email content and additional content accept these placeholders: {site_title}, {order_number}, {order_date}, {customer_first_name}, {customer_last_name}, {tracking_number}, {carrier_name} and {tracking_url}. The three tracking placeholders use the most recent outbound shipment on the order. Return shipments are ignored. For example: Order #{order_number} is on its way with {carrier_name}.

Use the Email preview and Send a test email on each email screen to check your wording before you save.

To change the layout rather than the wording, copy the email template from the plugin into a folder named dispatchio in your theme, keeping the same path. Your copy then takes precedence and survives plugin updates.

Go to Dispatchio > Settings > Tools. This tab is a reference: it has no settings to save.

Moving from another tracking plugin

Dispatchio reads and writes the same order data 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

The endpoints follow the shape used by other tracking plugins. Authenticate with a standard WooCommerce REST API key that has write permission.

• GET /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/{order_id}/shipment-trackings: list an order's tracking.
• POST /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/{order_id}/shipment-trackings: add tracking. Send tracking_number with either tracking_provider (matched against your carriers and their aliases) or custom_tracking_provider and custom_tracking_link. Optional: date_shipped and status_shipped (1 Shipped, 2 Partially Shipped, 0 no change; 1 when left out).
• GET /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/{order_id}/shipment-trackings/{tracking_id}: get one tracking item.
• DELETE /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/{order_id}/shipment-trackings/{tracking_id}: remove one tracking item.
• GET /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/shipment-trackings/providers: list carriers.
• POST /wp-json/wc/v3/orders/shipment-trackings/bulk: add tracking to many orders. Send a trackings array, with an order_id in each entry.

Developer hooks

The Tools tab also lists the main developer hooks. The full list, with what each one does, is on the Documentation page.

Go to Dispatchio > Documentation for a reference inside your dashboard. It shows which edition you are running and explains every option in the order you meet it: adding tracking to an order, the General, Shipping Carriers and CSV Import settings, shipment emails, the REST API, developer hooks, privacy and data, troubleshooting and a side-by-side comparison of the free and Pro editions.

Privacy and data

• Tracking numbers are stored on the order, in the same place other tracking plugins use.
• A shipment log table records what shipped and when.
• Dispatchio works with the WordPress personal data exporter and eraser, so a customer data request includes their tracking numbers, and an erasure request removes them.
• The free edition makes no outbound connections to any third-party service. Carrier tracking pages are only plain links. A request to a carrier happens only when someone clicks the link.

Dispatchio adds no shortcodes and changes nothing on your shop or product pages. Customers see tracking in their account and in their emails.

• My Account > Orders: orders with tracking get a Track button that opens the carrier's tracking page.
• My Account > View order: a Tracking Information table lists each shipment with Carrier, Tracking Number (a link to the carrier's tracking page), Ship Date and a Track button. When an estimate is available, it shows Est. delivery: with the date. Your shipping note appears under the shipment, and return shipments carry a Return label. Turn this off with the My Account setting.
• Emails: the Shipped, Partially shipped, Updated tracking and Delivered emails include the tracking details. The WooCommerce emails you ticked on the General tab get the same tracking block.