Shipping label saved as PDF

We are trying to correct an issue with printing shipping labels. We use to have the ability to print directly from VIN65 to the UPS thermal printer, but now after the label is processed a PDF screen pops with a “Save as” option. We have to cancel out of the screen and then open a UPS window to find the label and reprint. Does anyone have a solution to correct the setting allowing us to skip the “Save as” window? We have tried Vin65 support and they are stumped as well.

Millicent, this may be a silly question but are you saying that when the PDF screen pops up with the save as option, that you cannot select the drop down to choose your thermal printer? Another suggestion, although I’m sure you checked, is to make sure that the thermal printer you prefer has been set to the default printer at that computer or terminal. What you are describing actually happened to us on the POS side of things and we solved it by setting the default printer. We also needed to NOT use kiosk mode in that particular instance.

I know these may be obvious steps that you already explored. I hope you find a solution soon.

Thank you for the quick reply and suggestions to things that are not, unfortunately, obvious to us. No we cannot see the drop down. The thermal printer is set to default and we are still required to cancel out of the Save As screen before printing.

Are you doing this in google chrome? I had a very similar issue with receipt printing because the download folder could only have 100 of the files. My normal print window disappeared and I only had the PDF option. Once I deleted the 100 documents everything went back to normal. Hope that makes sense…

1 Like

Or maybe… get into Chrome settings, go to the Advanced settings, all the way to the bottom, and reset everything. Worth a shot and not too destructive.

Thank you Erica and Eljefe. I will try these next week and keep my fingers crossed. :slight_smile:

@Millicent I’m definitely late to the party here but I have personally run across this problem before. Imagine a workstation much like your own. You download labels every day. Sometimes there are 5, sometimes there’s only 1. In Chrome, that label (or report, or packing slip) is actually saved to your Downloads (or whatever you’ve set it to) folder. In Windows in particular, the naming nomenclature (a phrase which seems a bit redundant) goes Invoice (1), Invoice (2), … Invoice (99), then Windows has a bit of an existential crisis. It cannot rename a file with a triple digit name such as Invoice (100) so it asks you what you want to call the file instead.

TL;DR Empty out your Downloads folder so Windows knows what to call your file.

1 Like

Hi, Zach. Thank you for your reply. That is exactly what is happening. Because of your answer and others I have received, I now know to delete the files. It happened again today and with this new knowledge, I deleted the 100 files and I was back in the business of printing labels. Thank you!

2 Likes

Hi all - When we click a big batch of orders and “Generate shipping labels”, most of the UPS labels will download so that we can open the file and print. However, whenever we have to download 25+ (often we are doing 75-100 orders at a time for our club), some of them don’t download. Today, for example, we “generated” / downloaded 99 labels but only 91 actually downloaded. The other 8 are still sitting in the store widget and then we have to go back in and click on them and download them separately. It happens to us all the time, and there is no one distinct thing about the orders that don’t get downloaded. Always a random bunch. WineDirect support was stumped about this too… anyone got trouble-shooting ideas? Or has anyone else dealt with this? We usually use Google Chrome on a windows computer with the Zebra printer.

Wine direct support shouldn’t be stumped on this, I reported this issue years ago.

The reality is that the built-in label generator is not very reliable and has to be double checked. Every time I print more than 20 labels, it skips a few.

For large batches like this, I highly recommend setting up UPS Worldship and doing a batch import. This is how I print my wine club orders. I use the wine direct report “Fedex Shipments” to import into worldship.

Setting up the batch import will take a few hours, but once set up is simple to do every time. UPS’s tech support should be able to help walk you through it. There are special customer reps just for setting up this sort of thing, ask your UPS rep for that phone number so you can go directly to an expert.

Thanks Ryan! If we switch to FedEx we will definitely be doing that since Wine Direct appears not to have any integration (we don’t use Ship Compliant currently). Does your club employ user choice? We are also thinking of switching to that, at which point the bulk upload we could do all at once. Right now we process our base club and people ordering extra bottles at different times (one through the club widget and the additional wine orders through the POS). We terrified that our older customer base will be unable to figure out user choice, even with the best directions on how to that many others have nicely shared on here.

I HIGHLY recommend setting up WorldShip and the import. It can be set up with the same UPS account that wine direct uses, if that helps :slight_smile:

We don’t use user choice at this time. I have your same concerns about the user experience. I just don’t think the user choice offerings are quite ready for prime time. Maybe for a very small club?

Thanks again Ryan! Yes, we used to do the bulk excel sheet import into worldship and still use worldship for wholesale orders, etc. We decided to switch to the wine direct label integration because then more employees (including ones that aren’t good at excel) can help with our club over the course of a week or two, since we have a large club. But I might take us back to the import, especially after hearing your same struggles!

We use a hybrid approach; wine direct for our dailies, and worldship for the larger batches. Best of both worlds!

Hi @bkireker which winery are from? :slight_smile:

Ravines Wine Cellars

I’d like to chime in here that I get the same very frustrating situation when I want to either “print receipt” or “print packing slip” - it forces them to save to a pdf first. I have nothing with that name in the downloads folder, so that’s not my issue. I don’t want to save it -I just want to print it !!