Printers and packing stations
Picqer prints automatically: shipping labels always, and picklists and packinglists as soon as you set that up. You print product and location labels yourself, with the push of a button. To make that automatic printing work, you connect your printers to Picqer and set up packing stations.
Below, you'll find how that works, which hardware you need, how to connect it, and what to do when a printer does print, but not correctly.
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Printers and packing stations in Picqer
To print from Picqer, you connect your printers through PrintNode: a program you install on a Windows or Mac computer that makes the printers connected to it available to Picqer. You can then add any of those printers in Picqer.
A packing station is a workstation in your warehouse, for example a packing table. For each packing station, you choose which printer handles packinglists, shipping labels, shipping documents, and product or location labels. Each user selects the packing station they're working at, so Picqer automatically sends their documents to the right printer.
Why work with printers and packing stations?
Printing from Picqer saves you manual work: you don't have to open and print PDFs yourself, because Picqer starts printing automatically at the right point in your process. A packinglist is ready as soon as you close a picklist, and a shipping label as soon as you create a shipment.
Packing stations make sure every document ends up on the right printer. Without them, you'd have to pick a printer for every print job. With packing stations, you set this up once per workstation: everyone working there prints on the right printer automatically, even when you run several packing tables at once.
How do you set up printers and packing stations?
1. Buy the right hardware
Which computer, scanner and printers you need per packing table is covered in packing table hardware. We recommend a Zebra label printer for shipping labels, a second label printer for small stickers such as product and location labels, and an A4 printer for picklists and packinglists.
2. Connect your printers
Connect your printers to the computer you use for printing. Using a Zebra printer? Follow the steps to install a Zebra printer, which also cover the right paper and print quality settings.
3. Create a PrintNode account and install PrintNode
Go to Settings > Printers and click 'Create PrintNode account'. The account is included in your subscription, and you'll receive the login details by email. Then install PrintNode on the computer connected to your printers and log in. Installing PrintNode walks you through the steps.
4. Add your printer and packing station in Picqer
Go back to Settings > Printers and add your first printer. Then create a packing station and choose which printer it uses for each document type. You can only create a packing station once you've added at least one printer.
5. Fix a printing problem
Nothing coming out of the printer, or labels printing blank, double, skewed or in poor quality? Work through troubleshooting printer issues.
What do you need in Picqer?
To print from Picqer, you need these parts:
- PrintNode: sends print jobs from Picqer to your printers.
- Printers: every physical printer you want to use in Picqer, each with a name and paper size.
- Packing stations: the workstations in your warehouse, each with their own printer per document type.
Useful additions:
- Rules: to use a different printer than the default in specific cases, for example a different shipping label size for a particular shipping provider.
What does Picqer handle automatically?
Once your printers and packing stations are set up, Picqer takes care of the following:
- Picklists: Picqer prints a picklist as soon as it's created, for example when you process an order or a backorder.
- Packinglists: when you close a picklist, Picqer prints the packinglist at your packing station, if a printer for packinglists is set up there.
- Shipping labels: Picqer prints the shipping label as soon as you create a shipment.
- Other labels: when you print product, location or container labels, Picqer sends them straight to the right printer at your packing station.
Don't want picklists or packinglists to print automatically? Choose 'Do not print automatically' at Settings > Printers.
