Common shipping label mistakes new sellers make

Printing the full A4 page and shrinking it

Most marketplace shipping PDFs are generated as A4, often mixing the label with invoice content. Sending that straight to a 4×6 thermal printer forces the driver to shrink the whole page — barcode included — which is the single biggest cause of a barcode that will not scan at the courier hub. For Flipkart specifically, see Flipkart A4 to thermal label.

Using “Fit to page” instead of actual size

Fit to page tells the printer to scale the content to whatever paper is loaded, which defeats a correctly-sized label PDF. Always print shipping labels at 100% / Actual Size, and confirm the driver’s paper size matches the PDF’s page size exactly.

Cropping too tight around the barcode

If you crop manually, leaving no margin around the barcode risks clipping the quiet zone scanners rely on. A small safety margin around the barcode is not wasted space — it is what keeps the scan reliable at the hub, not just on your own screen.

Loading the thermal roll backwards

Thermal paper only darkens on its coated side. A roll loaded the wrong way around prints faint or completely blank, which looks like a printer fault but is a paper-orientation mistake. Check this first if labels suddenly stop printing after a roll change.

Not checking the label before dispatch

A ten-second glance — is the barcode fully printed, is the address legible, is nothing cut off at the edge — catches most of the above before the parcel leaves your hands. It is far cheaper than a failed scan discovered at the courier’s end.

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