In ecommerce, small things become big problems—fast. You spend a fortune perfecting your unboxing experience, only to have a warehouse ship your premium product in a generic mailer. Or worse, a simple stockout on your custom boxes brings fulfillment to a grinding halt, jeopardizing SLAs and disappointing customers. These aren’t just headaches; they’re expensive, brand-damaging errors.

At ShipMonk, we believe managing your packaging should be as precise as managing your product inventory. That’s why we’re rolling out our new Advanced Packaging Inventory Management suite—a set of powerful features designed to give you uncompromising control, visibility, and operational resilience.

This isn’t just about avoiding mistakes. It’s about building a smarter, more cost-effective fulfillment machine.

Shift from reactive to proactive with intelligent alerts and logic

Stop discovering packaging stockouts after they’ve already caused delays. Our new features help you stay ahead of inventory needs and create a safety net for your operations.

Proactive low-stock alerts

Never get caught by surprise again. You can now set custom low-stock thresholds for your packaging, based on either quantity or days of supply remaining. When your inventory dips below that line, we automatically notify your team. This is a game-changer for brands with long lead times on custom materials, allowing you to restock before you run out.

Automated fallback logic

What happens when a specific box does run out? Instead of creating an exception or a delay, you can now define your business logic ahead of time. Automatically switch to the next-best-fit packaging or temporarily backorder the order until the right box is available. This turns a potential crisis into a seamless operational pivot.

The bottom line: You prevent fulfillment pauses, reduce fire drills, and protect your customer experience without constant manual oversight.

Precision routing = total cost control

Using the wrong packaging isn’t just a branding mistake; it’s a shipping cost nightmare. We’re giving you the tools to enforce your standards across the entire network.

Warehouse-specific packaging controls

Have regional, seasonal, or limited-edition packaging? Now you can control exactly which packaging types are available at each specific warehouse. From a single screen, you can enable or disable packaging SKUs, ensuring your California facility never uses the mailers reserved for your Pennsylvania LTO. This removes it from the routing logic entirely, preventing misuse and optimizing shipping costs.

Real-time pack station visibility

We’ve closed the gap between what the system says and what’s physically on the floor. Our interface now shows you when unpickable packaging marked as “0” in inventory is still available at the packing stations. This eliminates false stockouts and gives your operations team true visibility, so they can make faster, more informed decisions without submitting a support ticket to check on a box. When the station is truly empty, you get an alert.

The bottom line: You eliminate costly packaging errors, ensure brand consistency, and gain trust in the data you use to run your business.

Who is this for?

All ShipMonk merchants can now access these features, but they are essential for:

• Brands with multiple fulfillment centers managing regional or LTO packaging.
• High-volume merchants with strict SLAs who cannot afford fulfillment pauses.
• Teams with custom-branded unboxing experiences where packaging accuracy is paramount.
• Any operation seeking to reduce errors, lower costs, and run a more resilient supply chain.

Activate your advanced controls today

If packaging has ever been a silent bottleneck in your fulfillment flow, this release is for you. Setting up your low-stock alerts and fallback logic is simple—just reach out to your Account Manager or Happiness Engineer, and we’ll help you configure everything.

With smarter tools and clearer visibility, ShipMonk is giving you the power to operate at the speed of your ambition, without letting something as simple as a box slow you down.