Postage paid total when selecting orders

Hey sales436, 

If I understand your question correctly you want to know the prices of the shipments before creating labels. 

If so, Check the "Cost Review" Screen: Once the dimensions are applied, click Process Labels on the batch. ShipStation will show a Label Batch Status: Cost Review pop-up. This screen displays the exact subtotal for the entire batch before you actually purchase the labels, letting you see exactly how much postage you need to load.

Let me know if I misunderstood. 

Here is an article about batches and cost reviews: https://help.shipstation.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025869932-Batch-Summary#UUID-d7968796-7204-e1aa-d772-88d13351c70c_UUID-438c21fe-0fec-62d4-7f04-7bba871b765e

I do not package my items before I have the postage, so none of my orders have dimensions, so there is no rate listed.

It doesn’t make sense for me to package a bunch of orders, label them with a marker or something since I won’t know what the packages are, go back to shipstation and enter the dimensions for each order, then print the labels and match them with the marked packages.

I want to buy my postage, then package my order, buy the label, one at a time.

Got it, that makes total sense. We definitely don't want you having to write on boxes with a marker!

Depending on how you like to run things, there are two easy ways to get your postage costs showing up automatically before you pack:

Option 1: Automation rules
You can set up a simple rule in ShipStation that says: "As soon as an order imports, automatically assign these dimensions." That way, the postage cost is already calculated and waiting on your screen before you even touch a box.

Option 2: Create "Saved Boxes"
You can save your most-used box sizes in your settings. When you're ready to print a label, you just select that box from your dropdown list. It instantly calculates the exact rate so you can buy the postage and pack the order right then and there.

Let me know if either of those sounds like it would fit your workflow, and I can walk you through how to set it up!

Unfortunately 99.9% of my packages are soft, and predefined sizes generally won’t work.

I was thinking If I set an automation to set all imported orders to 12x8x5, as this would give all our USPS orders generally the correct pricing, and then I would buy my postage, and do my orders and update the dimensions to the correct size.

I also enabled Smartfill for dimensions today, and hoping it will eventually help. But the help page on Smartfill states it applies before automation rules, so the above would not work with SmartFill.

Then I would have yet another request to be able to choose when smartfill is applied, so it could overwrite automations.

Though I think just the total of “Postage paid” for selected orders would be much easier.

I hope one of those workarounds work, and I’m happy to help set one of those up with you. I think the automation rule might be the best way do this, especially if you use similar poly mailer packages. 

I’ll let the developers know about postage paid,  but i do think they will just let me know about the cost review or auto funding.