You can create an Automation Rule to automatically assign a carrier and service when an order matches specific criteria.
For example, if a customer selects Express Shipping at checkout, you can automatically assign the order to your Express Post service in ReadyToShip.
This saves you from manually selecting the carrier and service for each matching order.
⚠️ Important: Once an Automation Rule has run against an order, the changes cannot be undone through Automation.
We recommend creating new Automatic rules as Inactive, then using Dry run to check which orders will match before making the rule Active.
Create the rule
Go to Settings > Automation and click New Rule.
Enter a Title that makes it easy to identify what the rule does.
For example: Express Shipping – Assign Express Post
For Type, select:
Automatic to apply the rule automatically when orders are imported.
Manual to apply the rule only when you choose to run it.
For a new Automatic rule, leave Active turned off while you set up and test the rule.
Set the Trigger
Click Add Condition Group.
For this example, we want to identify orders where the customer selected Express Shipping at checkout.
Select Requested Shipping Service as the Trigger and set the condition to:
Requested Shipping Service Contains Express
Use wording that matches the shipping method received from your store.
When an imported order has a Requested Shipping Service containing Express, it will match the rule.
Assign the carrier and service
Click Add Action and select Assign Carrier and Service.
Click the Carrier and service dropdown and select the Express Post service you want to assign.
The dropdown contains the carrier and service combinations available through your connected carrier accounts.
Note: Carrier and service are selected together. You don't need to select them separately.
If additional order options are available for the selected carrier and service, you can also set them here.
Save and test the rule
Click Save, then use Dry run to check which orders match.
For this example, check that orders with Express in their Requested Shipping Service are returned and that other orders aren't.
If the correct orders are returned, set the rule to Active.
ReadyToShip will now automatically assign your selected Express Post service when a matching order is imported.
Other ways to assign a carrier and service
In this example, we used Requested Shipping Service as the Trigger, but you can assign a carrier and service based on other order details, including:
Shipping postcode, state or country
SKU or Product Title
Order value
Other available order or item details
You can also combine conditions when you need a rule to be more specific.
For example, if you want to assign shipping based on a delivery area, see Automatically assign shipping based on postcode or location.
Check the priority of your rule
If you have other Automatic rules that could also apply to the same order, check where this rule sits in your Automation list.
You may need to change its priority or use Stop after this rule to prevent another rule from changing the order afterwards.
See Set the priority of Automation Rules for more information.