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Fix Box Definitions When They’re Too Small for An Item

Adjust packing box dimensions to ensure accurate order shipments and prevent issues with item fitting

Overview

Table of Contents

You have defined dimensions for your products and shipping boxes. All boxes are available for all products. Sometimes, an order is packed into a smaller box than it should be. You might know it needs a medium box, but the order is packed into a small one.

Example

Let’s say your defined boxes are:

  • Small: 5″ x 5″ x 5″

  • Medium: 7″ x 7″ x 7″

  • Large: 10″ x 10″ x 10″

You add two products to the cart, each measuring 2″ x 2″ x 2″. Based on dimensions alone, ShipperHQ packs the order into the Small box.

However, due to irregular product shape or the need for packing materials (bubble wrap, padding, etc.), these products don’t actually fit well in the Small box. You want the system to instead select the Medium box in this case.

Solution

There are two ways to handle this, depending on whether most of your products require additional space, or just a few do.

Option 1: Most of My Products Need Extra Packing or Are Oddly Shaped 😊

Use a default packing tolerance to automatically increase the perceived size of all products during packing calculations.

To set this:

  • Go to your ShipperHQ dashboard

  • Navigate to Advanced Features > Dimensional Packing > Settings > Advanced

  • Set a value for Default Box Tolerance (start with 20% and adjust as needed)

This setting will increase all product dimensions by the set percentage before packing logic runs.

Option 2: A Few of My Products Need Extra Packing or Are Oddly Shaped 💡

If you only need to account for a few uniquely shaped or fragile products:

  • Magento Users: Use the ship_box_tolerance attribute to set a product-level tolerance.

  • Other Platforms: Either:

    • Add padding directly to the product’s dimensions in your ecommerce platform, or

    • Apply the global tolerance setting from Option 1, understanding it will affect all products.

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