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Setting up PackedBy, running it at the bench, and what every setting does.

Last updated 3 September 2026

The whole idea. A packer taps their name on a screen at the bench, then taps the order they are packing. That is the entire interaction. Their name goes onto the order in Shopify, so months later you can search one order number and know who packed it.

Setting up

Three steps, and the app tracks them for you on the Today page until they are done.

  1. Add the people who pack. Settings, then Packers. A first name is enough. Tap a name to change its colour: packers recognise their own colour across a room faster than they read their own name.
  2. Open the Pack Station on the device at your bench. Settings, then Pack Station. Either copy the link, or point the device's camera at the QR code.
  3. Record a pack. Tap a name, tap an order.

The Pack Station

This is the screen your team uses. It is a normal web page, so it runs on a tablet, an old phone, a laptop, anything with a browser. It needs no login and no app store.

Add it to the home screen and it opens full screen, like an app, without a browser bar in the way. On iPad and iPhone that is the share button, then "Add to Home Screen". On Android it is the browser menu, then "Install" or "Add to Home screen".

Keep the link private. It contains a key, and anyone holding the link or a photograph of the QR code can record packs for your shop. Treat it like a password. If it escapes, use "Issue a new link" in Settings and the old one stops working immediately.

If you issue a new link, open the new one on every device. A device still holding the old link cannot send anything, and any taps waiting on it to be sent are lost. Do it at a quiet moment, not mid-shift.

Packing

Tap your name, then tap an order. It moves to the Packed list on the right.

Undo. A message appears after each pack with an Undo button. Undone packs stay in the record, marked as undone, rather than disappearing. They are not counted in your stats or your plan usage.

Skip. For an order that cannot be packed yet: oversold, damaged, waiting on stock. It takes the order out of the list without recording a pack. You can find it again later by searching the order number. Skip can be switched off in Settings.

Several devices at once. Fine, and expected. An order can only be claimed once: if two people tap the same order at the same moment, one gets it and the other is told so.

Finding out who packed an order

Two ways, and you can use whichever is closer to hand.

Tagging can be switched off in Settings if you would rather keep your order tags clean. The record inside PackedBy is kept either way.

When the wifi drops

Packing carries on. Taps are stored on the device and sent when the connection comes back, so a dead access point does not stop a shift.

There is no time limit on this. A device can be offline for hours, be locked, even be restarted, and the queue is still there when it reconnects. Two things do lose it: clearing the browser's data on that device, and issuing a new station link before the queue has sent.

Orders that shipped with nobody recorded

Today shows a card listing orders Shopify fulfilled in the last seven days that nobody tapped on the Pack Station. Usually it means someone forgot, or an order was fulfilled straight from the admin without reaching the bench.

You can assign one of them to a packer from that card. It is recorded as entered by a manager rather than tapped at the bench, so it is honest about where it came from, and it is left out of the pack time figures because there is no real timing behind it.

If your orders are routinely marked fulfilled before they reach the bench, every one of them lands on this list. Switch the warning off in Settings.

Pack times

Stats shows a median time per order and per item, for each packer, per day.

Pack time is measured as the gap between one order and the next, so it includes everything that happens in between: fetching stock, answering a question, finding a box. It is the median rather than the average, so one long lunch break does not distort the number.

One order per person per day cannot be measured, because you cannot time something with only one end. The Timed column shows how many gaps could actually be measured.

Whether a gap belongs to the order before or after it depends on when your team taps, which you set in Settings.

Every setting

People who leave

Remove a packer and they come off the Pack Station, but every order they packed keeps their name and stays in your history and stats. Renaming someone updates their past packs too, so their figures stay in one place. Tags already written onto shipped orders keep the old name, because those orders have gone.

Plans

Plans are counted in orders packed per month. Skipped orders and anything undone do not count.

Going over the limit does not stop anyone packing. The app tells you, and if you are still over seven days later the reporting pauses: Stats, the recent list and the CSV export. Nothing is deleted, and it all comes back complete when you change plan or your volume comes back inside it.

Change plan from Settings. Billing is handled by Shopify and appears on your Shopify invoice.

Your records

Export the full history to CSV at any time from the Today page. Worth doing before you uninstall: when you uninstall, Shopify sends us a deletion request 48 hours later and every record belonging to your shop is permanently deleted.

Reinstalling within that window keeps your history.

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