How to Create a Royal Mail Return Label for Your Customers
Written byAyushi Tyagi
Reviewed byAnuj GoelA Royal Mail return label lets a customer send an order back without buying postage. Your store sets the return up with Royal Mail, pays for the label and gets the parcel at your return address. For a UK store, the first thing to settle is whether your Royal Mail account can issue these labels at all.
Quick answer: Royal Mail sells business return labels as Tracked Returns, which needs a Business Parcels Account. Shoppers can print the label free at a Post Office or have the parcel collected from home with Parcel Collect. With QuickReturns, the label comes from your Royal Mail account when you approve a return.
On this page
What a Royal Mail return label is, from the store’s side
A Royal Mail return label is a shipping label addressed to your return location. Royal Mail sells its business version as Royal Mail Tracked Returns. The service needs a Business Parcels Account and a minimum of 20 returns a week or 1,000 a year.
That minimum decides who can use this route. Say a UK store handles 60 returns a month. That is about 14 a week and 720 a year, which is under both figures on returns alone. Royal Mail lets Tracked Returns volume be combined with Royal Mail Tracked delivery services and international tracking and signature services to reach the 1,000 items a year, so a store under 20 returns a week may still qualify through its outbound volume. Ask Royal Mail what applies to your account before you build a returns process around Tracked Returns. At 30 returns a week, a store is already above the weekly figure.
A label is one step in a longer process. Our guide to ecommerce returns management covers the rest of it.
How shoppers get a Royal Mail return label
Royal Mail gives a shopper two ways to send the parcel back when they have no label at home. Each suits a different customer.
Printed at a Post Office or Customer Service Point
A shopper without a printer can print the Royal Mail return label free at a Post Office branch or a Royal Mail Customer Service Point. The customer has to make the trip, so this suits small, light items.
Collected from home with Parcel Collect
Royal Mail can collect the return from the customer’s home with Parcel Collect, at no extra cost to the shopper. This helps with bulky items and with customers who cannot get to a branch.
How to create a Royal Mail return label
Royal Mail documents three ways to create Tracked Returns labels in Click & Drop:
- With each outbound label. Go to Settings, then Shipping services, pick the service, choose the Tracked Returns service and tick “Print Tracked Returns label”. Every outbound label then comes with a returns label.
- For one manifested order. Open the order, choose Other actions, then Generate Tracked Return, pick the service and select Generate label. You get a PDF to put in the parcel or email to the customer.
- In bulk, before any order exists. Go to Settings, open the Miscellaneous tile, choose your trading name, the Tracked Returns service and how many labels you need, then select print. You get a PDF of labels to print or email to customers.
The exact screens depend on your account, so check them against the guide.
That works for a handful of returns. With returns every day, someone has to open each order and create each label by hand, and the customer waits until they do.
What a Royal Mail return label costs and who pays
Your Royal Mail account is billed for each label. Royal Mail’s page does not give one price, so check your account terms for what you pay per label. By default, the customer pays nothing for the return.
A free return label makes a return easy for the shopper and adds a cost to every return. A store with thin margins can charge a fee instead: a fixed amount, a percentage of the order, or the actual label rate. The fee comes off the refund or goes on the exchange order. Our guide to how prepaid return labels are billed covers who should pay in more detail.
Automate Royal Mail return labels with QuickReturns
QuickReturns has a direct Royal Mail integration. When you approve a return, it creates the label through your Royal Mail account and emails it to the shopper with a tracking link. Nobody opens the order to buy a label. Each label is created from your own Royal Mail account, so Royal Mail bills you as before.
The shopper picks a return method in the returns portal: send a return label, drop off at a store, or ship it back themselves. On paid plans, an automation rule can approve new requests, so the Royal Mail label goes out without a click. For a fee on the return, a Courier Rate rule charges the shopper the live label rate, with a fallback amount you set. It is deducted from the refund, added to the exchange order or collected upfront.
Connect Royal Mail under the carrier integrations, then read our guide to automatic prepaid return labels for the settings. The QuickReturns plans page shows which plan fits your volume.
Create Royal Mail return labels automatically. Install QuickReturns on your Shopify store, or book a short walkthrough.
Frequently asked questions
No. According to Royal Mail, shoppers without a printer can print their return label free at a Post Office branch or a Royal Mail Customer Service Point. They can also have the return collected from home with Parcel Collect at no extra cost.
Yes. Your Royal Mail account is billed for the label, and the customer pays nothing unless you set a fee. In QuickReturns, a return fee rule can charge a fixed amount, a percentage, a combo fee or Courier Rate, which is the live label rate with a fallback amount you set.
Royal Mail sells business return labels as Tracked Returns, which needs a Business Parcels Account and a minimum of 20 returns a week or 1,000 a year. Connect that account to your returns app, and each approved return gets a label from it. Check your account terms for per-label prices.
Sources: Royal Mail Tracked Returns · Royal Mail help: create Tracked Returns labels.
