Shipping label rolls are cheap enough that nobody tracks them, and that is exactly why warehouses run out mid-dispatch. The arithmetic takes two minutes and saves the afternoon.
Working out monthly consumption
Parcels per month divided by labels per roll. At 100 x 150 mm that divisor is 250.
- 10 parcels a day — roughly one roll a month;
- 30 parcels a day — three to four rolls;
- 100 parcels a day — about twelve rolls, two-thirds of a carton;
- 300 parcels a day — two cartons a month.
When to reorder
Order more shipping label rolls when you open the second-to-last one, not the last. Delivery takes a day or two and dispatch does not pause while you wait.
For anything above fifty parcels a day, hold a full carton in reserve. The cost of carrying it is trivial next to a stopped dispatch bench.
Where shipping label rolls get wasted
Roll changes
Every change burns two or three labels on calibration. Changing daily, that is around seven hundred labels a year — noticeable but not alarming.
Reprints
Wrong address, bled barcode, label applied crooked. On a bench without a set routine this reaches five percent of all parcels, and it is the largest single loss.
Degraded stock
Rolls stored badly go grey and get scrapped unused. This is pure loss, and entirely avoidable.
Storing shipping label rolls properly
Upright, in the original carton, at room temperature, out of sunlight. Not in an unheated bay over winter — damp swells the edge and the first twenty labels feed crooked.
Two printers or one
The threshold is roughly eighty parcels a day, or two people packing at once.
A second machine is not about speed; a desktop printer produces a label in under a second. It is about not queueing at one bench.
A note on cheap rolls
Stock quality shows up as reprints, not as a line on the invoice. A roll that costs twenty percent less and fails one label in fifty is more expensive, not less.
How many labels are on a shipping label roll
About 250 at 100 x 150 mm with a 40 mm core. A carton of 18 rolls holds 4,500 labels.
How many rolls do I need per month
Divide monthly parcels by 250. Thirty parcels a day works out at three to four rolls a month.
How should rolls be stored
Upright in the carton, at room temperature, away from sunlight and heat sources. Thermal stock greys permanently if it warms up.
When should I reorder
When you open the second-to-last roll. Above fifty parcels a day, keep a full carton in reserve.