AutoPilot: AI Shipping Automation and Carrier Selection

AutoPilot is the automated shipping decision maker built into SKUSavvy. For every shipment, it picks a strategy from rules you write, applies the right carrier options, compares every rate, and buys the label. Your packers stop comparing rates by hand, so a shipment goes from packed to labeled with no clicks.

Automation never means giving up control. Each strategy has guardrails, such as a Max Shipping Cost and a Max % Of Shipment value, and AutoPilot only buys a label that stays inside them. Anything outside the guardrails waits for a person to review.

• Faster labels. AutoPilot chooses the rate the moment a shipment is packed. With Print label automatically when purchased on in the batch settings, the label prints without a click.
• The same decision every time. Every packer follows the same rules, so the choice no longer depends on who is at the station or how busy the day is.
• Lower shipping spend you can measure. The Rate Strategy Simulator replays your own shipping history to show what each cost and speed balance costs per shipment and per month.
• Safe by default. Cost caps, value caps and rate filters decide what may be bought automatically. If any carrier returns a rate error, AutoPilot waits for review, because a cheaper rate could be missing.

AutoPilot runs at the ship step of SKUSavvy's pick, pack and ship workflow. For the carrier rate shopping, address validation and tracking around it, see shipping and fulfillment software.

1. Choose a strategy. When a packer opens a shipment, AutoPilot checks your protocol rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches picks the strategy. If no rule matches, the Default Value strategy is used.
2. Apply advanced options. If the strategy has Advanced Options switched on, AutoPilot writes them to the shipment before rates are fetched. The rates you see are then quoted with insurance, signature or other options included.
3. Filter the rates. The strategy's filters remove rates that break your rules, such as a rate that is too slow, untracked or from a carrier you excluded.
4. Pick the best rate. AutoPilot scores the remaining rates with the strategy's speed and cost balance and selects the best one.
5. Check the guardrails. If Auto Approve is on and the rate is inside every guardrail, AutoPilot buys the label. If not, the rate is selected and waits for a packer to approve it.

Box Count and Total Weight read as 0 until a shipment is packed. If a rule uses them, AutoPilot evaluates the protocol again after packing, which can move the shipment to another strategy.

To build or change your rules, go to AutoPilot, open Purchase Rate and click Edit. A saved protocol opens as plain text so you can read the rules at a glance, and Edit turns each rule into inputs. Click Update to save your changes.

• Each rule is an if or else if with one or more conditions. Join conditions with and when all must match, or or when any may match.
• Rules run from top to bottom, and the first match wins. Put specific rules, such as orders over $500, above general ones.
• Switch on Allow nesting to put a rule inside another rule. For example, inside "Country not equal to United States", send Canada to one strategy and every other country to another.
• A strategy that no rule can reach shows a warning, so you can fix the order before it causes surprises.

A strategy is what AutoPilot does once a rule picks it. Outside edit mode, each strategy shows a summary in four columns, so you can check every guardrail without opening anything.

Filters decide which rates AutoPilot may consider. A rate that fails any filter is removed before scoring.

• Min Rate Cost and Max Rate Cost: the price range a rate must fall in.
• Max Delivery Days: removes rates that promise slower delivery. A rate with no delivery estimate is removed too.
• Require Tracking: removes untracked rates.
• Which Carriers? and Which Services?: include or exclude carriers and services, such as UPS and FedEx only for alcohol, or no USPS Media Mail.

The Speed to Cost slider sets how AutoPilot weighs price against delivery time. Move it toward Cost to favor cheaper rates, or toward Speed to favor faster ones. Click Simulate to see which services win at each setting before you commit.

Switch on Auto Approve to let AutoPilot buy the selected rate. It buys only when every guardrail passes:

• Max Shipping Cost: the most AutoPilot may spend on one label.
• Max % Of Shipment: the most a label may cost as a share of the shipment's retail value. At 15%, a $100 shipment can auto-buy a label up to $15.
• No rate errors: if any carrier returns an error, AutoPilot does not buy, because the missing rate could have been the best one.

With Auto Approve off, AutoPilot still selects the best rate, but a packer always confirms the purchase. Use this for fraud holds and other orders that need a person to look first.

Each strategy can set the shipment's Advanced Options for you. Switch on Apply in the strategy's Advanced Options card, then choose the options it should set. AutoPilot writes them when the packer opens the shipment, before rates are fetched, so every quoted rate already includes them.

• Insurance: insure at Retail Value or Purchase Price, through the carrier or ParcelGuard.
• Third Party Billing Account: bill the label to another account.
• Confirmation: delivery, signature, adult signature and other confirmation types.
• This package contains alcohol: also sets Adult Signature, which carriers require for alcohol.
• Contains dry ice: with the dry ice weight and unit.
• Non-Machinable and Saturday Delivery.
• Terms of Trade: for international shipments. Leave it blank to use your company default for the destination country.

The pack screen marks the options AutoPilot set, so the packer knows where they came from. If the packer changes and saves the Advanced Options form, their choice wins and AutoPilot stops changing options on that shipment. For what each option does, see Advanced Options.

To see what a strategy will do before it buys a single label, click Simulate on the strategy. The Rate Strategy Simulator creates 500 shipments from your last year of shipping, runs your filters, and scores them the same way live rates are scored.

• Which service wins? shows the top service at each cost priority, and how often each service wins. Click a band to move your slider there.
• At your priority shows the median label cost, the delivery estimate and the real ship-to-delivery time, with each winning service.
• What each priority costs compares spend per shipment and per month at your volume.
• Insights points out what your filters remove and which services never win.

The example above is from a merchant that ships about 12,900 labels a month. A speed-first priority averages $24.41 a label, about $314,000 a month. A cost-first priority averages $7.34, about $94,000 a month, and still delivers in under 4 days.

The simulator needs at least two services with 20 or more labels that have a carrier cost. Without that history, it uses typical USPS, UPS and FedEx pricing, and Use my history and Use sample data switch between the two. If neither applies, or your filters remove every rate, the simulator tells you why instead of showing an empty chart.

These strategies are common starting points. Each row is one rule in the protocol and the strategy it picks.

On the pack screen, the AutoPilot bar sits under Select Rate. Click the bar to engage or disengage AutoPilot for the Warehouse, and the choice is remembered on that device. The strategy name in the bar opens that strategy in a new tab.

The bar tells the packer what AutoPilot is doing. It is blue while AutoPilot works on its own, and yellow when a person needs to act. A robot icon marks the rate it selected.

AutoPilot is SKUSavvy's shipping automation. It chooses a carrier and service for each shipment from your rules, applies carrier options, and buys the label when the rate is inside your guardrails.

It removes rates that fail the strategy's filters, then scores the rest with your speed and cost balance. The rate with the best score is selected.

No. AutoPilot only buys automatically when the rate is under the Max Shipping Cost, under the Max % Of Shipment value, and no carrier returned an error. Otherwise the rate waits for a packer to approve it.

Set up a protocol and engage AutoPilot on the pack screen. Packing does not change: AutoPilot compares every connected carrier's rates as each shipment is packed and selects or buys the best one.

Yes. Switch on Advanced Options in a strategy and choose insurance, confirmation, alcohol, dry ice, Saturday delivery or terms of trade. AutoPilot applies them before rates are fetched.

Email support@skusavvy.com and we will help you map your shipping rules to a protocol.