Postage Billing

How prepaid postage funding works · Contact: support@shippingcloud.net

What the postage balance is

This applies specifically to USPS labels. To actually print a USPS label, ShippingCloud has to buy real postage from USPS on your behalf, at the moment you ship. Rather than billing a card for every single label, most customers keep a small prepaid balance on their account — like a postage meter — and each label's real postage cost is deducted from that balance as it's created. FedEx labels are billed differently and are not funded from this balance.

How it's billed

You add funds to your postage balance whenever you choose, through your own ShippingCloud dashboard — this is entirely separate from and independent of any connected sales channel (Shopify or otherwise). Top-ups are processed by Stripe. Every charge is for one of exactly three things:

• A manual top-up — you choose an amount and add it to your balance.
• An automatic recharge — if you've opted in, your balance tops itself up by a set amount once it runs low, using a card you've already saved.
• Saving a card for automatic recharge — this step itself charges nothing; it just stores the card for the case above.

Each label's cost is the carrier's own rate for that shipment, plus ShippingCloud's margin as set on your rate card — the same pricing that shows on the rate board before you buy the label. Nothing is estimated or charged after the fact without your having chosen to fund the balance.

This isn't an app charge

This billing exists to pay for real, physical postage — a cost every shipping label carries no matter which platform, carrier account, or storefront it comes from. It is not a fee for using the ShippingCloud app itself, is not required to install or use the app, and works identically whether or not a Shopify store (or any other sales channel) is connected to your account.

Questions

Reach us any time at support@shippingcloud.net.