Canada Post Universal Shipping

Canada Post is Canada’s national postal service, delivering to every address in the country and to more than 190 destinations worldwide. Its parcel network combines nationwide domestic coverage with cross-border services to the United States and international air and surface products.

Canada Post Universal Shipping is designed to connect your Magento 2 store to that network end to end — live rates at checkout, labels and customs paperwork from the admin, tracking, cancellations, returns, pickups and end-of-day manifests. Whether you ship a handful of domestic parcels a week or close out a hundred a day under a commercial contract, the extension keeps the whole workflow inside Magento.

Supported Canada Post services

• Domestic: Regular Parcel, Expedited Parcel, Xpresspost, Xpresspost Certified, Priority, Library Books, Tracked Packet
• United States: Expedited Parcel USA, Xpresspost USA, Tracked Packet USA (and LVM), Small Packet USA Air, Priority Worldwide Envelope / Pak / Parcel
• International: Xpresspost International, International Parcel Air and Surface, Tracked Packet International, Small Packet Air and Surface, Priority Worldwide Envelope / Pak / Parcel

Account & Pricing

To use the Canada Post Universal Shipping extension you need an account with the Canada Post Developer Program. Registration issues an API key — a username and password pair — and ties it to your customer number. A commercial contract number unlocks negotiated rates, on-account billing, manifests and Open Returns; merchants without one can still rate and ship using non-contract shipments settled per label. Payments for delivery are settled with Canada Post only. The extension does not charge for shipping, labels, or rate calls. There are no additional fees associated with this service.

Features

• Automatic, Mass and Manual creation of shipping labels
• Real-time shipping rates at checkout, contract or published
• Contract and non-contract (credit-card) shipments
• Multi-package orders — one Canada Post shipment per parcel, collected into one order
• Customs declarations on international labels, built from the order’s invoice products
• Delivery options: signature, proof of age, do-not-safe-drop, leave-at-door, card for pickup, coverage
• Non-delivery handling for cross-border parcels
• Authorized Returns — a return label per parcel
• Open Return templates — created from the admin in one click, then drawn on demand
• Customer self-service returns from the account area
• Automatic box packing — calculates dimensions and weight from product attributes
• PDF (8.5x11, 4x6, 3x5) and ZPL thermal labels
• Tracking for every label, with the full event history
• Cancellation that picks the right operation: delete before transmission, refund request after
• On-demand and scheduled pickup booking, availability lookup and cancellation
• End-of-day manifests — manual or by cron — with the manifest PDF stored for reprint
• Post office locator at checkout, as a list or on a Google or Bing map
• Canada Post email notifications on shipment, exception and delivery
• Cost centre and two customer references on every contract shipment
• Mailed-on-behalf-of billing for fulfilment providers
• Compatible with Hyva Theme and Hyva Checkout (via the companion module)
• Print shipping labels on inkjet, laser and thermal printers
• Per-document-type printer routing (label, packing slip, invoice)
• Multi-store, multi-website, per-direction and per-country configuration

Advantages

Shipping Labels — PDF and Thermal

The creation of shipping labels is possible manually, in bulk from the Orders grid, automatically by cron, and even on a schedule. The Canada Post Universal Shipping extension associates each shipping label with an order, shipment or credit memo. All labels are stored on your server and accessible at any time from the admin interface. Before manually creating a label, you can pick the Canada Post service you want and immediately see the shipping cost. In automatic mode, labels are created either by the method the buyer chose at checkout, or by a configurable domestic / international service for every qualifying order.

Shipping Rates & Shipping Methods

Get rates at checkout exactly as on canadapost.ca. Prices depend on the origin and destination postal codes, weight, dimensions, destination type (residential or commercial) and any active options — all of them accounted for by the extension. Quotes are cached for a configurable interval so a busy checkout does not re-ask the carrier for the same cart, and the display of rates can be fine-tuned per store, per direction and per country.

Returns

Two return flows, both native to Canada Post. An Authorized Return issues one label per parcel, with your address as the receiver. An Open Return is a standing template the store draws labels from until its budget is spent — create it from the Returns settings with one button and the extension stores the template ID for you. Customers can request a return label from their account, and it arrives by email in a template you control.

Pickup & Tracking

Order a parcel pickup directly from the admin panel of your Magento store — on demand for a specific window, or on a standing weekly schedule driven by cron. Availability for a postal code can be checked before booking, and a booked pickup can be cancelled again. Once your packages move, tracking is available inside Magento, either as a popup with the full event timeline or as a redirect to the Canada Post website, and the tracking number travels with the order email.

Manifests

Contract merchants can hold shipments in a group and transmit them once at the end of the day instead of one at a time. Close out manually from the admin or leave it to the hourly cron; the manifest PDF Canada Post produces is downloaded and stored next to the labels, and the PO number the driver signs for is recorded on every label in the group.

Post Office Locator

Let the buyer choose an outlet to collect the parcel from. The locator searches around the delivery postal code within a radius you set and shows the results as a list or on a map. The chosen outlet is carried through to the label as a hold-for-pickup delivery.

Printing

Printing is one of the most important steps when working with shipping labels. Use our companion application el-Print (recommended) or QZ Tray to print PDF and thermal labels on local and network printers. Route each document type (Shipping Label, Packing Slip, Invoice) to its own printer in one click.

Hyva Theme and Hyva Checkout

Canada Post Universal Shipping integrates with the Hyva Theme and Hyva Checkout via the companion module extmag/shiplab-hyva. Installation is one Composer command; see the Installation Guide shipped with the extension for details.

Configuration

The capabilities of the module are truly extensive due to flexible settings. At the same time, the settings are intuitive and many ship with sensible defaults. You can configure the extension for a specific store or for a specific country. Apply some settings to domestic shipments and different settings to international shipments. Separate settings are also possible for regular and return labels.

Requirements

• Magento 2.4.x (Open Source or Adobe Commerce)
• PHP 8.1 or newer
• Composer 2.x
• A Canada Post Developer Program API key and customer number
• A Canadian origin address — Canada Post ships from Canada
• Outbound HTTPS access to soa-gw.canadapost.ca

Demo

You can try this extension for 30 days before you buy it. Sign in to your extmag.com account, open the extension page and press Request demo. The Try an extension for 30 days page explains what a demo includes, how you install it, and what happens when the 30 days end.