Batch print shipping labels on a thermal printer

If you need to batch print shipping labels, you are probably past the point where one-label-at-a-time feels acceptable. Twenty orders after a good weekend sale can turn into an hour of clicking, cropping, reprinting and swearing at a thermal printer that was meant to save time.

The annoying part is that the printer is rarely the real problem. The problem is usually the PDF, the label size, or a print dialog quietly scaling your labels down to postage-stamp size.

This guide is for Australian sellers using eBay, Shopify, Etsy, Amazon AU or MyPost Business with a 100x150mm thermal printer. It covers the clean batch workflow, the A4 PDF trap, and the settings worth checking before you send 50 labels into the queue.

In this article:

• Why batch print shipping labels breaks down
• Before you batch print shipping labels
• How to batch print shipping labels from a PDF
• How to batch print shipping labels from MyPost Business
• Troubleshooting bulk label printing
• Related reading

Why batch print shipping labels breaks down

Batch printing sounds simple. Select a bunch of orders, download the labels, press print, stick labels on parcels.

That is how it should work. In practice, sellers hit a few boring but expensive problems.

The PDF format does not match the printer

A 100x150mm thermal printer expects one label per page. A4 PDFs often contain a label in one corner, a receipt, instructions, blank space, or multiple labels on one sheet.

Your printer driver cannot magically know which part of the A4 page is the actual shipping label. If you send the full A4 PDF to a thermal printer, it may shrink the whole page onto one label. That makes the barcode tiny and hard to scan.

This is common when sellers move from office printing to thermal labels. The workflow that was fine for A4 paper does not translate cleanly to direct thermal stock.

Each marketplace handles labels differently

An eBay Australia seller might print postage through eBay for some orders, then use MyPost Business for others. A Shopify seller may have Australia Post set up in Shopify, but still download carrier PDFs for some orders.

Etsy and Amazon AU add their own rules around packing slips, customs details and order handling. The result is a folder full of PDFs that look similar until you open them.

That mix is where bulk label printing gets messy. You may have 30 labels, but they are not always 30 clean 4x6 pages.

Print settings reset at the worst time

Most batch print failures come from simple settings:

• Paper size is still set to A4 instead of 100x150mm or 4x6.
• Scaling is set to fit instead of actual size.
• Orientation is wrong.
• The browser print dialog overrides the driver settings.
• The printer queue jams after a large PDF.

If you catch those before printing, you save labels. If you catch them after, you are peeling off bad labels and reprinting half the pile.

Before you batch print shipping labels

You do not need a complex warehouse system to print multiple shipping labels at once. You do need the basics lined up.

Check your label size

Most Australian ecommerce sellers using thermal printers use 100x150mm labels, also called 4x6 inch labels. This size works for common shipping printers from Dymo, Zebra, Brother, MUNBYN and similar brands.

Set the paper size in both places:

1. Your operating system printer settings.
2. The print dialog inside Adobe Reader, Preview, Chrome or your shipping platform.

Do not assume one setting controls everything. Browser print screens often remember the last paper size, which is how a perfect test print turns into a bad batch the next day.

Check whether your labels are already thermal-ready

Open the PDF before you print the batch. Look at the page size and layout.

A thermal-ready batch usually has:

• One shipping label per page.
• No packing slip on the same page.
• No large A4 whitespace around the label.
• Barcodes that fit comfortably inside the 100x150mm area.

An A4 batch usually has:

• One small label sitting on a full A4 page.
• Two labels on one A4 page.
• A label plus receipt or instructions.
• Lots of blank space.

If the PDF is already one 4x6 label per page, you can usually batch print it directly. If it is A4, crop or split it first.

Test one label before the full batch

This feels slow, but it is quicker than wasting 40 labels.

Print the first label, then check:

1. The barcode is sharp.
2. The whole address fits inside the label.
3. Nothing is cut off at the edge.
4. The label is not rotated sideways.
5. The tracking number is readable.

Once one label looks right, print the rest of the PDF using the same settings.

How to batch print shipping labels from a PDF

If your platform gives you one PDF containing multiple labels, the fastest path is usually direct PDF batch printing.

For a clean 4x6 PDF

Use this workflow when every page in the PDF is already one shipping label.

1. Open the PDF in a PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader or your system preview app.
2. Choose your thermal printer.
3. Set paper size to 100x150mm or 4x6.
4. Set scale to actual size or 100%.
5. Check orientation in the preview.
6. Print page 1 as a test.
7. If the test label is correct, print all pages.

Avoid printing from a browser if the preview looks odd. Browsers are convenient, but they can hide printer driver options or apply scaling you did not ask for.

For an A4 PDF with labels inside it

This is where many sellers lose time. A full A4 page cannot be sent straight to a 4x6 printer unless the label area has already been extracted.

You have three options:

1. Crop each A4 page so the shipping label becomes the full page.
2. Split multiple labels from each A4 page into separate 100x150mm pages.
3. Use a tool that detects the label area and prepares the thermal version automatically.

The manual method works for a small batch, but it gets old fast. Cropping 20 labels by hand can take longer than packing the orders.

If you sell daily, it is worth fixing the PDF stage rather than blaming the printer. A thermal printer can only print the file you give it.

For mixed PDFs with packing slips

Some platforms bundle labels and packing slips together. That is fine if you are printing on A4. It is painful when your thermal printer receives every page in the file.

Before printing, remove pages that are not shipping labels. Keep packing slips in a separate PDF if you still need them.

A simple rule helps: the thermal printer queue should only receive thermal labels. Invoices, pick lists and customs pages should go somewhere else unless they are designed for label stock.

How to batch print shipping labels from MyPost Business

MyPost Business is a common choice for Australian sellers because it gives access to Australia Post business rates without needing a large warehouse setup. Australia Post explains the service on its MyPost Business page.

The label printing part can still be fiddly, especially when you are moving from a few parcels per week to daily dispatch.

Create or import the parcels first

The cleanest batch starts before printing. Get all parcels into MyPost Business first, then pay for and download labels together.

Depending on your setup, that may mean:

• Importing orders from an ecommerce integration.
• Uploading a CSV.
• Entering parcels manually for a small batch.
• Using marketplace order data as your source of truth.

If you sell on eBay Australia, the eBay postage label help page is worth checking when you are deciding whether to print through eBay or send orders through another postage workflow.

Download labels as a batch

Once the parcels are ready, download the labels together rather than opening each one separately. Keep the file names simple, especially if you need to reprint later.

A sensible folder setup is:

• Labels today for the current dispatch run.
• Printed labels for anything already sent to the printer.
• Problem labels for orders that need address fixes, customs edits or manual review.

That sounds basic, but it stops the classic mistake: printing the same label twice because two PDFs were sitting in Downloads with similar names.

Prepare A4 labels before thermal printing

If MyPost Business gives you A4 PDFs, check whether the label is already in a thermal-friendly format. If it is not, crop the label area first.

For small batches, you can do this manually. For daily sellers, a watch folder or PDF processing tool is usually cleaner.

LabelChop was built for this exact MyPost Business problem. It watches your Downloads folder, detects A4 label PDFs, crops them to 100x150mm and sends them to your thermal printer without opening a print dialog.

Troubleshooting bulk label printing

When bulk label printing goes wrong, slow down and isolate the stage that failed. Most problems sit in one of three places: the source PDF, the printer driver, or the print dialog.

Labels print too small

The PDF is probably being shrunk to fit the selected paper size.

Try this:

1. Set paper size to 100x150mm or 4x6.
2. Set scale to actual size or 100%.
3. Turn off fit to page.
4. Print one label only.

If the source PDF is A4, crop it first. Scaling an entire A4 page down to 4x6 will make the label too small.

Labels print sideways

Orientation is wrong, or the PDF page size does not match the driver setting.

Switch between portrait and wide layout in the print preview. If the preview still looks wrong, check the printer driver media size rather than the app print screen.

Some printers remember orientation per app. Adobe Reader, Chrome and macOS Preview can all behave differently.

Only one label prints from the batch

Check the page range. It may be set to current page instead of all pages.

Also check whether your shipping platform downloaded one label or a full batch. Some dashboards let you select multiple orders but still require a separate button to download all labels.

The printer skips blank labels

Blank labels between prints usually point to media calibration, sensor settings or a page size mismatch.

Run the printer calibration from the driver or printer utility. Then confirm the selected stock size matches the physical labels loaded in the printer.

Barcodes look blurry

Thermal labels need clean barcodes. If Australia Post or a marketplace cannot scan the label, your parcel can slow down.

Check these first:

• Print darkness is high enough.
• Speed is not set too fast.
• The barcode is not scaled down.
• The label roll is direct thermal stock if your printer requires it.
• The print head is clean.

Do not keep printing a full batch if the first barcode looks faint. Fix it before you create a bigger mess.

Related reading

If you are still setting up your shipping workflow, these guides cover the parts around batch printing:

• eBay shipping labels Australia: guide for new sellers
• MyPost Business label setup for eBay and Shopify
• How to print 4x6 labels from A4 PDFs
• Print MyPost Business labels on a thermal printer
• How to set up a watch folder for automatic label printing

Conclusion

The trick to batch print shipping labels is to fix the file before it hits the printer. If every page is already one clean 100x150mm label, your thermal printer can do its job quickly. If the file is an A4 mess, the print queue will only make that mess faster.

For the occasional batch, manual cropping and careful print settings are enough. For daily MyPost Business runs, automate the boring part. LabelChop can watch your Downloads folder, prepare the labels and send them to your thermal printer, so you can spend the next half hour packing orders instead of fighting PDFs.

If you want to see whether it fits your setup, check the pricing or read the FAQ before installing.