An order ships. You add the tracking number in the admin; the customer sees a Track button next to their order in My Account. They click it, land on the courier’s tracking page, watch their parcel move. They don’t email asking where their order is, because they didn’t need to.
That’s shipping tracking: built into HQ, not a separate plugin, designed for the ways real shops actually ship.
What staff add
On the order edit screen, a Tracking panel lets you add:
- Carrier: picked from a dropdown of common couriers (Australia Post, USPS, Royal Mail, DHL, FedEx, UPS, others) that auto-fills the tracking URL template. If your carrier isn’t listed, pick Custom and paste the full tracking URL manually.
- Tracking number: the courier’s tracking identifier.
- Ship date: defaults to today, editable.
- Items: if the order has multiple items, you can pick which items this shipment covers (for orders that split).
Multiple shipments per order
One order can split into multiple shipments. One item ships from your warehouse, another is drop-shipped from a supplier, a third is backordered and follows later. Each shipment has its own tracking number, items, and date. The customer sees all shipments in their order view with each tracking link labelled.
Where tracking shows up for customers
- My Account orders list: a Track button beside each shipped order.
- Order detail view: full tracking info per shipment.
- Shipping notification email: tracking info is available as a merge field you can include in your WC email templates.
Ties into returns
Returns reference the specific shipment the returned items came from, so the audit trail connects “item received on date X” (from the shipment tracking) with “item returned on date Y.” Useful for working out return windows accurately, and for disputes where timing matters.
Are you running WC Shipment Tracking by Ewout?
WooCommerce Shipment Tracking (by the Ewout / WP Overnight team, the same folks behind the popular PDF Invoices plugin) is the established WooCommerce tracking plugin. It does a solid job for many shops and integrates well with a lot of WC extensions. It’s a separate plugin with its own data model and settings, supporting a large carrier list and its own extension ecosystem. If you’re already running it and it’s working for you, no pressing reason to switch.
HQ shipping tracking is built into HQ, using a native data model that ties directly into the returns workflow, email templates, and order documents. No separate plugin to maintain, and the tracking data is available to the rest of Tracksies (for example, when a return is processed, staff see which shipment it came from without any extra wiring).
If you’re already on WC Shipment Tracking and happy, keep it. If you’re setting up a new shop or reviewing your plugin stack, HQ’s native tracking avoids one extra plugin dependency.
Migration from WC Shipment Tracking
If you’ve been running WC Shipment Tracking and want to switch, a migration utility is on the roadmap. It’ll read the plugin’s historical tracking data and copy it into HQ’s native schema so your order history stays intact. The utility isn’t shipped yet. If you’re currently on WC Shipment Tracking and plan to switch, it’s worth waiting for the migration tool before deactivating the source plugin; otherwise your existing tracking history won’t carry across.
Why shops use it
“Where’s my order?” emails are one of the most common customer-service loads for any online shop. Visible tracking in My Account takes most of them off your queue. The customer checks, sees the update, moves on. You stay focused on fulfilment instead of answering status questions.