In this article we're going to run you through several solutions to automatically print WooCommerce orders. We've personally used all of them and have had great experiences with each.

Google Cloud Print will be discontinued in December, meaning that many WooCommerce plugins that automatically printed out orders and packing labels will no longer work. The industry is changing, and plugins need to catch up.

You may be searching around for a new WooCommerce plugin that automatically prints labels without Google Cloud Print, and after recently migrating all of our client E-commerce stores two solutions that don't require that service, these are the best offerings we have found.

Auto printing WooCommerce orders use cases

There are a ton of use cases for automatically printing WooCommerce orders. If you've built a WooCommerce ordering platform for your restaurant, printing out tickets as they come in is a great way to keep your staff on track.

If you ship physical items, printing out an invoice to easily put in the packing box is a great way to keep up with industry standards. You can also set up label printing , were you work with a third party service like FedEx an automatically print and purchase shipping information As you get orders.

If you're used to paper invoices, order tracking slips, tickets, and more, automatically printing WooCommerce orders is a necessity for your company. There are many plugins out there, but you need to be mindful of what we're going to discuss in the next section.

What's this about Google Cloud Print?

Google Cloud Print will soon be discontinued (December 2020) for this use case. There are dozens of plugins that allow you to automatically print WooCommerce orders with Google Cloud Print, but now all of these will be incompatible and not working in the future.

If your site uses one of the plugins that connect this service to your WooCommerce orders, you'll need to begin looking for an alternative. It's better to do so before December 2020 as service will become interrupted when the GCP is discontinued.

Luckily, there are a few plugins/methods out there that will automatically print WooCommerce orders without Google Cloud Print, and we've tried most of them out for client websites. Here's a list of the best plugins to auto print WooCommerce orders, with our personal review, and screenshots of the back end interface.

Method 1: Email Invoice/Order To Admin, Auto Print Admin Email Attachments

This method works best if you have an office printer, dedicated computer, and are fine with setting up a couple of services. The way this method works is that when your customer orders a product on your WooCommerce store, an invoice or order sheet is automatically generated and emailed to an admin account.

That admin account is accessed by the server or computer that is connected to your office printer, and a piece of software called automatic email manager read all of the attached files, and prints the invoices automatically.

This is one of the best solutions if you need to do this at scale, and it doesn't require you using any third party services. Of course, you can Automatically renew both the plug-in and automatic email manager (they come in one year licenses), but you don't need to if you don't want to get free updates to the next version.

Let's breakdown how exactly to set up this system to automatically print WooCommerce orders, invoices, and packing labels without Google Cloud Print.

First, we need to choose a plugin that will generate the printable sheet, and email it to an administrative email account. There are a few options out there, but WooCommerce Print Invoices and Packing Lists, developed by Skyverge is the best one for a company that needs dependency and has high volume printing requirements.

It's been around since 2012, and is pretty much the industry standard when it comes to generating invoices and packing lists. Essentially, you set it up so it emails a packing list or print invoice to an administrative account like: printing@woocommercestore.com

This is really easy to do, and you can also make it only send these emails when the order is paid for. Each email will come with an HTML version of the printable document, and an attachment of the printable document. The attachment is really what we're after.

Once you've set up the system that emails , you need to set up the printing aspect of it. This is what will actually automatically print your WooCommerce orders. To do this, the easiest method is having a dedicated printer, dedicated printing computer (there are some really cheap ones out there starting from $30 on eBay), And Microsoft Outlook. These items are virtually standard throughout every American office.

Set everything up so the Microsoft Outlook account on the computer that is connected to the printer can receive the emails sent by your Woo Commerce website.

Now, it's time to install a piece of software that will automatically print email attachments (using rules), as your Microsoft Outlook installation receives them. Pretty simple, as long as a new email contains an attachment an the term “invoice” or something like that, this software will automatically generate a print job, and the printer will print it.

The printer itself doesn't matter, as the settings are universal. That means you can easily use a label printer, thermal printer, standard printer, or anything else that you may have at your disposal.

There are two pieces of software that you can use to do this. The first software is called auto email manager, while the second is called auto print pro. We have personal experience with the first piece of software, and have had auto print pro recommended to us on multiple occasions.

Essentially, you need to purchase them, install them onto your computer, and connect them to your printer. These will then automatically print your WooCommerce orders which come in the form as an email attachment. If you're looking for a long term solution, and/or if you have high volume printing requirements for your WooCommerce website, this is probably the best long term solution to do it. That's because you're not dependent on any third party service, other than email.

However, let's take a look at another solution to automatically print WooCommerce orders without Google Cloud Print(We have also installed this in some client websites). The solution is almost a complete 180 from the previous one, which didn't use any third party services.

Method Two: Use BaseLinker To Connect WooCommerce and PrintNode

BaseLinker allows you to connect woo Commerce to PrintNode. You may have heard these two names in your research when it comes to automatically printing WooCommerce orders without Google Cloud Print, because they dominate the industry. PrintNode is essentially a commercial version of Google Cloud Print. It allows you to easily connect to web services to printers, to do exactly what you're looking to do -- make automatic printouts.

WooCommerce doesn't automatically play nice with print node, which is where BaseLinker are comes into play. This tool is somewhat like Zapier, except it is dedicated to connecting woo Commerce to multiple services like couriers, marketplaces, communication tools, shops, and accounting systems.

It is a software as a service solution, And the pricing is unique to your usage. For example, if you have 250 orders per month, you'll end up paying somewhere around $30 per month. As you can see, this is a fairly expensive solution, which is what makes method one a great option for many.

However, if you go for the base linker option, it's really easy to automatically print orders using automatic actions module. As an example, if your order is marked as packed or paid, the system will automatically print the shipping label / invoice. this is a dedicated service for companies in your exact position, And it helps you make integrations with many different services, not just print node.

It's nice because you have 100+ integrations all on one platform, meaning you don't need to purchase many different plugins. This is also a European company, and if you're based in America you'll need to pay VAT.

Method Three: WooCommerce Automatic Order Printing (PrintNode) WordPress Plugin

To add another option to the mix, you can also take a look at a plugin called WooCommerce print orders -for automatic printing of your WooCommerce orders via print node. This is a standalone plugin , but we haven't had any personal experience with it.

At the same time, the one site license of 68 euros is much better than $30 per month, and it connects you to the same service mentioned in method two.

Keep in mind, PrintNode still costs money. These are the two lowest cost plans.

WooCommerce automatic order printing is compatible with any printer, and can work with orders, invoices, packing slips, and delivery notes.

Essentially, it is an on site integration to print node (whereas method two is a software as a service). first, install the print node app on the computer where your printer is connected, then install and configure the plugin, and then you're good to go.

It was most recently updated in June of 2020, so if you're looking for an up-to-date way to automatically print WooCommerce orders, this plugin may be your best bet. It may also offer the best value. In the future, if we are looking for a standalone plugin To get this job done, we're going to test this out and update the article accordingly.

Conclusion

Google Cloud Print will stop working in late 2020, so it’s time to start looking at WordPress plugins and solutions that will still automatically print orders, invoices and labels.

We really like method one – this is completely self hosted, and you can even choose to not renew licenses (no updates then). If you have a typical office/manufacturing setup, this could be a great, cost effective option.

Using method three, WooCommerce Auto Order Printing could also be a good choice as it’s a dedicated plugin, but you’ll still need to use PrintNode (essentially an enterprise version of GCP).

If you have any questions or other suggestions reach out in the comments section. Also, if you know of anybody who could use this article, share it!