ZSS outbound shipping process: Mother parcel and pallet guidelines

The following are the step-by-step guidelines for the ZSS outbound shipping process. They are aligned with the ZSS Outbound Parcel Sorting Center (OPSC) inbound shipping guidelines. 

ZSS differentiates between the Mother and Baby parcels: 

• A Baby parcel is a customer parcel.

• The Mother parcel is the consolidated Baby parcels packed in a larger parcel. 

In order for you to have a cost-efficient first mile (i.e. from your warehouse to our OPSC) and minimize potential errors, we ask you to send packed, labelled and addressed customer parcels (Baby parcels) either consolidated in a bigger parcel (Mother parcel) or on a pallet. 

The Mother parcel(s) or pallet can be sent via Express or a Parcel carrier to our OPSC Hamburg. 

Once the Mother parcel has been received at the OPSC, the Baby parcels will be taken out, sorted and scanned, and sent onwards to the delivery address.

In order to save time and minimize the possibility of errors, we provide you with and request that you use the following ZSS Shipping Label, where the destination details of the OPSC have already been pre-filled. 

Please fill in the sender’s details (i.e. the address of your warehouse) on the ZSS shipping label, and put the ZSS shipping label, along with the shipping label of an Express or Parcel carrier of your choice, on the Mother parcel or pallet.

We recommend typing in your warehouse information directly into the ZSS shipping label PDF after downloading, then saving it pre-filled on your computer. Printing out a stack, and sticking one to each Mother parcel or pallet, can also save time.

Please be sure to have the ZSS Shipment Label visibly attached to the front side of the Mother parcel or pallet.

Please put the customer parcels (Baby parcels) into the Mother parcel or onto a pallet. Each Baby parcel needs to carry a separate carrier label that has been created by the Centiro/Tradebyte Tool for the respective destination country.  

When attaching the carrier label to the Baby parcel, please be sure to attach it as centrally as possible. The barcodes should not go around any corners, as this could lead to difficulties in scanning the parcels, thereby slowing down the overall process.

Whenever an injection is done via transport and not with a mother parcel, we need a Eyefreight TMS reference to enter our OPSC premises in Hamburg.

1. For the creation of a TMS account the following information is required: 

a. Which email IDs should be used for the accounts?

b. What is the warehouse address?

c. What is the company’s official postal address?

d. Which carrier will you be using?

e. What injection time into OPSC Hamburg are you aiming for? Please note that injection times end at 1 pm, Monday to Friday. 

Please send an email containing these details  to ZSS_OPS@zalando.de

2. Once the ZSS_OPS team has created your account, they will send you your TMS account credentials

3. After receiving your TMS credentials you’ll need to log in to your TMS account and fill out all the details. Please ensure that all transport related information, such as licence plate number, driver's name, number of parcels arriving etc. is filled in correctly.

 4. You can find the training pdf here.

Please download and read the presentation attached below for more information outlining use cases of the ZSS shipping guidelines.