{"id":2645,"date":"2026-09-09T13:03:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T11:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hubrise.it\/?p=2645"},"modified":"2026-09-09T13:07:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T11:07:01","slug":"checklist-logistica-black-friday-natale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hubrise.it\/en\/blog\/checklist-logistica-black-friday-natale\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Friday and Christmas: the checklist for ecommerce shipping"},"content":{"rendered":"

In August the peak looks like a November problem, but almost everything that will go wrong between Black Friday and Christmas<\/strong>is actually decided in these weeks, while volumes are low. The Black Friday shipments<\/strong><\/a> that get stuck rarely get stuck because of the courier; behind them there is a contract that was not reviewed, an assignment rule that stayed in someone's head, a label flow tested on twenty orders instead of two thousand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why August is the last useful window before the peak<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Every intervention on the delivery chain has a maturation time, and none of these times is short. Renegotiating terms with a carrier takes weeks of back and forth; activating a new service means configuring, testing and correcting. Reorganising shifts and warehouse capacity goes through workforce planning, which has deadlines of its own. Those who open these worksites in October do not close them in time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

August also has an advantage that the following months do not: with low volumes you can touch configurations, test environments and routing rules without risking ruining a campaign in progress. The warehouse, instead, follows a calendar of its own, which starts in September and concerns stock, shifts and picking capacity. The e-commerce peak season<\/strong><\/a> is prepared there, with a plan separate from this one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seven areas to check before Black Friday ecommerce<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the preparation of Black Friday for ecommerce<\/strong> seven points of the chain come under pressure. Going through them one by one, assigning each a person and a date, is the simplest way to know by mid-October which ones are still open. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Volumes, countries and delivery services for Christmas<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

You start from the numbers. The history of the last two peaks broken down by country, weight band, service chosen at checkout and sales channel tells where the load will concentrate. It happens that the picture overturns the priorities: the slice that seemed marginal generates more phone calls than the main one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recurring mistake is treating November and December as a single event.Ecommerce at Christmas<\/strong> has a profile of its own, with smaller carts, more gifts, dedicated packaging and the request for a delivery by Christmas<\/strong> within a precise date. Arriving in December with November's configuration means discovering the difference from the volume of requests that reach customer service. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Choosing the courier for Black Friday and fallback plans<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On the courier for Black Friday<\/strong> , the temptation is to compare rates and close the matter. On peak days other variables weigh in: how much capacity the carrier has really reserved, how it behaves when a route saturates, how dense the network of pickup points is in the areas that matter, how frequently it updates the tracking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the question that almost no one puts in writing. If the main carrier suspends pickups for two days in a province, how many shipments remain stuck and who decides to move them? An alternative plan written in August costs half a day of meeting; the same plan improvised on the Friday of Black Friday costs hours on every blocked order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shipment assignment rules<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On peak days no one chooses the courier order by order, and those who try slow down the line. The rules must be set beforehand, looking at country, weight and volume band, service requested at checkout, order value and carrier availability. A written rule can be checked afterwards and corrected; a decision left to whoever is on shift cannot even be reconstructed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where these rules reside is an architectural choice. They can sit in the management system, in the warehouse system, or in a layer dedicated to shipping such as SEND2U<\/strong><\/a>, which reads the order conditions and always applies the same criterion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

API e etichette <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It is the least talked-about part and the one that stops an entire line. Label formats accepted by each carrier, printer fleet, print queues, manifest closing, multiple pickups on the same day, system behaviour when a call goes unanswered. Taken on its own none of these points is complicated; they all become so together, at eleven in the morning, with the truck in the yard. Testing must be done on realistic volumes, because a test on three orders does not tell how the flow holds with a thousand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracking and exception management<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Exceptions grow before volumes do: incomplete addresses, failed attempts, storage holds, returns started early. The cost lies not in the single anomaly but in the minutes customer service spends reconstructing what happened, moving from one portal to another. With a Centralised shipment tracking<\/strong> , and the same data in front of operations and customer care, that time is reduced significantly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Testing, responsibilities and freeze window<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Each area is closed with a test done, a name and a date. It is also necessary to agree on a freeze window, that is the period in which nothing more is released on the webshop, the management system and the shipping flows. The risk, otherwise, is that an apparently harmless update presents the bill on the day of maximum load, when it is hard to trace the cause. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returns and after-sales capacity<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The peak's returns<\/strong><\/a> arrive in January, but the decisions are made now: who receives them, by what criterion the return to shelf is decided, what is done with non-compliant items, what is communicated to the customer. A flow left undefined eats up, in the first month of the year, resources that would be needed for sales. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The operational checklist T-90 \/ T-60 \/ T-30<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The seven areas become a plan when they are attached to dates. Counting backwards from Black Friday, August falls around T-90, the phase in which decisions are made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n