Packing Station for WooCommerce

Documentation | Companion Print App | Developer Hooks

Packing Station for WooCommerce is designed for WooCommerce stores that need to process and pack items in a new order. Staff can see and process orders without having to login to wp-admin. Staff log in through a dedicated Packing Station page and manage incoming WooCommerce orders from a focused screen built for operations like kitchens, packing benches, counters, and fulfilment stations that need to process orders.

The optional Packing Station Print App adds local printing without the need for a Cloud subscription.

Who is Packing Station for?

• Hotel kitchen — incoming room service and restaurant orders placed through an online menu, with the room number and any special requests shown directly on the order card.
• Restaurant or café — a clean order screen for website or QR-code orders, visible to kitchen staff without any wp-admin access.
• Bakery, meal prep, or delivery kitchen — a live production screen for orders that need to be prepared, packed, labelled, or collected.
• Flower shop or florist — pick, pack, and mark online orders complete for delivery or collection, all from a single screen.
• Dark kitchen or delivery operation — a dedicated order processing display that keeps fulfilment staff away from the main admin.
• Local retail or speciality store — a simple order handling screen for teams packing physical WooCommerce orders.
• Any WooCommerce store — a purpose-built fulfilment station for any operation that processes physical orders and wants to keep staff out of wp-admin.

Order Feed

Live auto-refreshing order feed showing compact cards (order number, status, date/time, customer, item summary, and optional total) with a browser chime for new orders. Filters by date range and order status. Each card has View and Complete buttons.

Order Detail Modal

Full-screen modal showing the complete order in labelled sections: core order details, line items, totals, customer, billing/shipping addresses, and additional fields from other plugins.

Configurable Fields

Go to WooCommerce → Packing Station to choose which fields appear in the modal. Three ways to add fields:

1. Built-in fields — 35+ fields across seven groups (Core Order, Line Items, Totals, Customer, Billing, Shipping, Other). Line item name/qty and item price are separate toggles so you can show quantities without prices, or include both.
2. Discovered third-party fields — The plugin scans recent orders for extra meta fields from other plugins (room numbers, table references, custom checkout fields) and lists them with sample values.
3. Custom meta keys — Manually enter any meta_key for fields not yet discovered.

Click Re-scan Orders at any time to refresh discovered fields. Discovery also runs automatically on first activation.

Optional Pages (disabled by default)

• Order Control — Lets staff instantly pause all incoming WooCommerce orders in an emergency. Classic checkout and WooCommerce Cart/Checkout Blocks are blocked site-wide until resumed. Enable only if you want packing station staff to have this capability.
• Stock Control — Searchable, paginated product list with a one-tap in-stock/out-of-stock toggle, without needing wp-admin access.

Enable either page in the Features section at the bottom of WooCommerce → Packing Station.

Print App

The WordPress plugin is fully functional without the companion Print App. The Print App adds local, non-Cloud printing.

When running in a standard browser, staff open the browser login URL shown at the top of WooCommerce → Packing Station. This is your site root URL plus /packing-station-login/. Staff log in with a user assigned the Packing Station role, then they are taken to the Packing Station order feed. The Print buttons are hidden and a download hint is shown in their place. Everything else — the order feed, View modal, Complete button, filters, and all admin settings — works the same in both environments.

When the plugin order feed is opened inside the Packing Station Print app instead of a browser, the plugin automatically detects the printing bridge and enables Print buttons on every order card and inside the Order Detail modal. No plugin configuration, API keys, or pairing is needed.

To enable printing, install the Print App on any Android device with an attached printer: a tablet connected to a desktop or label printer, or a POS device with an integrated thermal printer.

Print a packing list (ideal for retail fulfilment or restaurant room service orders), or print a shipping label to stick on the outside. Works with thermal receipt printers, label printers, and standard desktop printers.

The Print App includes 100 free prints so you can fully test your printing setup before committing to a purchase. The app is free to download from https://ateqa.com; a subscription or print pack is required once the free allowance is used. This print allowance applies only to the optional Android app and does not limit the WordPress plugin.

For a setup guide to the Print App, visit the Packing Station wesbite.

Other Features

• Connection indicator, browser audio chime for new orders (can be disabled from the Features panel), dark mode toggle, custom “Packing Station” user role, login gate, standalone page template, HPOS compatibility.
• Responsive interface — works on desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile browsers.

Developer Extensibility

The plugin includes a comprehensive set of WordPress actions and filters for store developers who need to adapt the Packing Station workflow without forking the plugin. Hooks are available for order feed queries, prepared order data, selectable print fields, the Android print payload, access checks, order status changes, stock status changes, and order control changes.

The print payload hooks are guarded: after custom code runs, the plugin restores the minimum core keys the Android companion app expects where possible.

See the Developer Hooks documentation for the full hook reference and examples.

Pages Created on Activation

• /packing-station-order-feed/ — Order feed
• /packing-station-login/ — Staff login
• /packing-station-store-open-close/ — Order Control (optional, disabled by default)
• /packing-station-stock-control/ — Stock Control (optional, disabled by default)