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Designing Shelf Labels

A shelf label template sets what prints on every tag—price, size, barcode, wine-specific fields like vintage—so fixing it once fixes every label, instead of tag-by-tag. This guide covers designing templates by hand or with AI.

Written by Help

Designing Shelf Labels

How Shelf Label Templates Work

Access requirements. Gated like Settings, even though it currently still sits under Stock management in the nav (a move that's planned but hasn't happened yet) — view access to Settings to see templates, edit access to create, change, duplicate, delete, or set a default one.

  • What actually prints is controlled entirely by the code you type, not a set of checkboxes. There's no field-by-field toggle for a hand-built template — you control what shows up by which placeholder tokens you include in the label's raw ZPL code.

  • "Create from Picture" is an AI-assisted alternative, not a replacement. It reads a photo of an existing label, guesses which fields are on it, and builds working code for you to review and adjust — and it's only available if your account has it turned on.

  • A failed preview won't tell you why. It just says the preview failed — there's no detail on whether it was bad code, mismatched dimensions, or the preview service itself being unavailable.

  • Nothing checks that a template's size matches what's actually loaded in your printer. Back Office has no idea what size labels are physically in the printer — a mismatched template just prints wrong, with no warning before or after.

  • Editing a template changes every future print of it — even jobs already marked printed. There's no locked snapshot of what a batch looked like when it printed; printing again always uses the template's current version.

  • Editing a product's description can queue its labels for reprint. If at least one of your templates prints the description, changing a product's description adds that product's labels to the print queue. If none of your templates use it, nothing is queued.

  • Deleting your default template doesn't replace it with anything. If the one you delete happens to be your default, nothing is automatically promoted to take its place.

Where to Access Each Feature

To…

Go to

See, create, or edit templates

Stock management → Shelf label templates

Build a template from a photo of an existing label

Shelf label templates → "Create from Picture"

Print labels using a template

Stock management → Shelf label print queue

Building a Template by Hand

Step 1

Click on "Stock management" in the left-menu bar, then click on "Shelf label templates."

Step 2

Click "+ New template."

Step 3

Enter a "Name," and set the label's size in inches under "Label size (inches)" — "Width" and "Height."

Step 4

Under "ZPL code" — the printing language your label printer understands — write or paste the label's raw code. Expand "Available placeholders" for the full list of fields you can include — only the ones you actually reference in the code show up on the printed label; there's no separate switch for any of them. The list is grouped by type: under "Product identity," "Description" prints the product's description text, which is shared by every size of that product.

Step 5

Click "Update preview" to see how it renders.

Step 6

Save.

Building a Template with AI Assistance

Only available if this feature is turned on for your account.

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Step 7

From "Shelf label templates," click "Create from Picture."

Step 8

Enter a template name and its size, then upload a clear photo of an existing physical shelf label — not a photo of the whole shelf.

Step 9

Review the fields it detected. Colored boxes over your photo show what it found — green means high confidence, amber means medium; anything it wasn't confident about isn't shown at all. Click a box to correct what field it represents, drag a new one in for anything it missed, or click "Re-crop label" if the boundary around the label itself is off.
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Step 10

Click "Approve fields and continue."

Step 11

Once it's built a design, compare it side by side with your photo. Type into "Request changes" and click "Send feedback" for anything you want adjusted — it makes the smallest edit it can rather than starting over each time.

Step 12

Optionally click "Test print" to send an actual test label to a paired Zebra printer, using either sample data or a real product from your store.

Step 13

Click "Approve design" once it looks right. This saves it as a real template you can use right away.

Troubleshooting

  • The preview fails to render, with no other detail given: try "Update preview" again — the error doesn't distinguish bad code, wrong dimensions, or the preview service being down, so there's nothing more specific to go on from here.

  • A label printed the wrong size, or content ran off the edge: check that the template's Width and Height actually match the labels physically loaded in your printer — Back Office can't detect or warn about a mismatch, it just prints whatever the template says.

  • You edited a template and older print jobs changed too: expected — there's no locked copy of what a batch looked like when it printed; printing again always uses whatever the template currently says, even for jobs already marked printed.

  • Your default template disappeared from the print queue: it was probably deleted — removing a template that happens to be the default doesn't promote a replacement, so you'll need to set a new one yourself.

  • "Create from Picture" isn't available: that feature isn't turned on for every account — reach out to support if you'd like it enabled.

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