Weekly shipping spend and carrier performance review in Slack

Every Monday at 8am, review my shipping spend and carrier performance for the last seven days and have the summary waiting for me in Slack.

Pull my labels from Shippo using List Transactions (Labels). I need the last seven days and also the seven days before that, so you can compare week over week. Page through the results and keep following the next link until it comes back null instead of stopping at the first page, because a busy week runs well past one page and the page size caps at 100. Only count labels that were purchased successfully, and leave out test labels.

The list response does not always carry everything needed. Where the carrier, service level, or amount charged is missing or ambiguous for a label, call Retrieve Transaction (Label) on that specific label to fill in the gaps rather than guessing.

Group the spend by carrier and by service level. For the week overall and for each group, work out total spend, label count, and average cost per label. Do the same for the prior seven days and calculate the change between the two weeks, both as an absolute amount and as a percentage.

Then write a short narrative that says what actually changed, rather than dumping the numbers back at me. The things worth calling out are a carrier that got more expensive week over week, a service mix drifting toward pricier express options, and unusual one off high cost labels that dragged the average up. If nothing meaningful moved, say so plainly in a single line instead of padding the summary.

Post the result to Slack with Send a Message. Keep it to a handful of bullets. Lead with total spend, label count, and average cost per label alongside the change against the prior week, then the narrative points. Always finish with the three most expensive labels of the week, each with its tracking number and carrier.

Also append one row per carrier per week to a Google Sheets tab using Append Values, so a spend trend builds up over time. Each row should carry the week start date, the carrier, total spend, label count, and average cost per label. Only ever append, never overwrite earlier weeks, because the accumulated history is the whole point of the sheet.