Packaging quantity report (Lucid / ZSVR)

Packaging Volume Report – your LUCID filing in 2 minutes instead of 2 days

Every year, the same question: How much cardboard, film and tape did you actually ship? Most shop owners guess. Guess too high and you overpay on licensing fees. Guess too low and you risk fines of up to €200,000 and cease-and-desist letters from competitors.

Not anymore. Enter the packaging for each product once. The Packaging Volume Report does the rest from your real orders: per month, per country, broken down into all 8 material types required by LUCID and your dual system (German packaging compliance scheme).

Tell us how much plastic and paper your product needs for shipping, and we'll tell you how much paper you sent to consumers in France last year :-)

What you get

• ✅ All mandatory material types: glass, paper/paperboard/cardboard, ferrous metals, aluminium, beverage cartons, composites, plastics, other materials
• ✅ Shipping boxes counted correctly: once per parcel, not once per item
• ✅ Branded goods handled correctly: If the manufacturer has already licensed the product packaging in Germany, it's excluded from your LUCID figures. For shipments abroad it's still reported, because there you are usually the one responsible.
• ✅ Split by country: Germany for LUCID, plus Austria, France & co. for their own requirements
• ✅ Self-pickup handled correctly: no shipping packaging, but the product packaging still counts
• ✅ Early warning: a pre-warning when 80 % of your licensed planned volume is reached (adjustable), and a warning once it's exceeded. Each warning is sent only once per year and material, no flood of emails.
• ✅ Declaration of Completeness at a glance: The report shows how close you are to the legal thresholds for the Declaration of Completeness (Vollständigkeitserklärung). If you need an auditor, you'll know in good time before the 15 May deadline.
• ✅ Hide B2B: Customer groups that don't deliver to end consumers can be excluded.
• ✅ Fast data entry: table view with search, apply values to entire categories or manufacturers at once, CSV import
• ✅ Audit-proof: Values are saved at the time of shipping. Later changes to the packaging data never change past reports.
• ✅ CSV export for Excel: opens directly in Excel. Take the figures, enter them with your dual system and in LUCID, done.

Who is it for? Every online retailer shipping to consumers in Germany. That's practically every shop, because shipping packaging always requires licensing.

What the plugin does not do

• It doesn't report anything automatically. You transfer the figures to your dual system and to LUCID yourself.
• It only knows orders from your shop. Marketplace orders are included if they are imported into the shop (e.g. via magnalister). Sales in a physical store or via marketplaces that aren't imported into the shop must be reported in addition.
• It is not legal advice. Checking, registration, licensing and reporting remain your responsibility.

Requirements

• modified eCommerce 3.x
• A cron job that runs the capture script every 15 minutes (from the command line, or via URL with a key)

Optional at a fixed price: configuration service (no data entry)

We create profiles for you (mailer bag, small box, large box etc.) that you can assign to your products.

Optional on request: data entry

If you like, we can enter the data for you according to your specifications. We may even be a bit faster than you, because we can work directly in the database. We're happy to send you a quote. For that we need access to your shop admin and your detailed specifications.

How it works

The plugin calculates your packaging volumes from the orders you have actually shipped. The reporting itself is up to you.

The packaging weight of an order always consists of two parts that are added together:

• Product packaging: the packaging around each individual product, times the quantity
• Shipping packaging: box, filler and tape for the whole parcel, once per order

You'll find all menu items in the admin under Tools › Packaging Volume Report.

1. Product packaging

Menu "Packaging Data Products". For each product, enter how much its own packaging (folding box, bag, blister etc.) weighs per material, in kg, for one piece. If a customer orders 3 pieces, the plugin multiplies by 3 automatically. You can use a comma or a dot as decimal separator (0,25 or 0.25).

• An empty field means "not maintained yet", 0 means "deliberately no packaging". The indicator "X % of sold items have packaging data" shows you what's still missing.
• Tip: Filter by category or manufacturer and give all matching products the same values in one go. For large catalogues, CSV is fastest: export, fill in with Excel, import again.

Example: A product's packaging is entered as 0.2 kg paper and 0.05 kg plastic. A customer orders 4 pieces. The report counts 0.8 kg paper and 0.2 kg plastic for this line, plus the shipping packaging.

2. Checkbox "Licensed" (by the manufacturer)

If the manufacturer already licenses the packaging of their product in Germany, tick "Licensed" for that product. The product packaging then counts as 0 kg for shipments to Germany, so you don't report it twice.

If the same product is shipped abroad (e.g. Austria, France), the product packaging counts in full, because the manufacturer's licence only covers Germany. The shipping packaging always counts; the checkbox only affects the product packaging.

3. Shipping packaging

Menu "Packaging Profiles". This is where you define what is added per parcel. It is counted once per order, no matter how many items are inside. After all, you usually don't pack every item in its own box.

• Default values: a weight per material for "box", "filler" and "tape". They apply to every order.
• Own values per shipping method (optional): You can store different values for a specific shipping method, e.g. lighter packaging for a letter-based service.
• Packaging profiles (optional): Create named profiles (e.g. "Mailer bag C4", "Large box") and assign them to products. If an order contains at least one item with a profile, the profile replaces the default box. Filler and tape from the default values are always added on top.
• Filler per additional item: A profile can have a surcharge for each additional item in the parcel. The first item is included in the profile; from the second item on, the surcharge is added per item.
• Several profiles in one order: Only the heavier profile counts, once. Profiles are never added up.

Example (see screenshot):

• Default values: box 0.25 kg paper, filler 0.04 kg paper, tape 0.003 kg plastic. All products without a profile use these values. If you only ship one kind of parcel, you're already done here.
• A larger product has the profile "Shipping box L (double wall)": 0.65 kg paper for the box and 0.04 kg plastic filler per additional item.

A customer buys 3 pieces of this product:

Plus the product packaging from item 1, times 3.

4. Packaging per variant (optional)

Menu "Packaging per Attribute (+/-)". If a variant value needs more or less packaging than the product's base value (e.g. size "XL" needs a bigger bag than "M"), enter the difference here. It is added to the product packaging and can also be negative.

The value applies to all products with this variant value, so "XL" counts the same for a T-shirt as for a jacket.

5. Self-pickup

In the menu "Packaging Profiles", mark your pickup shipping method as "Self-pickup (no shipment)". For these orders:

• The product packaging still counts, because it still ends up with the customer.
• Packaging profiles and the shipping box are dropped. If you hand over e.g. a carrier bag at pickup, you can store it as that shipping method's own value. If you bought the bags pre-licensed, leave this empty.
• The country is your shop's country, even if the customer lives abroad.

6. Excluding customer groups (B2B)

In the module settings you can list customer groups whose orders don't require licensing, e.g. resellers who sell the goods on. These groups are not counted for planned volumes, the Declaration of Completeness and warning emails, and are hidden in the report table by default.

Note: Deliveries to business customers can still require licensing if the packaging ends up there the same way as with private consumers, e.g. in restaurants, craft businesses, medical practices or offices. Only exclude groups where this is not the case.

7. Which orders are counted

• Counted order statuses: In the module settings you define which statuses count as "shipped", e.g. "Shipped".
• Month: An order counts in the month in which it first received one of these statuses. On installation, older shipped orders are captured as well, each in the correct month and with your current packaging data.
• Cancellations: Orders that move to a cancellation status are removed again.
• Returns: They still count, because the packaging was shipped.

8. Capture and correction (cron job)

A background process (cron job) checks every 15 minutes whether new orders have been shipped and permanently stores the packaging weight of each order. If you change a product's packaging data afterwards, orders that were already captured do not change. Only new orders use the new values.

If you need to correct an order that was already captured, open it in the menu "Packaging Order Override" and adjust the values manually. A button in the order details takes you straight there.

9. Report

Menu "Report". Select the year at the top. Below are two separate sections:

• Notices: how close you are to the thresholds for the Declaration of Completeness (glass 80,000 kg, paper/paperboard/cardboard 50,000 kg, ferrous + aluminium + plastics + beverage cartons + composites combined 30,000 kg) and whether you're within your planned volumes. These notices always count all orders to Germany, excluding the B2B groups you've excluded.
• Table month × country × material with its own filters (order source, order status, customer group) and CSV export. The filters only apply to the table and the export, not to the notices.

10. Planned volumes and warning email (optional)

In the module settings, enter the planned volumes you have licensed with your dual system (per material, in kg), the year they apply to, and one or more email addresses.

• Pre-warning when a material reaches an adjustable percentage of the planned volume (default 80 %)
• Warning when the planned volume is exceeded

Each email is sent only once per material and year to each address. In January, the report reminds you to enter the planned volumes for the new year. Until then, there are no planned-volume warnings.

Note: The plugin calculates quantities based on your input and does not constitute legal advice. Checking, registration, licensing and reporting remain your responsibility.