How to Send a Tracking Number to Customers in WooCommerce (The Right Way)

If you run a WooCommerce store and you have ever gone into an order to add a tracking number, you already know the problem. You open the order page expecting a tracking field, and instead you see something like “No tracking information available at this time.” You add a note in the Order Notes box hoping it reaches the customer, and nothing happens. No email goes out. The customer is left guessing where their package is, and you end up answering the same “where is my order” email five times a day.

I ran into this exact issue while managing a WooCommerce store that ships physical products internationally, and the fix is simpler than most people expect once you understand why WooCommerce works this way in the first place.

Why WooCommerce Doesn’t Do This Out of the Box

WooCommerce is built to be a lean core plugin. Shipment tracking, carrier integration, and tracking emails are not part of that core on purpose, because not every store needs the same shipping workflow. A digital download store doesn’t need tracking numbers at all. A furniture store shipping freight needs something completely different from a small business shipping through USPS or a local courier. So WooCommerce leaves this to plugins, and that is why the built-in “Shipment Tracking” box on the order page sits empty until something activates it.

The Order Notes box works the same way in reverse. It is not broken, it is just not automatically triggering the customer note email unless certain settings are enabled and a compatible workflow is attached to it. Store owners often assume it should “just work” because it used to on an older site setup, but usually that older setup had a plugin quietly doing the job in the background.

The Two Real Ways to Solve This

Option 1: Use a Shipment Tracking Plugin

This is the standard, low-effort solution for most stores. Plugins like WooCommerce Shipment Tracking, Advanced Shipment Tracking, or YITH WooCommerce Advanced Shipment Tracking add a proper tracking box directly on the order edit screen. You type in the carrier, the tracking number, and the ship date, and the plugin takes care of the rest. It formats a tracking link, drops it into the customer’s shipped order email, and keeps a record on the order itself so both you and the customer can see it later.

The setup is usually the same across these plugins:

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Open any order and look for the new tracking box, usually placed below the order items.
3. Select the carrier from the dropdown, or enter a custom one if you use a regional courier.
4. Enter the tracking number and date shipped.
5. Update the order status to “Completed” or “Shipped,” depending on your workflow.
6. The plugin sends the tracking email automatically at that point.

This is worth doing even for a small store, because customers checking a tracking number is one of the biggest reasons for support tickets and “where is my order” emails. Cutting that down saves time on both ends.

Option 2: Use Order Notes as a Manual Workaround

If you are not ready to add another plugin, you can send tracking info through the built-in Customer Note feature, but you need to check one setting first. Go to WooCommerce, then Settings, then Emails, then Customer Note, and make sure “Enable this email notification” is actually checked. This setting gets disabled more often than people realize, especially after a theme change, a plugin conflict, or a site migration, which is likely what happened if this used to work for you before.

Once that email is enabled, adding a note to the customer from the order screen and selecting “Note to customer” will trigger an email containing whatever you typed, tracking number included. It is not as polished as a dedicated plugin, since there is no clickable tracking link or carrier logo, but it works and costs nothing extra.

A Word of Caution on Adding More Plugins

If your store is already carrying a lot of plugins, and especially if you are running a large WooCommerce catalog, it is worth thinking about performance before adding another one. Every extra plugin adds its own database queries, scheduled tasks, and sometimes its own JavaScript and CSS files loading on every page. On a store with thousands of products, this adds up fast and can turn into real server strain over time.

If you decide to go with a tracking plugin, pick one that is actively maintained, lightweight, and does exactly this one job rather than a bloated “all in one shipping suite” that tries to do fifteen things you don’t need. Test it on a staging copy of your site first if you can, and keep an eye on your site’s load time and CPU usage for a few days after activating it.

What’s Coming Natively to WooCommerce

Worth knowing if you want to avoid a third party plugin altogether: WooCommerce itself has been working on native order fulfillment functionality, which is expected to bring proper tracking support directly into WooCommerce core in an upcoming release. It is currently available to test as a beta feature for stores that want to try it early. If this becomes stable, it could eventually remove the need for a dedicated tracking plugin altogether, at least for straightforward use cases. It’s still worth keeping an eye on release notes if you’d rather wait for the native option instead of adding another plugin now.

Quick Recap

• WooCommerce does not send tracking numbers by email natively, this requires a plugin.
• The Order Notes box only sends emails if the Customer Note notification is enabled in WooCommerce email settings.
• A dedicated tracking plugin is the cleanest long-term fix and adds a real tracking box to the order screen.
• Be selective about which plugin you install, since store performance matters just as much as features.
• Native fulfillment and tracking support is in development for WooCommerce itself, so this may get simpler down the road.

If you manage a store with a high order volume, setting this up properly pays for itself quickly in fewer support emails and fewer customers asking where their package is.