Packaging
Manage product packaging specifications, costs, and supplier associations.
The Packaging section manages your product packaging materials — the boxes, bags, labels, inserts, and other materials used to package your products. This is separate from dispatch packaging (shipping boxes), which is managed under Fulfillment.
PackagingOverview
Packaging items are displayed in a customisable table (100 items per page) with real-time synchronisation. Each packaging item tracks its type, supplier, cost structure, and operational metrics.
Packaging types
Helium supports several predefined packaging categories:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Bag | Poly bags, paper bags, or other bag-style packaging |
| Box | Product boxes, gift boxes, retail packaging |
| Label | Product labels, stickers, barcodes |
| Insert | Instruction cards, marketing inserts, tissue paper |
| Void Fill | Packing peanuts, bubble wrap, crinkle paper |
| Printed Material | Branded sleeves, wraps, or printed packaging |
Adding packaging
Navigate to Packaging
Go to Product → Packaging in the sidebar.
Create new packaging
Click the create button to open the packaging form.
Enter details
Fill in the packaging name, type, description, and supplier. Every packaging item must be linked to a supplier.
Set cost structure
Enter the purchasing details:
- Purchase cost — Total cost for a bulk purchase quantity
- Purchase quantity — Number of units per order
- Purchase increments — Order quantities must be multiples of this value
- Purchase minimum — Minimum quantity the supplier will accept
The system automatically calculates the cost per single unit from these values.
Add operational metrics
Optionally set the processed per hour rate — how many units your team can pack per hour. This helps with labour planning and cost calculations.
Cost calculations
Helium automatically calculates per-unit costs from your bulk purchase pricing:
Cost per unit = Purchase cost ÷ Purchase quantity
This gives you visibility into the true cost of each packaging item, which feeds into overall product cost calculations.
Ordering in bulk
The purchase increments and minimum fields help your team order correctly. If a supplier requires minimum orders of 1,000 units in increments of 500, these constraints are visible when planning purchases.
Custom views
Like other catalogue pages, you can create custom views to show specific columns and filter configurations. This is useful if different team members need to focus on different aspects — for example, a "Cost Review" view showing all pricing fields, or an "Inventory" view focused on stock-related columns.
Packaging vs. dispatch packaging
Important distinction
Product packaging (this section) covers the materials that go around or with the product itself — retail boxes, labels, inserts.
Dispatch packaging (under Fulfillment) covers the shipping materials used to send orders — cartons, mailers, shipping labels. See the Dispatch Packaging article for more.