Highlight Gift Wrapping on WooCommerce Packing Slips

WooCommerce · Tutorial

If you offer gift wrapping in your WooCommerce store, the hardest part isn’t taking the order — it’s making sure the warehouse actually sees that an item needs wrapping before it ships. In this guide you’ll learn how to clearly highlight gift-wrapped items on your WooCommerce order details and PDF packing slips, with copy-paste code you can use today.

Why gift-wrap flags get missed in fulfillment

Most gift-wrapping setups add a small fee or a line of text to the order, but that information is easy to overlook on a busy packing slip. When a customer pays extra for gift wrapping and receives a bare product, you get a refund request, a bad review, and a lost repeat sale — all over a detail that was technically in the order the whole time.

The fix is to make the gift-wrap status visually impossible to miss on the document your packers actually read: the packing slip. A bold, high-contrast flag next to the wrapped line item does exactly that.

How gift-wrap status is stored on a WooCommerce order

To highlight a wrapped item reliably, you first need the status saved on the order in a form your code can read. When a customer chooses gift wrapping, the choice should be stored as order-item meta on each wrapped line.

For example, the Gift Wrapping for WooCommerce – Cart & Checkout plugin saves two things per wrapped item:

• A human-readable label (e.g. Gift wrapped: Yes) that shows on the order screen and in emails.
• A stable, non-translatable meta key — _cgwfw_wrapped — that your packing-slip code can check.

What the highlighted packing slip looks like

Step 1 — Install a PDF packing-slip plugin

WooCommerce doesn’t generate PDF packing slips on its own. The most popular free option is PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce by WP Overnight. Install and activate it, then enable the packing-slip document under WooCommerce → PDF Invoices → Documents. The snippet below hooks into that plugin.

Step 2 — Add the highlight snippet

Add the following code with the free Code Snippets plugin (set it to “Run everywhere”) or in your child theme’s functions.php. It prints a bold 🎁 GIFT WRAP flag — plus the gift message — under each wrapped item, and it covers both the classic and the newer “Smart/Premium” PDF templates.

/**
 * Highlight gift-wrapped items on the WooCommerce PDF packing slip.
 * Works with "PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce" (WP Overnight).
 */

// Classic PDF templates
add_action( 'wpo_wcpdf_after_item_meta', function ( $document_type, $item, $order ) {
    if ( 'packing-slip' !== $document_type ) {
        return;
    }
    $line = ( isset( $item['item'] ) && is_object( $item['item'] ) )
        ? $item['item']
        : ( isset( $item['item_id'] ) ? $order->get_item( $item['item_id'] ) : null );
    if ( ! $line || ! $line->get_meta( '_cgwfw_wrapped' ) ) {
        return;
    }
    $message = $line->get_meta( '_cgwfw_message' );
    echo '<div style="margin-top:5px;padding:4px 8px;background:#ffe600;'
        . 'color:#000;font-weight:bold;border:2px solid #000;display:inline-block;">'
        . '&#127873; GIFT WRAP' . ( $message ? ' &mdash; ' . esc_html( $message ) : '' )
        . '</div>';
}, 10, 3 );

// Smart / Premium PDF templates
add_action( 'wpo_wcpdf_templates_after_order_details_row', function ( $document, $item_id, $item_columns ) {
    if ( 'packing-slip' !== $document->get_type() ) {
        return;
    }
    $line = $document->order->get_item( $item_id );
    if ( ! $line || ! $line->get_meta( '_cgwfw_wrapped' ) ) {
        return;
    }
    $message = $line->get_meta( '_cgwfw_message' );
    $colspan = max( 1, count( (array) $item_columns ) );
    printf(
        '<tr><td colspan="%d"><span style="display:inline-block;margin:2px 0;'
        . 'padding:4px 8px;background:#ffe600;color:#000;font-weight:bold;'
        . 'border:2px solid #000;">&#127873; GIFT WRAP%s</span></td></tr>',
        $colspan,
        $message ? ' &mdash; ' . esc_html( $message ) : ''
    );
}, 10, 3 );

Step 3 — Test with a new order

Place a test order with gift wrapping enabled on at least one item, then open or regenerate its packing slip. You should see the yellow 🎁 GIFT WRAP flag under each wrapped product. Because the flag reads live order meta, it appears on any order that stored the gift-wrap data — typically every order placed after the plugin was activated.

Highlighting gift wrapping elsewhere

The same stable meta key lets you surface gift wrapping anywhere your team looks:

• Admin order screen & emails: the human-readable label already appears automatically with most gift-wrap plugins.
• Invoices: swap 'packing-slip' for 'invoice' in the snippet to flag wrapped items on invoices too.
• Pick lists / exports: read _cgwfw_wrapped in any custom export or order-management integration.

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