Shipping Rules for Downloads

[emcdermon]

Jamie:

I was setting up the downloads this morning for purchase for my client at Digital-Preserves.com and ran into a couple of issues regarding the downloads and getting the cart to continue on to payment. This doesn't seem to be covered in documentation for Downloads.

I think this solution will work, but I wanted to run this by you:

1. On setup with the downloads for my client, when I attempted to buy a test download product, the shopping cart initially tried to charge a Real Time Rate failure rate for the shipping charges.

I went in to the control panel and deleted these, but the cart would not allow me to get past the "Select Shipping" when attempting to purchase a download as there was no method to "ship" a "download" file that was being "purchased".

2. I set up a new Courier named "Digital-Preserves.com" in the "Shipping" tab of the Squirrelcart Control Panel, and created a new shipping method called "Download Delivery".

3. Against the Download Delivery method I created a Shipping Rule called "Zero Dollar Shipping Downloads" that states:

Shipping Cost: $0.00 per item
Method: Digital-Preserves.com - Download Delivery
Priority: 2
Rule 1:
Type: Order in Progress

Condition:
Product Quantity is greater than or equal to
1
Product: (clicked on the products being offered as downloads).

When this rule was applied it allowed me to get past the shipping screen to go to the payment (separate issue that you've already addressed) to pay for the downloads and it correctly showed "$0.00" collected for shipping, and did this correctly whether I wanted to buy one or multiple download files.

4. We're offering a bundled pack of files that are available for purchase in the Squirrelcart in a box with 3 DVDs. This is a physical item, and I've set up a USPS Shipping Rule for this product which works in this manner:

Shipping Cost: $8.95 per Order
Method: US Postal Service - Priority Mail
Priority: 4
Rule 1:
Type: Order in Progress

Condition 1:
Product Quantity is greater than or equal to
1
Product: (clicked on the products being offered as packs).

Rule 2:
Type: Order in Progress
Condition 1:
Field: Ship state or province is one of the following:
Value: (clicked on the list of 50 US states + Washington, DC but NOT Canadian provinces)

This rule seems to work okay in the presence of the downloads and will collect a shipping charge of $8.95 for the first pack of DVDs and does not increase the price of shipping if they order downloads in conjunction with the pack of DVDs.

Question: Is the above the correct way to handle the issue of shipping calculations for downloads using the Download Module?

Should an example of this sort be placed in the documentation for the Squirrelcart Downloads Module, or at least a reference to this issue for Downloads and a specific example in the Shipping Rules documentation?

I'd almost suggest putting a downloads shipping courier in the Squirrelcart as one of the standard couriers and with a standard shipping method or two predefined just for downloads.

Thanks in advance,

Ernest McDermon
Snellville, GA

[Jamie]

Question: Is the above the correct way to handle the issue of shipping calculations for downloads using the Download Module?

Technically there isn't one correct way to handle it, and what you've done sounds like it works OK. What I would recommend is setting the weight of your downloadable items to 0, and just checking the weight total on the order as a whole to determine whether to charge for shipping. If the weight is 0, charge 0. If it's not, then use higher (larger) priority rules to control the shipping costs.

Should an example of this sort be placed in the documentation for the Squirrelcart Downloads Module, or at least a reference to this issue for Downloads and a specific example in the Shipping Rules documentation?

I'd almost suggest putting a downloads shipping courier in the Squirrelcart as one of the standard couriers and with a standard shipping method or two predefined just for downloads.

Both of these are good ideas. I'll work on adding them.

[emcdermon]

Hi Jamie!

Thanks for the excellent suggestion about the shipping weight and setting it to "0". That's an GREAT way to do this and ensure that money is collected for shipping if the weight goes above 0.

I've already got the weight for the downloads set at zero, so this will another way to accomplish what I'm trying to do.

I've also found that with the downloads, we're better off setting the storewide "Handling Charge" in the Store Settings area to "$0.00" and then adding a nominal handling charge on each product in the catalog that will actually be shipped physically.

For Digital-Preserves.com I've added $1.95 handling charge for each of the product packs which will cover the box etc. for the DVD packs, but it doesn't add on to the downloads.

There's a lot of flexibility in the "Rules" area of Squirrelcart, probably one of it's strongest (and least understood) features.

Ernest McDermon
Snellville, GA

[Jamie]

Your welcome. Glad it worked for you. We like the rule set feature also, and plan to add support for using rules to control lots of other aspects of the store.

[adwh.com]

Your welcome. Glad it worked for you. We like the rule set feature also, and plan to add support for using rules to control lots of other aspects of the store.

A modification of this worked for me. Thanks so much for posting it.