Shipping explanation

[Jamie]

Below is a description of the three options below the "Shipping" menu in the administration page of Squirrelcart:

1. Shipping Couriers - this is a table that basically just lists the couriers. If all of a sudden your store starting using a new courier, like "Bob's Delivery", this is where you would add the name of the courier, and check "enable" to indicate that you are currently using the courier.

2. Shipping Methods - this table is just a list of the different methods of shipment the couriers offer. If you know that "Bob's Delivery" service offers both "Overnight" and "Super Express" delivery methods, you would enter them here. Just because you enter methods here, it does not necessarily mean that these methods will automatically offered. Again, this is just to keep track of the name of the method itself.

3. Shipping Rules - this is what determines what shipping will be applied (or offered) to the customer. There are quite a few choices for applying rules. You can apply a certain rule based on total number of products, total weight of order, total price of order, Country shipping to, State shipping to, and Privelage Level (priv. level doesn't work at the moment. My attentions are to setup groups in the cart, and allow the store owner to put customers in groups. That way, if you do a lot of business with your next door neighbor, you could set a rule that would not charge him shipping, because he is going to pick up the order at your house, etc...)

So once you figure out when you want the rule to apply, you have to enter the Shipping Cost, which can be entered in a dollar amount, or percentage. If you follow the number with a %, the cart automatically treats it as a percent. If you don't, than it just treats it as a dollar amount.

The next 2 fields are "Apply to Shipping Type" and "Apply to Shipping Method". I will be modifying these 2 fields soon to work a little better. The intention here is that you are setting a rule for a particular type of shipping. For example, USPS Priority Mail is $3.50 for a small package. As the weight gets larger, the price goes up. You could program in certain rules based on your needs, and try and match them to whatever shipping method you are using. You need to set the Shipping type, and shipping method, but I will change this so they appear as one - example: Instead of 2 fields, you would have one that says:

Apply to shipping method: USPS Priority Mail
USPS First Class Mail
FedEx Overnight
Etc....

Now comes the interesting part - the "Priority" field. It's basically a tie breaker. This comes in to play when you have 2 or more rules, and all of them apply for an order, as in this example:

Rule 1:

• Apply when: Weight total is...
  Operator: Less Than
  Value: 1 (lbs - you don't need to enter lbs, just the number)
  Shipping cost: $3.50
  Apply to shipping type: USPS
  Apply to shipping method: Priority Mail
  Priority: 1

Rule 2:

• Apply when: Weight total is...
  Operator: Less Than
  Value: 1 (lbs - you don't need to enter lbs, just the number)
  Shipping cost: $1.50
  Apply to shipping type: USPS
  Apply to shipping method: First Class Mail
  Priority: 1

Now say the order for this example is 1/2 of a pound. If you read these rules, both of them apply. So, if the priorities are the same, the customer gets to choose the shipping method, and is shown the price along with it. Now, say you have a free shipping policy on orders over $100. And you have a rule for that as well, and someone orders a rare postage stamp that costs $150. Then in this case, the first two rules for weight would apply (because stamps are light!), as well as your free shipping rule. So the only way you could force the free shipping rule(which you would probably want to do) is to give it a higher priority. So you would make its priority 2.

One thing that may be confusing is if you have a Courier set to disabled, it still shows up in the rules for the field "Apply To Shipping Type". If you set this field to a courier that is disabled, it is still a rule, but will not work unless you enable the courier itself.

Each individual rule can also be disabled if you need to.

This may sound complicated, but I wanted very customizable shipping. Shipping is a complicated thing, and I think it is not given enough attention in a lot of shopping cart software. I spent a lot of time on the shipping functionality, because I actually offered free shipping once on another business (before I designed the cart). The shipping was free for orders over a certain dollar amount. This worked great until we got an order from Greece! I then looked into finding a cart that would handle all kinds of shipping scenarios, and couldn't find one. That's one of the main reasons why I started this one!

[lulu61]

Jamie,
My client wants 3 types of shipping set up, UPS Ground, UPS 2nd Day, & UPS Next Day. These three are to be available for US & Canada. Each of the 6 choices have a different price for a 1-2 item order. He wants a per item up-charge for each type of shipping. I can set each rule for a certain # of items, but what if someone wants to order 99 items? Is there an easier way to do this without having to type new rules for days?

[Jamie]

Hi,

Unfortunately, even the current rules would not work, no matter how many you added. There is no way to set them up to make 2 decisions via 1 rule. Many people have asked for this, and it will be added in the future. We have a post about it in the Requests section of the forums.

Thanks,
Jamie

[misterfogg]

i still don't understand that why i keep asking

[Jamie]

I'll see if I can explain this a different way. First, to confirm...you understand everything about shipping rules EXCEPT for the priority field, correct?

[misterfogg]

Right, I have 6 rules and they are all ups ground,

[Jamie]

The cart offers rates for every rule that applies to the order for all rules that have the largest priority number. The priority field is a tie breaker used to give precedence to some rules over others.

You mentioned you have 6 UPS Ground rules. If you set them up so that logically no more than 1 of the rules would ever apply, then you can set them all to the same priority (because you will never get more than 1 that apply, their is no need to determine which one should take precedence).

Here is a scenario for you.

Let's assume a store wants to offer UPS Ground and Overnight only. That's 2 different shipping methods. So, let's suppose you created 2 rules for this.

Rule #1 - offer UPS Ground at 4.50 for all orders where number of items is greater than or equal to 1 (priority set to 1)
Rule #2 - offer UPS Overnight at 10.50 for all orders where number of items is greater than 1 (priority set to 1)

OK...someone now orders 3 items. Both of those rules apply to the order, so the customer get's the following shipping choices:
UPS Ground - $4.50
UPS Overnight - $10.50

Now, the merchant decides to offer a deal on shipping for customers that spend a lot of money (over $100.00). The merchant then goes and adds a new rule to offer free UPS Ground shipping on orders over $100.00, and uses the same priority of 1. In this example, the rule is #3. They also decide they want to offer the same type of deal for UPS Overnight, BUT they want to charge them say 3.50 instead of the regular 10.50 charge. So, they create Rule #4, to offer UPS Overnight at $3.50 for orders over $100.00, again with a priority of 1.

Now, a customer comes along, and adds $150.00 worth of items to the cart. With the 4 rules specified above, they all match the specified criteria....SO...they get these choices:
UPS Ground - $0.00
UPS Ground - $4.50
UPS Overnight - $3.50
UPS Overnight - $10.50

Now, that doesn't make any sense, because you wouldn't want to offer the same service twice with 2 different prices. To remove the extra Ground and Overnight rates in this case, you need to change the priorities of the rules, so the free rates takes precedence. So, if you prefer to give precedence to the discounted rates, you need to set Rule #3 and Rule #4 to a larger priority number than Rule #1 and Rule #2. All rules have a priority of 1. So, 2 is larger than one. The merchant therefore sets the priority of Rules #3 and #4 to 2. Now, when the customer spends over $100, they get these choices:
UPS Ground - $0.00
UPS Overnight - $3.50

When they spend less than $100, they get these choices:
UPS Ground - $4.50
UPS Overnight - $10.50

[misterfogg]

its kind of working but the 2nd day and overnight prices are not being added to the ups ground like I want it to

[Jamie]

Please open a ticket, and we will look at your rules.

[misterfogg]

i can't open a ticket I don't have any support left

[Jamie]

Post as much info as you can about all the rules you've created and we can probably make sense of what you are seeing. Be sure to include the Apply When, Operator, and Priority fields.

[misterfogg]

can i just e-mail you my username and password so you can look at it?

[Jamie]

I'm sorry, but we can't do that. We can either help you here or in the helpdesk.

[misterfogg]

ok i wioll post my rules

[misterfogg]

I have 5 rules, they are order total is less than or equal to $30.00. $8.95 per order ups ground. Prority one

2nd rule order total is greater than or equal to $30.00 $11.95 per order ups ground. priority one

3rd rule order total is greater than or equal to $50.00 $15.95 per order ups ground. priority one

4th rule order total is greater than or equal to $75.00 $20.95 per order ups ground. priority one

5th rule order total is greater than or equal to $150.00 $24.95 per order ups ground priority one

other rules are 2nd day air order total is greater than one $18.95 ups 2nd day priority one

other rule are ups overnight order total is greater than or equal to 1 $24.95 ups next day priority one

I hope you understand this. I want what ever thier total is to come up and then have something they can check to add ups next day or overnight that is added to the ups ground total. These are addiotional charges. To me it is very hard to get this set up.