Shipping price/weight b4 I do something stupid!!

[mike_howles]

If you take a look at the image I've attached you can see that we have a food variety called Chicken and Rice. This comes in 3 weights.

Now, I'm setting up shipping and for BFPO we need to go by weight, everything else goes by value.

As the different weights are a choice would I be correct in saying that I need to set up hidden products that just contain the weight and associate the Chicken and Rice to that weight 'choice' using the permutations tab?

Next snag is that all other shipping (UK Mainland, Highlands & Islands) are shipped on value.

Is it possible to combine shipping cost of 'by weight' and 'by value' depending on the shipping zone?

The help documentation describes both methods but not a combination.
The Quick Start guide....well enough said there.
Been through the community and cannot find a post concerning 'shipping combination' and only found this:

"You can either ship by one method or the other - alas not a combination. This is a common request / bugbear with Actinic which hopefully will be resolved in v8 (gentle nudge to the mods)"

has it been included in V8? as I'm a bit stuck if it ain't.

Mike

[leehack]

Shipping is due for a overhaul, from what i have read it hasn't been touched as of yet. Its either by value or weight, not a mixture. Can you convert to weight or this a no goer?

Its sometimes a little hard to get your head round the shipping, however there are very few occasions where i havn't been able to come up with a working by weight solution.

[mike_howles]

Lee

Yes, I think I've just found that out, there is very little in any of the user guides considering shipping in general is quite complicated.

I can sort out the problem of shipping by price and that works ok.

It's the BFPO thing thats a pain as it's always charged to us by weight, up to 14kg, 14-30kg and over 30kg is just not allowed. This is the key, to stop people ordering BFPO over 30kg.

If I need to convert everything to weight it would be a real pain, unless, like I say I can associate a choice to a hidden 'weight' product. If this can be done then I could do the whole thing by weight which would be better as far as I can see as our courier charges by weight and we give free carriage over 15 kg for dog food and free over 7.5 kg for cat food (that would be a cludge as i would need to associate a 7.5kg cat with 15kg!!). In fact, by weight would be far better so is it the case that I can associate each 'weight choice' to a weight product in the permutations tab. I'm only asking as I really don't want to go through this whole conversion process only to find it doesn't work.

Also it would mean all items would be added to the order by weight especially as most items are sold by weight.

I'm plodding along......but it is working (sort of)

Mike

[leehack]

Mike could you create a BFPO shipping class to separate these from the usuals. I presume BFPO is the British Forces here and not an acronym i haven't heard of?

Changing to weight in my experience is something that sounds a lot of work, however often quite quick. I think this is misunderstood as the default weight setting is not taken into consideration. You define a default weight for all of your products which will fall into the most common weight bracket and then only assign weights to products that differ from this.

For example if i have 100 products, of which 90 of them are 0.1kg and then the other 10 are varying different weights, then i only have to inout weights into the 10 products, the other 90 can use the default setting.

If you set a scenario that you think will be problematic, i will take a look and come up with a solution for you. Bear in mind that i do not know your business or products though, so it needs to be clear. I'm 99% sure this will work for you.

[mike_howles]

Lee

This whole thing is becoming clearer (and could help others)

BFPO, is, yes British Forces Post Office and they charge us by weight of shipment.

Our product range is not very big:

Dog food:
A number of varieties in (up to) 3 weights 15kg, 7.5kg and 2kg.
Some are only available as 15kg, some in 7.5kg and 2kg

We also have treats and other small items ranging from 500g down to 10g

We do have some non-food items that I would have to weigh but that is no problem.

personally I would prefer to go the 'by weight' route but only if I can associate choices with a weight.

Now, there's something that could go in the wishlist: Could you specify weight by choice rather than by product?

Mike

[wjcampbe]

You can specify a weight on the base product that the choice associates to. Does this help you?

[mike_howles]

William

For the majority of what we sell, for example Chicken & Brown Rice the 'product' is Chicken & Brown Rice, which is available in three bag sizes 15kg, 7.5kg and 2kg. Under the Product I have a component to allow a size attribute which has within it the three choices.

So:

Product (Chicken & Brown Rice)
-------Component (Size selection)
---------------Attribute (Size)
---------------------Choice (15kg,7.5kg,2kg)

Price permutations are set on the selection component which is where, if possible I could associate each choice to a hidden product containing each weight we use.

Mike

[RouX]

Same Weight Issue

Hi Mike,
I am having the same problem in that I have sevral products and within each product are the choices 1Ltr, 5Ltr or 25Ltr. I want a weight assigned to each choice so that the shipping will be calculated accordingly.
Obviously I can't use a default weight against the product as the difference in price between 1Ltr and 25Ltr (or 250Ltr in some cases) is huge.

Did you ever get a resolution to this problem as I don't want to have to enter 3 or 4 products for everything we sell when it should be a simple choice selection.

[wjcampbe]

Rona,

You need to do the same as Mike.

Create three products - in your case 1. Product in 1Ltr pack - add a weight, leave the price at 0.00, if required - enable stock control and add stock levels, 2. Product in 5Ltr pack - add a weight, price at the difference between a 1 Ltr and a 5 Ltr, if required - enable stock control and add stock levels, 3 Product in 25Ltr pack - add a weight, price at the difference between a 1 Ltr and a 25 Ltr pack, if required - enable stock control and add stock levels. Hide these three products on the website.
Now create a 4th Product - full description etc and give the price of the 1 Ltr pack, Add three components. Associate the first component with the hidden 1 Ltr product, the second with the hidden 5 Ltr product, the third with the hidden 25 Ltr product. Set the main product pricing to sum of product and components.

That is how it's done - there is no shortcut.

[mike_howles]

William

Your are a star!!!

As it happens we have decided to price our shipping by price rather than by product weight but, non-the less I will be printing your instructions and putting them in my file.

Thanks again

Mike