Volumetric Shipping

[StickyWeb]

Whats the best way to deal with volumetric shipping?

My client ships in the UK and Worldwide. The UK does not charge volumetric shipping. (yet). The rest of the world does.

I need 2 calculations, one for the UK (Weight) and one for World (Volume, or I can convert and add as weight).

I have tried adding another attribute VOLUME. users can select a country and see the price. ie Canada £20 or Australia £40. The problem is that people can select UK (No premium) and still ask for the goods to be sent to Australia. So they don't pay the £40. The shipping cart does not pick this up.

This is a major issue with the changes in post and shipping. How do we Actinic users best deal with this? any ideas most welcome.

Rich.

[Nadeem]

Hi Richard,

Presently Actinic cannot do volumetric shipping, and i have not see any clients who have successfully implemented this in their store by any means. If there are some users who have achieved this, please feel free to comment to this thread.

I will add this thread onto the wishlist.

Kind Regards

[NVL]

Volumetric shipping has been standard in the UK for decades, however Royal Mail do not charge this to personal clients over the counter... which is where you may be confused.

Normal calculations are 333Kg per cubic M...

As Actinic can't cope with this simple calculation i.e. add a field to the product data where we could add actual and volume weight (dims), you must look at each product and protect yourself from revenue losses by entering the volume weight should it be greater than the actual weight. Where a client purchaces multiple items this can create an overcharge for shipping should one item be dense and the other volumetric, however you must weigh up your options and decide your direction... risk losing a bit on shipping for multiple product order or protect your revenues however small each exposure could be.

Example : Say you ship five pillows and one box of bricks, the pillows have an actual weight of 1.5kg and volume weight of 3.5kg = total 7.5kg actual and 17.5kg volume (chargeable weight) however the client now adds the bricks to their order which are actual 10kg and 3kg volumetric; the total shipping becomes 17.5Kg actual and 20.5kg volumetric (chargeable) so although the bricks weight a further 10kg the client is only charged for another 3kg due the density of the bricks 'eating up' the volume of the pillows.

In Actinic if you had used your actual weights in the product record the charge would have been based upon 17.5Kg, but consider this... the client adds only volumetric products (eg the pillows) so under your shipping price model you would charge 7.5Kg x your rate but your carrier will want to charge you the volume weight of 17.5kg, you lose 10kg x their rate to you.

The best and unfortunatly time consuming solution is to check every product and then enter which ever is the greater weight, volume or actual which at least protects you and the customer is unlikely to check the weight.

Calc : L x B x H (cms) divided by 3000

I would state that we added this to the so called wish list in 2003

[StickyWeb]

Thanks for that useful info. I was under the impression (My client told me) that the postal service they use (Parcelforce) don't charge volumetric weights in the UK, only overseas. If you are saying that they do charge for the UK too, it makes life a little easier. (I think )

I can ask the client to give me a value for each product as you suggest, either actual weight or volume weight and use this to calculate shipping for all destinations.

The figure I have for calculating volumetric weight is L x W x H (cm) divided by 6000, not the 3000 you suggest, or am I looking at the wrong fomula?

What I have suggested to the client is that they have 5 standard size boxes, small to large. We can then calculate the volume of each box and decide if the product is heavy it will be given a weight value, if it is light, we see which size box fits and use the volumetric value for this one.

I can't double check if the UK charge volumetric too as their site is down.

Thanks again for you help, much appreciated.

Rich.

[StickyWeb]

I have now spoken with Parcel Force and they assure me that shipments in the UK are only charged be weight, not volumetric. Volumetric is only used for overseas.

So, back to square one. I still appear to need two methods to calculate shipping. One for the cost to ship to the UK and one to ship overseas. If the item is large and bulky, the volumetric shipping cost will be high compared to weight cost.

ie if a custmer orders pillows, the volumetric cost will be say, 10kg or £50. thats fine for overseas, but if the same products are ordered in the UK, people can't be expected to pay £50 when they should only be paying for weight which would be a lot less.

How do Actinic users get around this problem? At the moment my client is unable to ship overseas using actinic.

Any ideas please.

[wjcampbe]

I too, am familiar with L x W x H / 6000 as used for calculating airfreight volumetric weight, or simple L x W x H (cms) / 1000 for seafreight volumetric weight, but have never come across the / 3000 option - is this just for UK Inland mail?

[StickyWeb]

I think the 6000 is the correct option looking around.

What I appear to need from Actinic is the option of two weights for each product. One the UK weight and the other the Overseas weight (Volumetric).

When the destination is selected, the shipping cost is calulated on the weight for the intended destination.

Can this be done, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

[NVL]

Aye 6000 it be for my sticky fingers hit the wrong key...

ParcelForce : they do charge volume if you are an account customer, non-account customers in the UK don't get charged volume however our account manager assures us that the sales team will target you after a while... and open you an account. (swines)

PS - There is a ParcelForce import file in Actinic for your non-UK rates.

[StickyWeb]

The old sticky fingers eh!

Thanks, my client does have an account and they don't get charged volumetric in the UK, only overseas.

I'll have a look at this ParcelForce import file, that may be useful.

I'm still struggling to resolve the separate shipping weights for UK and Overseas.

Umm. Must be an answer out there somewhere??

[StickyWeb]

Umm not getting very far here.

If I am to assume Actinic is unable to calculate overseas shipping, is it possible to create 2 sites. One for UK and one for overseas?

Then I would assume that the client will need to buy another Actinic business licence to download the orders from overseas??

[wjcampbe]

Maybe not the best solution, how about slightly increasing your prices and offering free shipping within UK, and use volumetric weights in the detail field to apply for all non-UK orders?

[StickyWeb]

Aye, that might be another approach.

It's certainly worth looking onto, and thats what I'll do!

Thank you for your suggestion.