Help with complex weight / postcode shipping

[jheath]

Hi
Does anybody know of anyone able to assist with setting up an actinic store selling a small range of products but with very complex delivery charge calculation based on quantity and delivery postcode. We sell salt (not very glamorous know!) and it's very heavy and very inexpensive. We want to offer a choice of quantities optimised for 1/4, 1/2 and full pallet weights respectively. Our hauliers offer different prices based on these weights and have 5 zones within the UK based on the delivery postcode.

For example: We sell our Block Salt for £2.56 + delivery and vat per pack. 30 packs of Block Salt is the maximum weight for a 1/4 pallet. A customer living in the GU postcode area is in delivery zone B, and a 1/4 pallet delivery costs us £29.00 + vat which we can charge to the customer at cost. So we need actinic to calculate an order total of £105.80 + vat during the ordering process.

We're looking for someone who would have the ability / patience to set this up for us and would be happy to pay a reasonable cost.

You can see how the site looks currently at: www.salt-supplies.co.uk (with or without the /acatalog)

Any ideas / comments (!) or feedback appreciated

Jeremy

[Mike Hughes]

Three questions:

1. What does each block of salt weight?

2. How many postcodes are there in each zone (maximum)?

3. What are the shipping costs for 1/2 and full pallets?

Mike

[jheath]

There are differant pack sizes:
A 1/4 pallet is 10 x 25kg, 25 x 10kg or 30 x 8kg.
A 1/2 pallet is 20 x 25kg, 50 x 10kg or 60 x 8kg.
A full pallet is 140 x 8kg or 100 x 10kg or 40 x 25kg.

There is only about 12 products in all.

There are 6 zones. Zone B covers most of the country and has nearly 100 postcode areas. AL, BA, BB etc etc... The other zones cover the crinckly bits, highlands / islands the south coast, cornwall and london.

Zone B prices for 1/2 and full pallet are £30 & £32 respectively.

Other zones are more expensive, with bigger differences between 1/4, 1/2 and full pallets.

Cheers

[Mike Hughes]

the only complex bit here is getting the customer to select the right shipping zone as actinic won't select shipping based on postcode.

Zone B could be selected as the default and then the customer would have to select an alternative shipping zone (read charge) if their postcode fell under the other categories.

Can you say who the carrier is and whether they have a website with all their shipping zones on it?

Mike

[jheath]

Yes - that makes sense. I guess at least 8 out of 10 deliveries are in zone B.

The carrier we use is Pallet Track (www.pallet-track.com) but the zones and prices depend on the delivery address relative to the point of despatch and are subject to negotiation. We're negotiated / grouped together about 28 zones down to 5 to try to simplify it.

[Mike Hughes]

OK here's how I would do it. I can't say how well the shipping selection will work as I don't have the details but it's worth giving it a try and seeing how it looks.

1. Assign your products their actual weight in the product setup.

2. Set shipping by weight,

3. Create 5 shipping zones, Call them 'London', 'Highlands & Islands', 'Cornwall', 'South Coast', 'rest of the UK' (or whatever best describes them). You might want to add the relevant postcodes to the name if there aren't too many.

4. Set up the shipping tables as follows (If I remember correctly):

250Kg £29.00
500Kg £30.00
1000kg £32.00

This is the zone B table but the rest will be the same just with different prices. The 140 x 8Kg is too large for this so the last weight could be changed to 1200kg if it really is 140 packs and not 120.

5. Vat should be set at a default of 17.5% and prices should be set to display exclusive of VAT.

I'm pretty sure this should work.

Mike

[Mike Hughes]

Another thought on this.

It should be possible to set up each postcode as a 'state/province' under the UK with a unique shipping charge for each one. This way the customer would select their country and then postcode at the start of the checkout process.

Quite a bit of work to do this, but it might be a cleaner solution for the customer than the one described above.

Mike