Shipping costs per product

[stualk]

Hello,

I'm new to the forum, this is my first post.

I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to specify shipping costs per products rather than per item? The problem i've got is that a site I have built in version 7 needs to be able to specify higher shipping costs for products in certain sections only. Most UK shipping is free so that's fine as most I've set it to £0.00 shipping for UK customers.

The problem is that EU and Worldwide orders need their own shipping rates. They have a strange postage system whereby some products have postage of 3p in one product section, then in another section the postage is 30p per product, then in another section it's 60p per product. That's just for Europe! The price then doubles for worldwide orders.

Does anyone know of a way of doing this in version 7?

[wjcampbe]

Sounds as though the standard weight option would work for you.

First thing to do is check you have tax set up correctly with the necessary three zones and then set up the shipping tables.

UK table, one option - 1000kg price 0.00

EU 0.01 kg = 3p, 0.2kg = 6p etc through 0.10kg = 30p and 0.20kg = 60p ....
ROW same weight as EU but with costs doubled

Very fiddly to build, but once done - its done.

[stualk]

Hmmm, sounds good in thoery. I seem to remember trying something like that before though.

Would that work per quantity as well? For example, someone who buys 10 items that weighs EU 0.01 kg at 3p, would it charge 30p?

This is what it needs to do.

[Bruce]

If you use the standard weight option as detailed by Bill in the post above it will do this for you.

Kind regards,

[stualk]

Just another few questions regarding this shipping method:

1) I have tried something like this before and this biggest problem was when people ordered large quantities of a certain product and then the shipping table didn't cater for this. The obvious solution is to extend the shipping table but ideally I need a way of this not happening because it actually stops people placing an order and comes up with a message saying "the shipping table specified does not match your order" or something like that. Is there a way of just letting people carry on ordering while adding nothing to their order? We can always adjust it once received.

2) As we have so many products in the database it would be much quicker if we just edit the Access database directly. When we try to add the weight using Actinic it takes quite a while to update itself and let us move on to the next product. Ideally I just want to go into the Access database and copy and paste the weights into the weight column. If I do a backup of the site before I do this will this method of entering weights etc be ok? Or is there another method that's just as quick? Otherwise it will take me weeks to do! :-D

Thanks

[stualk]

Can anyone see any problems with this? I'm hoping to get it done today.

Thanks

[wjcampbe]

Is there a way of just letting people carry on ordering while adding nothing

Nothing = no additional shipping charge - right? If so, then set the excess option to take the highest value.

You will need to find a way of telling customers your shipping charge is subject to review if you do this.

I would have thought a better solution was to use the increment by x amount for each additional y kg option.

For your #2, just be sure you backup the database before you try this, so you can get back into operation if things go wrong. Once you have a backup (that you know works), there is nothing to stop you doing it this way.

[stualk]

Excellent, thanks for that. This seems to work so far.

Just a couple more questions on this:

1) As all UK postage is free I've just put one value in my shipping table, which is 10000Kg = £0.00. Will this mean that no matter how many products people order the shipping will be always be £0.00? (Someone would have to order about 100,000 products from the site to reach or exceed 10000Kg!)

2) The vast majority of products need to be 0.4Kg in weight. If I enter this as the default weight in kg will this mean I don't need to assign a weight to the vast majority of products and that Actinic will take the 0.4Kg shipping cost for each of these products? Big time saver this if it works!

Thanks

[wjcampbe]

1) Not sure what the question is here. What you have done will work - in just the same way as a single entry of 0.01 kg = 0.00 and take the highest value would.

2) Yes a default weight of 0.4 will work, but I would recommend you set aside maintenance time later for actually adding the weight to those products anyway. Don't forget to make an allowance for packing - you can quickly lose your shirt if you have exact product weights charged to the customer and end up paying product plus packaging yourself. The products may all be in the 0.4kg range, but some will require more shipping protection than others.