Restricting Products To Particular Shipping Methods

[Rich Brady]

I have this set up for a client:

http://www.denbigharmysurplus.co.uk/...D-Storage.html

This item weighs 1.5 kg, it's light but big. Add one to the basket and you'll get charge RM price, add a 2nd and you'll exceed the 2kg limit in the RM shipping tables and a Parcelforce price is the only choice.

[Darren B]

i think Lee and Rich have given me plenty of info on resolving this issue and once i have test it and got it all working i will come back here and offer more info on how it was achieved

Darren

[Darren B]

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT

I got it wrong

It seems what i require has beent here all along, although it seems experience is the key to resolving this puzzle - I cant believe Mr Hack has deliberately with held this knowledge from me

What i require is possible using a combination of the method i described earlier and using alternative weight

By creating other catagories in the shipping and setting this to use alternative weights and remembering to tick use weight if not defined (this is actually important when your rebuilding shipping or adding new products)

Im still working through a few hundred products and wont know until i have fully tested it and dont doubt some tweaking of weights and charges will still need to be made.

Once i have all the details i will post something here for others should they require it

Darren

[Darren B]

OK im working through this and thinking out aloud here

i have ticked user weight when undefind (see attached image)

now from my working out, this uses the weight and applies this to the alternative weight catagory. At first i looked at this and thought it ment if the alternative weigth is not defined user the normal weight catagories. I know it does not say that but for some reason thats how i read it.

Can someone confirm i am right that all it does is still use the alternative weight shipping catagory but use the normal weight, when alternative is not defind.

i hope this makes sense
Darren

[Darren B]

OK

this is what I have setup to achieve the desired effect thanks to Lee & Richard for their input (thinks we need a button to thank members)

To stop products from appearing in all shipping options you need to use alternative weight, I had never considered using this and think the problem is no one knew a lot about this area of shipping when it 1st came out and I had got it into my head that what I required was not possible.

I’m going to keep this as short as possible and take it that people have an understanding of shipping already.

So 1st you need to create the shipping methods that all your products can be sent by, so do the following.

1) Setup all your products and fill your weight field with their correct values.

2) Create your shipping classes, standard delivery, courier e.t.c using the shipping calculated by weight in your shipping setup

3) Fill these with your charges

There you go job done shipping is setup for simple shipping using weight.

Now you have certain items that require a certain type of shipping, I use royal mail special delivery. the problem with this is you cant send very large items by this method the size is quite restrictive on some delivery methods.

So the problem is how to I stop a customer selecting this method for large items, this is were the alternative weight comes in

1) create a new class under shipping, I called my RM special Delivery, now select the basis to be by alternative weight.

2) In the table you now need to fill this with the weights and charges

3) now you need to go back to your products and fill these with the weights you require to make this method work. So small items that can go via this method you fill with the correct weights, large items that can not you fill with a higher weight out side of the table for this special method.

Its worth writing down your table when filling in all the product alternative weights so you remember what the bands you have defined are, especially if your memory is like mine.

So what does this do and how?

All your standard delivery options are using the products normal/correct weight so when you add an item to the basket the standard delivery charge comes in, now this is were the alternative comes in. If you have a small item in the table then its weight will fall under the special delivery methods table. this means that the option is visible on the website.

If you then enter a larger item that is outside of special delivery table then the option is not shown to the customer.

Looking at it I now realise how simple it was to achieve, basically I used the method above but used alternative weights for the specialised part. The main reason I require this is because I need to keep the correct weights for the products.

The weights are important as I use sage link and manage all the main products details in sage, so changing sage although possible was not ideal.

My next step is to now use this for international shipping, should help a lot as I don’t sell many small items over seas because of the cost as I have not been able to put a small packet option on the site.

If you need any clarification on points here please ask, now for the international charges

[Rich Brady]

1) create a new class under shipping, I called my RM special Delivery, now select the basis to be by alternative weight.

I've been using the Maximun Weight basis when I set this up. The reason being that sometimes your volumetric weight may be less than the actual weight. You courier will charge you based on the biggest.

[Darren B]

That s good point

I to date have not had to worry about volumetric weights so easily skipped past this part

my problem was the other way around
the items weigh nothing but are to big for the physical parcel size restrictions. But creating new shipping options using alternative weights solves the problem.

i have been setting up the international option today so fingers crossed i got every product right, its quite odd that i know how big everything is so knew what service i could use. Would be a nightmare if i did not as i would have to check every product manually before updating actinic.