Exclude item from Zone/Class Free Over calculation

[Chippy Minton]

Hello,

I have a few items which I want to exclude from the shipping calculation, so I have ticked the box to exclude them from the Shipping Band Calculation, and this appears to prevent them adding shipping charges. The problem is I also want to exclude them from the maths relating to the Orders In This Zone/Class Free Over. i.e. I don't want these items included in the total giving free shipping, is this possible?

I am using Weight in Kg basis, and have tried various classes, weights and combinations but I cannot get Actinc to ignore the item' value.

Any ideas?

[RuralWeb]

try giving them a zero weight and see what happens

[Chippy Minton]

Hello Malcolm,

Thanks for the quick reply.

The weight is currently set to 0. I have also tried no entry at all, and various other combinations of tick boxes but without sucess. It works correctly in that it does not add charges but it does include their value in the calculation for free shipping.

I assume it must be in the script somewhere. The script I am using is modified to look at the sub value rather than the total value (to acheive minimum order ex VAT).

Does Actinic have more than one running total when working out shipping charges? I'll try reverting to the original script and working back through it.

[Darren B]

This is similar to what i wanted to achieve, and the other option from mal's is to create differing bands and ad these to a high weight catagory and all your other products to a low weight.

Then when you add this item it will overule the low weight band options and charge for this item, the others might still get free delivery, but if you have this item then it will charge it

If you look at this page and add the item to basket http://www.airsurfing.co.uk/acatalog...mphony-14.html then checkout and select uk it will give you a delivery charge for royalmail.

now go to this page http://www.airsurfing.co.uk/acatalog...op_Prisma.html and add and item you will see the delivery changes to standard delivery, even if you remove the 1st item. This is because the second item is too big for 1st class post.

This is not exactly as you require but if i understand you correctly then this should point you in the right direction

[Darren B]

This thread might give you a better understanding of it

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?p=217566

[Chippy Minton]

Darren,

Thanks for the info. I see what you are saying but I don't think it will work.

The problem I have is that the carriage is quite complicated, in that I have five categories of products, all shipped at different times from different depots so they all need to be charged separately. Furthermore two of these categories need to be charged on a weight basis while the other three are flat rates. Each of the categories need to be considered as separate orders both in terms of applying a charge and giving free delivery over a certain value. The above is then repeated for each shipping zone. I reaslised long ago that Actinic would not cope with this so I went for a simple weight method for the main category ((seeds) with 0Kg for non chargeable items and then the relative weights for chargeable items) and hoped to exclude everything else from the maths, with a simple disclaimer for the other categories, but I can't acheive this either.

I am no expert on this but looking at the Script it only looks at 'excluded items' in terms of quantity of items not total price. I guess the script could be altered by one wise in such ways!

[Darren B]

Lee stop doing that, your driving me nuts but i think your right

And Rob, i dont think you are goign to achieve what you want, the type of shipping your require is asking to much, IMHO it is way to complicated and i dont see a way around it either

[leehack]

Lee stop doing that, your driving me nuts but i think your right

Sorry dude, i read it another couple of times and then understood what was being said, so my post was useless.

[Darren B]

PMSL i actually had to go and check my emails because i thought i was going mad, or getting madder if that is possible

[leehack]

Robert simplify your shipping, it sounds far too complicated, if we as seasoned actinic users are struggling to understand, then your customers must be also. Try not to think of shipping as separate transactions, think of them as one big one and note what you spend in relation to what it costs you. If one parcel means you lose £1 but the next means you gain a £1, overall it is neutral. Come up with a much simpler matrix which overall means you lose nothing. We see so often on here people getting so complicated with shipping, they can't even explain it themselves. By all means have some tiers but keep them sensible, people checking (and understanding) delivery costs is a key item nowadays IMO, so make it easy for all involved.

If the shipping with V8/V9 is not good enough, you are usually trying to do too much with it.

[TraceyHand]

i thought i was going mad, or getting madder if that is possible

it's not

LOL

[Darren B]

Phew i was starting to worry

[Chippy Minton]

Lee,

I realise the whole system is quite complicated but it is easily explained by a chart in our catalogue. The difficulty is getting the website to replicate it. This is why I went for a simpler route of excluding the unusual items from the calculations, but it appears that 'Exclude from shipping' doesn't actually do that, it only excludes the item from adding to the charges not cancelling charges.

I understand the economics of what you are saying but we currently offer free delivery for order over £50 (per category). We did look at a simple route of considering the total order value but then you have the following:
One order, £45 total value, shipping charges incurred by us (post) £3.50
One order, £45 total value, shipping charges incurred by us (courier) £6.00
One order, £45 total value, shipping charges incurred by us (5x courier) £30.00
Not enough margin to justify the last scenario, but if we increase our charges to cover this scenario it would be horrendous for other customers, hence the categories.

[leehack]

I'm with you Robert on the 3 examples, especially with the third at such a different price, my aim would be to rationalise the two small amounts, leaving you with a two tier service, bit like offering either a standard or next day delivery service. It is hard to say for sure without knowing your products and the associated problems shipping, I am yet to see a shipping matrix that is unable to complete or make operational though.

If you do not have too many products, is there any mileage in having the product weight field directly correlate to the price of the product? so if a product cost £5.23, then it would have 5.23kg in as its weight and then run shipping on total weight, where certain products can have 0kg input as weight, thus not adding anything.

There is also a % based system that can be setup, which corelates to a set % of the order value. Like i say, i do not know your full setup or needs, so just throwing some ideas into the pot. What you basically want is when a product is exempt from shipping, you want its cost to be removed from the free over limit, which makes sense and i think you are right it should do that. Looks like an oversight from actinic rather than a bug though.

[Chippy Minton]

Lee,

I have managed to edit the ShippingTemplate.pl file so that it does not include excluded items from the total goods value used for shipping calculations, and I assume it would do the same if edited for components, etc.. (I can post my notes if of interest).

However, my amendments did mean that discounts on product prices were not taken into account on the total for shipping, so if your threshold includes discounts you need to be aware of this. As I only have one discount rate I simply increased the free shipping threshold by this percentage. As with most things Actinic, you make progress but there is always a sting in the tail!

I think you are right an oversight rather than a bug but something else to consider for future releases.