Calculating shipping using Category

[mash]

Hi guys,

When reading the 'Getting Started with Actinic v9' I got all very excited about the Shipping Categories, but there may be an issue with this:

1. The use of categories may not work as I want them to do
2. Shipping in any form should not be excitting!

We have been using Actinic since v6 and the online shop is currently in V7 but I am migrating it to v9 at the moment so I have been using a shipping work around which has been fine but would quite like to sort this aspect of the online shop.

We have products which are sent out to our customers at different times of the year (delivery months), you can order them in advance, and order from any of the delivery periods. We also have some products which can be dispatched straight away to the customer (so any order can contain multiple delivery months and goods which are sent out straight away).

As I said we have a work around to cope with this but I was hoping to tidy it up and make it easier for the customer to understand.

So the goods which will be dispatch straight away I was hoping to use shipping calculated by weight.

Then for each delivery window I was planning to set up a category then allocate the product to the correct category and charge a flat fee for each category (not related to the number of items).

Delivery 1 = £4
Delivery 2 = £4
Delivery 3 = £4

If a customer order from delivery 1 and 3, their shipping cost would be £8 plus the cost of the various products.

From the information in the guide this should work, BUT in the help file, it says that only 1 fixed amount will be charged (being the highest) independent of products orders.

So instead of £8 only £4 will be charged.

I hope you can follow this logic, have I read the situation right or will it work, if it works like the help file says can it be stopped.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received. Thanks Mash

[leehack]

It's quite difficult to grasp your setup but if i have it correctly, you can associate the choices you offer to actual products (hidden ones at that) and set what should happen to them when purchased, ie which price, tax, shipping etc they should take. That might solve what you want, but on the surface it sounds to me that you want to have different shipping methods according to what they choose all on the same product, that i cannot see happening, it's one or the other.

[leehack]

Hmmmm....unless the choices they make are tiered in some way (using weight) so that it's clear to tell what they have chosen. Something along the lines of the weight is 100 + the actual weight if for a months time and 200 + the actual weight for 2 months and so on. Tiers in shipping table then correlate with timescales by using the weight cleverly.

There is often something that can be done, need to understand it all really before can offer any definitive methods to do it though.

[mash]

Thanks Lee for your thoughts, I have thought about the weight method before but I felt it was unworkable sadly.

Still interested in this fixed amount through Shipping Categories.

As it stands we have 10 delivery periods during the year, there are few more but trying to keep it simple plus items which available all round the year and dispatched straight away from stock.

An order can contain items from any of the delivery periods (products can be the same or most likely different) and also contain items from the products which will be dispatched immediately.

So at the moment as you guess, I use a hidden product to allocate the postage between the delivery periods, this works well but does have an impact on the value of the goods and the recalculation of the price as more items are added for a period can be off putting. This year I have allowed the item to have a separate line but this looks like you are paying a lot on shipping but actually it is the flat fee being divided between items. Hence not ideal.

What would be nice would be a single amount being added to the basket for each delivery period automatic and then the other items (dispatched immediately) would have shipping calculated on weight.

I was hoping to use the Shipping Categories (set up shipping for January, February etc.) allocate the products to the correct delivery window and then just have a fixed amount charged if any products were orders from the delivery window.

My issue is the note from the help file regarding this:

Note: If a customer orders a product from more than one category, they won't have to pay more than one 'fixed cost'. Only the largest 'fixed cost' will be applied to the order.

Based on this, it would mean that if someone ordered from January and March only 1 fixed amount would be charged (if they were the same amount unsure how it would decide which to charge).

Has anyone had experience of this, is this correct, is there way to make it charge all the fixed amounts, it would be really useful if it did and it would give me the single shipping for each delivery and it would be tidy.

Any thoughts would be gratefully received, thanks Mash

[TraceyG]

Hi Mash,

I haven't fully tested this so you use at your own risk but the following seems to allow the fixed costs to add up together (take a backup of your site before doing this too):

- browse to your site folder and go into the 'ShipControl' folder
- locate 'ShippingTemplate.pl'
- open the file in a text editor such as notepad
- search for:

# if fixed charge bigger than max

- you should see:

if ($phashCategory->{'Fixed' . $sKeySuffix} > $nMaxFixedCost)						# if fixed charge bigger than max
			{
			$nMaxFixedCost = $phashCategory->{'Fixed' . $sKeySuffix};						# save new max
			}

- replace this with:

if ($phashCategory->{'Fixed' . $sKeySuffix})						# if fixed charge bigger than max -        > $nMaxFixedCost
			{
			$nMaxFixedCost += $phashCategory->{'Fixed' . $sKeySuffix};						# save new max
			}

- close and save the file
- you would then need to set up a shipping class with the 'category' basis and enter the fixed charges in the grid using the 'Normal' option for your 'deliver immediately' goods (or you could create a new category for those too). Remove any other shipping classes from your zone(s)
- apply the categories to your products
- update your site.

What would be nice would be a single amount being added to the basket for each delivery period automatic and then the other items (dispatched immediately) would have shipping calculated on weight.

This wouldn't be possible as you can't set two calculation bases for one class and it would require a huge amount of perl changes.

Actinic is not able to provide any detailed support for script changes made. If you find that there is a problem, an original copy of the script can be found within the 'Original' folder in your installation. Copy this into your site folder.

[mash]

Excellent, worth trying, I hopefully get to test this before the end of the year, so by the sound of it, it is either category or weight, I thought you could select a product and opt it out of that way of calculating shipping?

It would be great if I could get this to work as the postage does cause huge confusion.

Thanks for this.

[mash]

Hi Tracey

Managed to get round to test the changes it works, only have added it to two sections and the first two products, if you got time have a look:

• March Delivery - March Brassicas delivery test
• April Delivery - April Onions delivery test

Add the delivery charge at the check out phase once you have selected England (only one I have put charges against). If you add any of the other product you will see the charge being added at the product level which is a bit messy but worked so far.

Regarding the Sundries (test site), is it possible add another class to the zone which you calculate shipping on weight basis and if anyone selects one of these products, shipping is done on weight.

As you can see, for the sundries I have done a similar thing but using the number of components used to calculate the weight and therefore price of the shipping, again it works but not very pretty.

Any thoughts please let me know thanks.

[TraceyG]

Hi Mash,

If you add any of the other product you will see the charge being added at the product level which is a bit messy but worked so far.

Yes, it looks like you are being charged too many times for shipping.

The only thing I can think of is to set up categories for your weights and use the 'per item' charges, for example:

250g
500g
750g
etc

And set the relevant weight category to the products. This may not work correctly depending on how your shipping pricing works but I think may come close to what you are doing with the components.

[mash]

Hi again,

Using categories with this single fixed cost per delivery months works (only the first two items of the pick and mix for that months I have set up this way).

Advantages are the neatness, shipping sorted at the end, separate to the product.

However, the disadvantage is that shipping may be surprise for the user especially if they do not understand that the plants are across delivery times (March, April, May etc.), one of the best way would have a shipping product that you just select for each month you are getting plants but people would not do that.

So would it be possible to do any of the following:

1. Add a delivery month in the basket through to check out and the email with the order, I have set up in the library a 'delivery month' variable and have tried to add it to the basket but it just brings up the default valve.
2. Make available 'Select the country drop down box' in the basket screen , why so that the shipping will appear in the basket screen. bit odd that.
3. Enable the shipping for each category to be separate so people can understand how it is calculated and not lumped together.

I was planning to add either a hard code table of delivery costs under the basket or a pop window with a table explaining the cost so people can understand it, educate and not get turned off by it.

Any thoughts I would appreciate thanks

[TraceyG]

Hi,

Your requirements for shipping are quite complicated and I can't really see a way of getting it to display exactly as you want it to. However, if you carry on using a mixture of components and categories for shipping then you could change the 'shipping' row text on the basket to something like 'Shipping by Month costs' (Design | Text | Phase -1, ID 102).

I was planning to add either a hard code table of delivery costs under the basket or a pop window with a table explaining the cost so people can understand it, educate and not get turned off by it.

I think that this is a very good idea.

2. Make available 'Select the country drop down box' in the basket screen , why so that the shipping will appear in the basket screen. bit odd that.

You could set it up to 'Request Location Information Early' so that when a customer first adds a product to basket it asks where they want to deliver their items to so it can then work out the shipping straight away. You have to have your shopping mode for all sections set to 'Quantity on confirmation page' to be able to use this option (Business Settings | Ordering).

Your other two options would require a lot of perl changes.

[mash]

Thanks for your reply, have been working quietly on this and have not moved it much forward. Still working on the best way to present the shipping table, have adjusted the text description.

Will have to look at the second suggestion to see what impact there is, I am hoping to get a 'Single add to basket button' on most of the pages just to speed up the customer conversion from selecting to the basket. Will a click through on each product is slow especially when you are adding arrange of plants. Does 'Request Location Information Early' work with a 'Single add to basket button'.

Finally adding more information to the shopping basket through to the email the customer receives (it is a layout question I guess), I have set up the Variables, what are the next steps or where can I find the information regarding this.

Thanks for your help, much appreciated, take care,

[mash]

Wish Tracey was here.

This work around works fine on the website but not on the MOTO page, bit of a pain, does anyone know how I can get this to work on the MOTO. Would be good, thanks M