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Shipping Flat Rate, Weight, Small Pkg ...

Submitted by druru on Thu, 09/13/2007 - 20:34
druru
Posts: 116
 Joined: 08/08/2007
Brain Stormer

Can anybody give me a leg up on setting up shipping. Sorry for my ineptitude here but shipping is somewhat foreign to me.

Bunch of questions:

1) i went in and enabled flat rate per order, flat rate by product and weight rate per product just to see how all of this stuff works. when i go to conduct a faux checkout.. it calculates all 3 shipping rates as radio buttons:

a) The radio buttons don't have any associated labels with them to tell the customer what "type" of shipping each of the options represents. is this the way it's supposed to be?

maybe for fedex and ups 2 day etc you actually present labels so the customer knows what "type" of "shipping" service they're paying for?

b) The way i understand it is that one can weight the different types of shipping options so that uc can apply different shipping methods to an order with multiple products that have different shipping methods. The problem is i don't see anywhere one can assign a given shipping type to a given product? where does one do that?

right now it looks as though shipping methods once enabled are global for all products. i must be doing something wrong

2) When I go to admin/store/settings/shipping, there are no settings to configure or save? just curious what that section is for?

3) If i go to admin/store/settings/quotes/methods, i'm confused by some of the options:

a) What is "small package"? I know it's only for ups / usps but what they heck is it?

b) Under the dropdown for "Default order fulfillment type for products", the only option that is available is "small packages". Why aren't the other methods i specified like flat rate and by weight available to be the default shipping method???? confused.

THEORETICAL QUESTIONS
----------------------

4) If i want to calculate shipping by zones and priority service versus regular service, i must use fedex, usps, ups etc.

a) to use those shipping modules must i have an account with those providers?
b) is it free to have the account?

c) OR is it just as easy to calculate these zones and priority shipping OFFLINE via a local db / lookup table plus module? I believe there was a contrib module floating around but i'm not sure if it was ever "blessed"

d) anybody care to share the benefits of going with one or the other - account versus offline?

5) I basically want to sell a couple of CDs (not an entire inty just a handful). I want the shipping to be a no brainer and as simple as possible. Ideally, i'd like to be able to offer priority shipping if customer wants it.

Anybody recommend the best method to approach this?

There's the exact method of calculating the precise cost based on total weight plus zone.

Then there's the possibility of setting a flat rate per each CD based on guestimating an average cost at different rates and service levels.

Just trying to pick someone who has been down the path before. As i said it's all new to me.

Hopefully this thread will help others and i'll summarize it and post a User Guide page assuming i get some decent feedback.

thanks
permalink #1 Fri, 09/14/2007 - 08:04
Lyle

Posts: 2352
 Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratoreLiTe!

Yeah, the two flatrate methods and weightquote are all labeled the same way because they all fulfill the same niche. The rates are all defined by the user, and because they are specified down to the product level, they are made to apply to all shipping types.

Shipping types are defined by shipping modules, and of all the ones that we have so far, only "small package" has been needed. A small package is basically anything you don't need a freight truck to move. Any reasonably sized box is accepted by UPS, FedEx, and the Postal Service, but for things like pallets or skids, you need to get a freight carrier. I've written a module to deal with freight shipments because we need it for our restaurant equipment site, but haven't released it because no one's expressed interest.

Shipping types really have more to do with order fulfillment than they do with generating a quote. I made the Shipping Settings page in anticipation of needing it, but haven't had anything to put there, yet. I need to look over where the various settings are being used and shuffle them around a little bit.

As for all the theoretical stuff, I'm not much help. We already had accounts with them, so I'm just doing what I'm told. Smiling

permalink #2 Fri, 09/14/2007 - 12:51
druru
Posts: 116
 Joined: 08/08/2007
Brain Stormer

thanks lyle,

you answered most of my questions but one fell through the cracks..

are we supposed to be able to specify different flat rate quotes and weight quotes to DIFFERENT products? Or is it global?

I think we're supposed to be able to assign them to either different products or product classed but i don't see where?

permalink #3 Fri, 09/14/2007 - 14:36
Lyle

Posts: 2352
 Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratoreLiTe!

It's global for each method as it's defined in the module, but for flatrate and weightquote, they're simple enough that you can copy them and change the shipping type to whatever you need. If you need a new shipping type, you can make one with hook_shipping_type(). See uc_quote or uc_ups for examples. Since they all use the same shipping type, they all define it the same way. With one new module, you can make a new shipping type and a new shipping method to for each one.

permalink #4 Mon, 12/17/2007 - 00:51
JonW
Posts: 40
 Joined: 12/05/2007

This old posting is the closest I've come to finding my answer - hopefully you can weigh in with either a work around, or some insights into your progress on package types.

I use only the shipping by weight feature. But I want to have an additional package type for certain packages.

This would let me ( I believe) use workflow-ng to create an "up charge" for shipping more than one of a certain product.

For example, I sell chocolates and cocoa. a single tin of cocoa or 12 tins in one box, that works just fine. But if I sell a larger gift basket, I can only pack one of those per box. So, if it weighs 10 pounds, and they buy two, it needs to reflect that I am shipping 2 10 pound boxes, not one 20 pound box.
With DHL, UPS, FEDEX, etc, that is a big difference.

Having a way to trigger an extra $5-7.00 per box on the multiple quantity order of those items would be cool.

permalink #5 Mon, 12/17/2007 - 05:27
diegohermes
Posts: 62
 Joined: 09/12/2007

Lyle wrote:
I've written a module to deal with freight shipments because we need it for our restaurant equipment site, but haven't released it because no one's expressed interest.

Hi Lyle, hi have interest in this, my client told yesterday that the majority of his products must be send by freight, i don't know if freight shipments works the same way there, but if you can release this module i believe it can be very helpfull.

permalink #6 Mon, 12/17/2007 - 09:45
JonW
Posts: 40
 Joined: 12/05/2007

I also would like to see this module available.

Once I get my retail site up and running, I want to set it up for my wholesale customers...and we ship by the pallet for that.

I can tell you are pulled about 100 different ways - what to do next - I do not envy you...but there is a community out there that is liking your work, so thanks for whatever you can do...

Thx