How to set up shipping on your PF site

A common setup is to set a flat rate per a defined set of products (one price for small prints, one for large prints and calendars, one for posters, one for cards, one for gifts, one for books).  We have a hybrid shipping pricing system that can combine both base charges & weight-based fees in addition to product-quantity-based charges.  Some dealers will then discount the shipping (using promos) for orders over a certain amount… “Free shipping on orders over $35!” 


Quick overview


How shipping is calculated

S&H = A + B + C.  Where:

A = Base Shipping Price (if set…set in Lab 50)

B = Product-Quantity-Based Shipping for products contained in shipping product groups (if set…set in myLab)

C = Weight-based additional fees for combined weight of products (excluding products already counted in B) (if set…set in Lab 50)


To set base shipping price (A)
  1. Use Lab 50
  2. Store Management > Shipping & Handling Charges


To set up product-quantity-based shipping (B)
  1. Use myLab: myLab.photofinale.com
  2. Store Management > Shipping Groups > Create a Shipping Group (name, default batch quantity, description):
    1. Name, ex: “5x7 and smaller prints”
    2. Default Batch Quantity, ex: “20”  (if qty of 20 is the first change in shipping price)
    3. Description (opt)
    4. Open the group, Add Products > Show All Active Products and add the products or product tags you want to apply to that group… when you click OK those products will have been added to the Group.
    5. Then, if you want to add extra charges, from there you will see you can now add you Price Breaks. (Just like setting Price Tiers for web catalog products).  The thing to bear in mind is the Base Price you have enabled (e.g. $1.99 for US Postal Service) will be added on top of whatever values you enter in these fields.
  3. When you add a new product, you can use the Shipping Group pulldown to add the new product to the correct shipping group (you can do this in Lab 50 and in myLab).

Examples of product-quantity-based shipping:

1) This has prints shipping at 1.99 for qty up to 20. 21-41 is $2.99…. all the way up to 100 prints ships at $5.99.  More than 100 are priced by additional groups of 20, with each group being an extra $1.


2) Here, 1 book ships for $7.99 and each additional book adds $1 to shipping


3) This one is 5.95 for shipping, with an extra $2 added when the gift qty is 2, 3 or 4 or 5 (ie, an additional group of four total items, so $7.95 

When the total qty is 6, 7, 8, 9 the shipping adds another $2 for that next set of 4, for total $9.95

When the 10th gift is added, shipping goes another $2 to $11.95… (ie, 1st product, two full groups of 4 items, then the 10th is the start of the 3rd group of 4)


4) another example of shipping groups: showing myLab in the upper left, and Lab 50 under it with base pricing. Then on the right, the website showing how qty affects the shipping cost, based on the entries of the shipping groups in myLab. 




To set up weight-based shipping (C)

  1. Use Lab 50
  2. Store Management > Shipping & Handling Charges

  3. Click the “add” button at the bottom of the “Weight-based shipping tiers” window.  In this example, the base price here is $1.99.  For any orders that exceed 3 ounces an additional dollar is added.  The chart goes all the way up to 204 ounces with a maximum shipping cost of $28.99.
  4. To calculate shipping by weight, each product in your product catalog needs to have a weight value entered.  This can be done in myLab or Lab 50.  For instance, 4x6 is assigned a weight of 0.30 ounces.  In this case up to 10 4x6 prints would ship for $1.99 and once 10 were ordered the shipping price would jump to $2.99 as it would exceed 3 ounces total.


FAQ
Question: What are options for customers outside of my country?
Answer: You can add a new shipping method for that country and have separate prices for that. You rely on the customer to select the right choice, so they could pick US when they are in Canada, but in practice we have seen this infrequently. For example: a US company could have: 

  • UPS Ground Shipping within US
  • UPS 2-day Shipping within US
  • UPS Overnight Shipping within US
  • UPS Ground Shipping to Canada

Alternatively, we can limit shipments to just your country. There is a setting we can enable in the database which will hide the "country" field on the checkout page, limiting it to just the dealer's country. Let our support desk know if you would like to set it up this way. 

Question: How can I set up ZIP code or zone-based shipping?
Answer:  The system doesn't not automatically calculate shipping based on delivery, but you can offer choice for the customer.  You do rely on the customer to pick the choice that corresponds to their location, so staff should be trained to double check. For example: A Canadian retailer may offer:

  • Canada Post to BC, AB, SK, MB: $7.95
  • Canada Post to ON, QC, NC, NS, PE, NL: $9.95
  • Canada Post to YT: $11.95
  • Canada Post to NT, NU: $29.95





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