Setting up Australia-wide weight based shipping is a great way to get started with the Shipping component, it's simple and gives you an understanding of all the areas involved.
Prerequisites
To keep this article simple and easy to understand, we won't explain how to add Shipping Companies or Shipping Regions here, however they will need to be added before the example in this article can be followed.
Shipping Company
Setting up the Shipping Company is a quick and easy step, you can review the Adding a Shipping Company article to instructions on how to do this.
Shipping Regions
Setting up the Shipping Regions can be a short or long process depending on how you're setting up your shipping rates. For this example, we only need to create a single Shipping Region which is very quick, simply take a look at Adding an Australia-wide Region for instructions.
The following instructions assume the Company and Regions described in the articles above have been added, and the Shipping Methods described below are being added to that Company.
Adding the Shipping Method
- On the Shipping Overview page you'll find a list of the Shipping Companies that have been added so far. Click on the "Add Method" button for the new company you added.
- The following fields are required for this Shipping Method:
- Name and Method Description: These fields are both required and display information about this Shipping Method to customers in the checkout. A common setup is for the Name of the field to contain the shipping provider, such as Australia Post, and for the Method Description to describe the shipping service, such as Standard or Express Shipping.
- Domestic: Leave this box checked as this Shipping Method is handling shipping to domestic locations only.
- Selected Domestic Regions: Select the "Australia - (0-9999)" entry from Available Regions and then click on Add Selected. After a few moments the selected Region will move over to the Selected Regions section.
- Calculation Method: Choose By Basket Weight for this example.
- By Basket Weight: You will see a Min, Max and Cost column, along with a plus sign. Start by adding 0 to Min, 500 to Max, and 5 to Cost, then hit the plus sign and you'll see the data you supplied is locked in and a new row appears. This means orders that weigh between 0 and 500 will cost $5.
Next, add 501 to Min, 1000 to Max and enter 6 into the Cost field, then hit plus again. This means any orders that weigh between 501 and 1000 will cost $6.
You can continue this process, using any Min/Max ranges and any Cost values that you choose.
Note: The Min/Max fields and the weight field for your products use the same weight unit. Ensure you base your Min/Max values on the same weight unit you used to specify product weights. This example typically applies when grams is the weight unit.
- Active: Leave this field checked if you want customers to see this option in the checkout.
- Click Save and Close to add the Shipping Method.
Now that you have added this shipping method, whenever someone places an order being shipped to Australia and the postcode they supply is between 0 and 9999, this shipping method will appear for them in the checkout. The price that the customer is shown will depend in the weight of their order, and the price associated with that weight.
Other Shipping Examples
This example is just one of many possibly ways to setup your shipping rate calculation. If you'd like to look at some other common methods, take a look at some of the links below: