Paid Shipping Setup

Please take your time and go through this section step by step. Some steps may not pertain, depending upon your shipping setup. Feel free to e-mail buddy@twcreations.com with any questions you may have.

  1. Enter administration, click on the Store Setup button in the Black Menu, scroll to the Shipping section, and click the Edit link.
  2. Charge For Shipping: Check "Yes".
  3. Shipping Company/Method: Leave blank.
  4. Handling Charge: Whatever is entered here will be added to the calculated total. Note that handling charges may be set on individual countries also.
  5. Ship To Foreign Countries: Check "No" if you wish to ship orders only domestically. Otherwise, shipping will be available to all valid Billing/Shipping countries that you should have setup in the Initial Administration Settings portion of this document.
  6. Ship To Different Address: Check "No" to use customer's billing address as shipping address. When used in conjunction with AVS, this will reduce the chance of Fraud and may be wise if you are selling high value items.
  7. Ship By Weight Or Per Package: NOTE! We have an option to price each item individually. Please see More Shipping Options, Item 3.
  8. Loop Option: This may require some thought, and experimentation. Packages generally cost more to ship for the first portion of each package. Such as $3.00 for the 1st pound or 2, and somewhat less for each additional pound or fraction thereof. This may vary somewhat depending upon the shipper. But as a general rule, all things being equal (no oversized packages, etc.), it should be somewhat cheaper to ship a single 50 pound package than it is to ship 5 - 10 pound packages. And alot cheaper than shipping 25 - 2 pound packages. That is where our loop option comes in. We take the total weight of the order and divide it by the loop variable to come up with the number of packages to calculate shipping on. Example: So we now have 4 - 18.75 pound packages, which we pass to the Live shipping tools. When using our own calculations we will round this up to 19.

    If you are selling large items that will likely all ship in their own package, you may set the Loop Option to "All". This will effectively get the shipping cost for every item, for every quantity in the shoppers basket. Again, we try to communicate with UPS as few times as possible, only doing so when the next item "in queue" is a different weight than the previous item.

    This is all fine and dandy if all of your items are close to the same size and weight. Where it gets confusing is if you have some large items, and some small items. If you're selling batteries to go along with your VCR's remote, you obviously won't be shipping 4 batteries in 4 separate packages, so setting this option to All would be cost prohibitive to your customers if they are ordering batteries. Your best bet is to play around with different scenarios.

    We also have the option of setting any item to be calculated separately if you have the loop set to something other than all. This would be done by setting dimensions on that item in product administration. This would also be used to send oversize dimensions to the Live shipping tools. But for the VCR example above, you could have the loop option set to 20 pounds and any battereis, remotes or other accessories your customer bought to go with the VCR would be calculated as a single package (if they all weighed less than 20 pounds together). By setting dimensions on the VCR, it would be calculated separately at it's actual weight. Now we have a more realistic shipping scenario. The 25 pound VCR being calculated as a single 25 pound package, and the 10 pounds of accessories being calculated as a single 10 pound package.

    If you chose "Per Package" under "Ship By Weight Or Per Package" above, read this! In this case the loop option will work the same way. Although you don't necessarily have to put the exact "weight" of the product in the weight field. If you set the loop option to "20" and you have an item of which 4 will fit in a box, you would set that item as 5 "pounds", even though that item may, in reality, weigh 10 pounds or 2 pounds.

    It doesn't get any more confusing than this, we promise. :-)
  9. Domestic Shipping Calculation: Click the radio button next to the option you want to use to ship within your country. Note that US Shippers should choose the option that you wish to use to ship within the 48 contiguous US states. You will have the option to choose a different method for Alaska and Hawaii and yet another method for APO/FPO.
  10. Click the Edit Shipping Setup Button.
  11. Complete the following items.
    1. Insure For Value: Only available if you chose to Ship using UPS. UPS automatically insures each package up to $100.00. If you would like to include the approximate insurance charges, check "Yes". Unless you chose "All" for the Loop Option, or set it to "150" where we will likely only be getting the cost to ship a single package, this is guesswork at best, and will divide the total of the entire order into the number of packages.
    2. Originating Zip Code: The zip where the items will be shipping from, be it your physical location or that of a fulfillment house. Only required if using one of the Live tools.
    3. If you chose Set My Own Rates for Domestic Calculations, and Ship By Weight or Order you will have the following Domestic options:
      • Flat Per Order Rate with 1 Shipping Option
      • Flat Per Order Rate with 2 Shipping Options
      • Flat Per Order Rate with 3 Shipping Options
      • My Calculations with 1 Shipping Option
      • My Calculations with 2 Shipping Options
      • My Calculations with 3 Shipping Options
    4. If you chose Set My Own Rates for Domestic Calculations, and Ship Per Package you will have these options instead:
      • Flat Per Package Rate with 1 Shipping Option
      • Flat Per Package Rate with 2 Shipping Options
      • Flat Per Package Rate with 3 Shipping Options
      Note! If more than 3 domestic shipping options are desired please continue and set all domestic rates to 0.00. Then see ezcart/includes/shippingmodules/myshippingdefaults.cfm for details how to set additional shipping options.

      Note! By default, we hide shipping options set at $0. If you would like shipping to be deferred, but would like to allow the customer to choose from your shipping options, choose the following settings: Set My Own Rates, Flat Per Order Rate With x Shipping Options. Set all shipping amounts to a negative number such as -1. You must also set attributes.deferzeroshipping = "1" in Application.cfm, otherwise we'll assume that you are giving free shipping.
    5. If you chose to allow shipping to foreign countries, continue below. Otherwise, click the Edit Shipping Setup button.
    6. If you chose Ship By Weight or Order you will have the following International options:
      • UPS "Live" Order Calculation
      • US Postal "Live" Order Calculation
      • Based On Order Total
      • Drop Shipment - Calculation Delayed
      • Flat Per Order Rate with 1 Shipping Option
      • Flat Per Order Rate with 2 Shipping Options
      • My Calculations with 1 Shipping Option
      • My Calculations with 2 Shipping Options
    7. If you chose Ship Per Package you will have the following International options:
      • Based On Order Total
      • Drop Shipment - Calculation Delayed
      • Flat Per Package Rate with 1 Shipping Option
      • Flat Per Package Rate with 2 Shipping Options
      Note! If you are choosing any of the Flat Rates or My Calculation Rates and more than 2 international shipping options are desired please continue and set all domestic rates to 0.00. Then see ezcart/includes/shippingmodules/myshippingdefaults.cfm for details how to set additional shipping options.
    8. Once you choose a foreign shipping method, click the Edit Shipping Setup button.
    9. Depending upon whether you chose any of the Flat Rate options or My Calculation options on the previous 2 pages, you are either done, or there is some more work to do. Assuming you chose a Flat Rate option and/or My Calculation option.
      • My Calculations:
        • Name each shipping option.
        • Enter the amount to charge for the 1st pound and the amount for each additional pound for each option. All fractions of a pound are rounded up. 1/2 pound orders will be charged for 1 pound, 2-1/2 pound orders for 3 pounds, etc.
        • If you set the 1st pound and each additional pound to 0.00 for the FIRST OPTION, that option will be displayed as FREE SHIPPING!
      • Flat Per Order or Per Package Rate:
        • Name each shipping option.
        • Enter the flat amount to charge for each option. For By Weight Or Per Order setups this will be for the entire shipment, whether one box or 100 boxes. For Per Package setups, this will be based on the loop option.
        • If you set the rate as 0.00 for the FIRST OPTION, that option will be displayed as FREE SHIPPING!
    10. Click the Edit Shippng Setup button and you are done.