Flat Rate Shipping – Advanced
First step is to go to Shippo settings and uncheck the Live Shipping Rates ( ) Live Shipping Rates Do you want cart/checkout pages to display live shipping rates?
Then go to Flat Rate/Free Shipping settings, and click that.
For each Zone that you plan to sell in hover over the zone name and the word edit will show under it. Click Edit to choose which shipping method you are going to possibly use in your storefront for your shipping processes. (This can be set and overridden per product as well).
***You MUST choose shipping options for each zone that you choose to ship to, otherwise shipping will not be charged during the checkout process.
Our Flat Rate Shipping – Advanced options allow you to create a large variety of options for your shipping needs.
Hover over the Flat Rate Shipping Method and the word edit will show up. Click on that to be taken to the screen where you can set up how you want your flat rates and how you want them calculated.
Title: This is what will show for Shipping title on the customer order.
Cost: This is your base rate. It is recommended to set this to $0.00 as the amount you enter for each class is added to the base price you set.
Be sure to scroll down to see all the Flat Rate Classes we have listed. (You can complete our Sellers Request Form (in the Sellers Resource Hub to have specific Flat Rate – Box sizes created for you to use)
This allows you to charge different fees for each box size (shipping class) that you offer. This can be overridden per product as well when entering or editing products.
Each shipping class has a cost field associated with it. For products that aren’t assigned to any category, there’s a cost field called “no shipping class cost”. The costs entered into these fields are an additional cost added to the cost field at the top of the Flat Rate shipping configuration form. To charge shipping costs based only on shipping classes, deactivate the cost field at the top of the form by setting it to $0.00.
The Calculation Type in the last dropdown of the form determines the shipping costs when products from multiple shipping classes are in a customer’s cart. You can calculate them in two different ways:
- Per Class: Charge shipping for each shipping class individually.
- Per Order: Charge shipping for the most expensive shipping class.
Here are two examples to show how these two calculations differ from each other:
Example: Flat Rate calculated per shipping class:
Rates | Costs |
Cost Field | $0.00 |
Flat Rate Medium Box x1 | $10.00 |
Flat Rate Small Box x1 | $1.00 |
Total Shipping Costs | $11.00 |
The customer pays $11.00 for shipping in this example because shipping is calculated per shipping class (Cost Field $0.00 + Flat Rate Medium Box $10.00+ Flat Rate Small Box $1.00 = $11.00)
Example: Flat Rate calculated per order:
Rates | Costs |
Cost Field | $0.00 |
Flat Rate Medium Box x1 | $10.00 |
Flat Rate Small Box x1 | $1.00 |
Total Shipping Costs | $ 10.00 |
The customer pays $10.00 for shipping in this example because shipping is calculated per order and only the heavy shipping class is added to the cart flat rate (Cost Field $0.00 + Flat Rate Medium Box (most expensive) $10.00= $10.00) .
You can configure Flat Rates based on the quantity of items in a cart or a percentage of the total order costs. Additionally, when you use percentage-based shipping fees, you can set minimum and maximum shipping costs to ensure that you never charge too little or too much for shipping.Configuring advanced flat rates requires writing a shipping formula. Here are the components/placeholders available for these formulas:
- [qty] — This is the number of products in the cart
- [fee percent=”numeric value”] – This calculates a shipping fee as a percentage of the total cost of products to be shipped. If all items in the order require shipping, the percentage is applied to the order total. To ensure accurate shipping costs, you can set a minimum or maximum fee for the percentage-based calculation using the following:
- min_fee=”numeric value”
- max_fee=”numeric value”
- Example: Quantity Based Flat Rate – You want to charge your customers a $10 standard flat rate + $2 for each item in their cart. In the cost field write this formula:
10 + ( 2 * [qty] )
Quantity of items | Shipping Costs |
1 | $12.00 |
2 | $14.00 |
3 | $16.00 |
Example quantity-based flat rates
- Example: Percentage-Based Flat Rate – You want to charge your customers a $10 flat rate + a 10% shipping fee on their order total. In the cost field write the following formula:
10 + [fee percent=”10″]
Order Total | Shipping Costs |
$10.00 | $11.00 |
$20.00 | $12.00 |
$30.00 | $13.00 |
Example percentage-based flat rates
- Example: Percentage-Based Flat Rate with Min Fee Applied: You want to charge your customers a $10 flat rate + 10% shipping fee on their total order. Additionally, you want to make sure that your customers are never charged less than $4.00 for shipping. In the cost field write this formula:
10 + [fee percent=”10″ min_fee=”4”]
Order Total | Shipping Costs |
$20.00 | $14.00 |
$26.00 | $14.00 |
$42.00 | $14.20 |
$54.00 | $15.40 |
Example percentage-based flat rates with minimum fee applied
Flat Rate Use Case: How to Offer Free Shipping for Some Products and a Flat Rate for Others
Setting up a combination of free shipping for some products and a flat rate for others requires the use of Shipping Classes.
In this use case, we set up three shipping classes: Free Shipping, Regular Shipping, and Expedited Shipping. We then assigned them to the appropriate products. Now, we’ll use the following settings to offer free shipping for the products in the “free shipping” class and flat rates based on quantity for the products in the “regular” and “expedited” shipping classes (Note: customers will only see the general name of the flat rate that is entered at the top of the settings, not the shipping class names):
- Set the base cost (top of the page) to $0.00 or leave it blank.
- Add the cost of the Expedited Shipping Class Cost field. For our example, we use 20 * [qty] or $20.00 per product of that class in the cart.
- Add the cost of the Regular Shipping Class Cost field. For our example, we use 10 * [qty] or $10.00 per product of that class in the cart.
- Add the cost of the Free Shipping Class to $0.00.
- Select Per Class: Charge shipping for each shipping class individually from the Calculation Type dropdown menu at the bottom of the page.
Settings for configuring free shipping on some products and flat rates on others using shipping classes.
Here is an example of a customer cart and total shipping costs based on the configuration above. Notice that shipping fees are only charged to products in the regular and expedited shipping classes, while the four products from the free shipping class have no shipping fee charged to them:
Products | Qty | Shipping Cost |
Free Shipping Class products | 4 | $0.00 |
Regular Shipping Class products | 3 | $30.00 |
Expedited Shipping Class products | 1 | $20.00 |
Total Shipping Costs | $50.00 |
Note: If you want to offer free shipping based on order totals or coupons, head to the core shipping methods guide for configuring Free Shipping.
Views: 5
