Setting up weight based shipping by state 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 12 Shipping Regions which is fairly quick, simply take a look at Adding State-by-State Regions 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
This process will need to be completed 8 times, once per state. The instructions below are for NSW, and can be repeated for the other states easily.
- 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 and destination, such as Standard or Express Shipping NSW.
- Domestic: Leave this box checked as this Shipping Method is handling shipping to domestic locations only.
- Selected Domestic Regions: Select each of the entries from the Available Regions section that look like "NSW - (XXXX-XXXX New South Wales)" and then click on Add Selected. After a few moments the selected regions will move over to the Selected Regions section. When adding the other states, select the appropriate regions for that state.
- 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.
- 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 these shipping methods, whenever someone places an order being shipped to Australia and the postcode they supply falls within the postcode ranges assigned to these methods, the appropriate shipping method for their state will appear for them in the checkout at the price that applies to their order 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: