Configuring shipping options

Configure shipping options of your on-line store when you want to set shipping for your products.

There are two kinds of products from the shipping point of view – those which don’t need to be shipped (e.g., media files, e-books that the customers can download from your website) and those which need to be shipped by a delivery service (e.g., clothing, computers, electronics). The Kentico E-commerce Solution allows you to specify for each product if shipping is required.

When placing an order, if at least one product in the shopping cart needs shipping, customers must specify which shipping option will be used for their order. You can then edit the shipping option in the Orders application.

In Kentico, shipping options are provided by carriers and services of these carriers. Imagine a carrier as a package which carry some shipping functionality; for example, a typical carrier is a FedEx carrier which returns shipping availability and price from FedEx. However, FedEx offers more than one type of shipping. That’s why carriers provide services. In the example with the FedEx carrier, its services can be the International Priority service for a quick international delivery and the International Economy service for a slower but cheaper international delivery. If your on-line store has this carrier, then you are able to create shipping options in the Kentico administration interface that offer customers the FedEx International Priority shipping and the FedEx International Economy shipping.

By default, the Kentico E-commerce Solution offers the Default carrier. The Default carrier provides the Weight based shipping service on which you can base shipping options with costs in levels according to weight of products in customers’ shopping carts. Developers can also implement other carriers.

Managing shipping options

You can manage shipping options based on existing carriers in the Store configuration application on the Shipping -> Shipping options tab. To manage carriers and to add other possibilities on how to calculate shipping, see Configuring shipping carriers.

On the Shipping options tab, the system displays a list of all defined shipping options based on all carriers. You can add new shipping options based on any carrier by clicking New shipping option, and you can modify properties of existing shipping options after clicking Edit () in the Actions column. You can also remove shipping options from your on-line store by clicking Delete () next to respective shipping option items.

When editing a shipping option, the system offers the following tabs to specify its properties:

• General
• Payment methods
• Tax classes
• A congifuration tab

General

Here you can edit general properties of the current shipping option.

Payment methods

Here you can specify which payment methods are available for the currently edited shipping option. To add payment methods, click Add payments and select appropriate payment methods in the displayed selection dialog. You can remove selected payment methods from the list at any time using the Remove selected action. You can also remove all listed items at once by clicking … and performing the Remove all action.

Tax classes

Here you can specify which taxes apply to the currently edited shipping option. To add tax classes, click Add tax classes and select appropriate tax classes in the displayed selection dialog. You can remove selected tax classes from the list at any time using the Remove selected action. You can also remove all listed items at once by clicking … and performing the Remove all action.

A configuration tab

Carriers can provide another tab, a tab with configuration of the shipping option. This tab can has various names and it can vary for each service of a carrier. For example, the Default carrier displays the Shipping costs tab.

Configuring the Shipping costs tab of the Default carrier

On this tab, you can define shipping costs for the given shipping option. You can set multiple weight ranges, each with a different shipping cost.

The system displays a list of all shipping costs defined for the currently edited shipping option. You can add new shipping costs by clicking New shipping cost, and you can modify properties of existing shipping costs by clicking Edit () in the Actions column. You can also remove shipping costs from the currently edited shipping option by clicking Delete () on the respective lines.

When creating or editing a shipping cost, you can specify the following properties:

• Minimum weight – specifies the lower limit of the weight range for which the current shipping cost is charged in units set for your on-line store. The upper limit of the weight range is made up by minimum weight of the next weight range (if defined).
• Shipping cost – specifies the shipping cost charged for the current weight range in the main currency of the site.