Shipping zones and methods

Shipping zones

Shipping zones are groups of locations in a particular market. These groups of locations can determine the available shipping methods for a given shipping address.

Different shipping zones can be created and filtered using a regular expression to match the country, state, or zip code of an address.

Shipping methods

Shipping methods allow users to provide delivery options with prices available to customers.

Available shipping methods

Shipping methods are defined by currency and can be restricted to a market (in the latter case the currency is inherited by the market's price list). Available delivery options can also be differentiated by:

• Shipping category — the shipping method will be available only if the items to be shipped belong to a specified shipping category.
• Shipping zone — the shipping method will be available only if the shipping address belongs to a specified shipping zone.
• Stock location — the shipping method is available only if the items are shipped from that specific stock location.
• Weight — the shipping method is available only if the total weight of the items to be shipped is greater than a specified minimum value and/or lower than a specified maximum value (in this case the shipping method unit of weight must also be defined). The total weight of the shipment is automatically calculated from the single weights of the items included.

Shipping method cost

When you create a shipping method you must set a price that will be used as its fixed cost. You can also define a free-over amount, i.e. the order's total amount that activates free shipping (shipping methods can also be free based on specific promotion rules).

Three schemes are currently supported for shipping method price management (default is flat):

• Flat — the shipping method has a fixed price that will be eventually set to zero when the order total amount exceeds a certain value (if a free-over amount was specified).
• Weight-tiered — the shipping method's price is tiered based on the total weight of the items included in the shipment. If a free over amount was specified, it applies regardless of the tier. If a minimum and/or maximum value for the shipping method's availability was specified, only the tiers between those values will be considered.
• External — the shipping method's price is fetched from an external service which handles the custom calculation overriding the price set in Commerce Layer.

Shipping method tiers

You can define up to 5 weight-based tiers for each shipping method. For each tier you need to specify:

• An upper limit for the weight value (the unit of weight will be inherited from the shipping method).
• The price that will be charged for the shipping method if the total weight of the shipment is lower than (or equal to) that limit.

If the upper limit field is left empty the related tier will be considered a beyond tier, meaning that the specified price will be charged for all the shipments whose total weight is greater than the maximum tier's upper limit. If no beyond tier is set the shipping method's fixed cost will be used as the beyond price.