Shipping methods

Once you get paid for a sale, you need to fulfill the order and that means you have to ship the items purchased. How you ship products is largely a function of what shipping methods you make available to your customers.

Shipping is one of the most complex aspects of e-commerce, and one where you can lose money if you're not careful. As you work through your shipping configurations, it's important to keep in mind the following:

What you charge your customers for shipping does not have to be exactly what you're charged by your carriers. Just as you can offer free shipping, you can also charge flat rates based on weight or quantity, or add a surcharge to "live" rates.
By default, Magento does not provide you with highly sophisticated shipping rate calculations, especially when it comes to "dimensional" shipping. Consider shipping rate calculations as estimates only. Consult with whomever is actually doing your shipping to determine if any rate adjustments should be made to accommodate dimensional shipping.
Note
Dimensional shipping refers to a recent change by UPS, FedEx, and others to charge you the greater of two rates: the cost based on weight or the cost based on a formula to determine the equivalent weight of a package based on its size: (Length x Width x Height) ÷ 166 (for US domestic shipments; other factors apply for other countries and exports). Therefore, if you have a large package that doesn't weigh much, the live rate quoted in Magento might not be reflective of your actual cost once the dimensional weight is calculated. If your packages may be large and lightweight, consult your carrier representative or shipping fulfillment partner for guidance.
If your shipping calculations need more sophistication than provided natively in Magento 2, consider an add-on. However, remember that what you charge to your customers does not have to be what you pay. For that reason — and to keep it simple for your customers — consider offering table rates (as described later).
Tip
WebShopApps (http://webshopapps.com) is perhaps the pre-eminent Magento shipping add-on provider. More recently, they have created a hosted shipping configuration system called ShipperHQ (https://shipperhq.com), which we have used to configure some rather complex shipping rules. If your shipping rules are more than Magento can natively accommodate, you may want to check these out.
Each method you choose will be displayed to your customers if their cart and shipping destination matches the conditions of the method. Take care not to confuse your customers with too many choices: simpler is better.

Keeping these insights in mind, let's explore the various shipping methods available by default in Magento 2.

Before we go over the shipping methods, let's go over some basic concepts that will apply to most, if not all, shipping methods.

Origin

Where you ship your products from will determine shipping rates, especially for carrier rates (for example, UPS, FedEx). To set your origin, go to Stores | Configuration | Sales | Shipping Settings and expand the Origin panel. At the very least, enter the Country, Region/State and ZIP/Postal Code field. The others are optional for rate calculation purposes.

At the bottom of this panel is the choice to Apply Custom Shipping Policy. If enabled, a field will appear where you can enter text about your overall shipping policy. For instance, you may want to enter Orders placed by 12:00 PM CT will be processed for shipping on the same day. Applies only to orders placed Monday-Friday, excluding shipping holidays.

Handling fee

You can add an invisible handling fee to all shipping rate calculations. Invisible in that it does not appear as a separate line item charge to your customers. To add a handling fee to a shipping method:

Choose whether you wish to add a fixed amount or a percentage of the shipping cost
If you choose to add a percentage, enter the amount as a decimal number instead of a percentage (for example, 0.06 instead of 6%)

Allowed countries

As you configure your shipping methods, don't forget to designate to which countries you will ship. If you only ship to the US and Canada, for instance, be sure to have only those countries selected. Otherwise, you'll have customers from other countries placing orders you will have to cancel and refund.

Method not available

In some cases, the method you configured may not be applicable to a customer based on destination, type of product, weight, or any number of factors. For these instances, you can choose to:

Show the method (for example, UPS, USPS, DHL, and so on), but with an error message that the method is not applicable
Don't show the method at all

Tip

Depending on your shipping destinations and target customers, you may want to show an error message just so the customer knows why no shipping solution is being displayed. If you don't show any error message and the customer disqualifies for any shipping method, the customer will be confused.

Free shipping

There are several ways to offer free shipping to your customers. If you want to display a Free Shipping option to all customers whose carts meet a minimum order amount (not including taxes or shipping), enable this panel.

However, you may want to be more judicious in how and when you offer free shipping. Other alternatives include:

Creating shopping cart promotions (see Chapter 6, Marketing Tools)
Include a free shipping method in your table rates (see later in this section)
Designate a specific free shipping method and minimum qualifying amount within a carrier configuration (such as UPS and FedEx).

If you choose to use this panel, note that it will apply to all orders. Therefore, if you want to be more selective, consider one of the above methods.

Flat rate

As with free shipping, above, the Flat Rate panel allows you to charge one, singular flat rate for all orders regardless of weight or destination. You can apply the rate on a per item or per order basis, as well.

Table rates

While using live carrier rates can provide more accurate shipping quotes for your customers, you may find it more convenient to offer a series of rates for your customers at certain break points.

For example, you might only need something as simple as follows, for any domestic destination:

0-5 lbs, $5.99
6-10 lbs, $8.99
11+ lbs, $10.99

Let's assume you're a US-based shipper. While these rates will work for you when shipping to any of the contiguous 48 states, you need to charge more for shipments to Alaska and Hawaii. For our example, let's assume tiered pricing of $7.99, $11.99, and $14.99 at the same weight breaks.

All of these conditions can be handled using the table rates shipping method. Based on our example, we would first start by creating a spreadsheet (in Excel or Numbers) similar to the following:

Country	Region/State	Zip/Postal code	Weight (and above)	Shipping price
USA	*	*	0	5.99
USA	*	*	6	8.99
USA	*	*	11	10.99
USA	AK	*	0	7.99
USA	AK	*	6	11.99
USA	AK	*	11	14.99
USA	HI	*	0	7.99
USA	HI	*	6	11.99
USA	HI	*	11	14.99

Let's review the columns in this chart:

Country: Here, you would enter the three-character country code (for a list of valid codes, see http://goo.gl/6A1woj).
Region/State: Enter the two-character code for any state or province.
Zip/Postal code: Enter any specific postal codes for which you wish the rate to apply.
Weight (and above): Enter the minimum applicable weight for the range. The assigned rate will apply until the weight of the cart products combined equals a higher weight tier.
Shipping price: Enter the shipping charge you wish to provide to the customer. Do not include the currency prefix (for example, "$" or "€").

Now, let's discuss the asterisk (*) and how to limit the scope of your rates. As you can see in the chart, we have only indicated rates for US destinations. That's because there are no rows for any other countries. We could easily add rates for all other countries, simply by adding rows with an asterisk in the first column. By adding those rows, we're telling Magento to use the US rates if the customer's ship-to address is in the US, and to use other rates for all other country destinations.

Likewise for the Region/State column, Magento will first look for matches for any state codes listed. If it can't find any, then it will look for any rates with an asterisk. If no asterisk is present for a qualifying weight, then no applicable rate will be provided to the customer.

The asterisk in the Zip/Postal code column means that the rates apply to all postal codes for all states.

Note

To get a sample file with which to configure your rates, you can set your configuration scope to one of your websites (furniture or sportswear in our examples) and click Export CSV in the Table Rates panel.

Quantity- and price-based rates

In the above example, we used the weight of the items in the cart to determine shipping rates. You can also configure table rates to use calculations based on the number of items in the cart or the total price of all items (less taxes and shipping).

To set up your chart, simply rename the fourth column Quantity (and above) or Subtotal (and above).

Save your rate table

To upload your table rates, you'll need to save/export your spreadsheet as a CSV file. You can name it whatever you like. Save it to your computer where you can find it for the next steps.

Table rate settings

Before you upload your new rates, you should first set your table rates configurations. To do so, you can set your default settings at the default configuration scope. However, to upload your CSV file, you will need to switch your store view to the appropriate website scope.

When changing to a website scope, you will see the Export CSV button and the ability to upload your rate table file. You'll note that all other settings may have Use Default checked. You can, of course, uncheck this box beside any field and adjust the settings according to your preferences.

Let's review the unique fields in this panel:

Enabled: Set to Yes to enable table rates
Title: Enter the name you wish displayed to customers when they're presented with a table rate-based shipping charge in the checkout process
Method Name: This name is presented to the customer in the shopping cart
Tip
You should probably change the default Table Rate to something more descriptive, as this term is likely irrelevant to customers. We have used terms Standard Ground, Economy, or Saver as names. The Title should probably be the same, as well, so that the customer, during checkout, has a visual confirmation of their shipping choice.
Condition: This allows you to choose the calculation method you want to use. Your choices, as we described earlier, are Weight vs. Destination, Price vs. Destination, and # of items vs. Destination.
Include Virtual Products in Price Calculation: Since virtual products (see Chapter 2, Managing Products) have no weight, this will have no effect on rate calculations for weight-based rates. However, it will affect rate calculations for price or quantity-based rates.

Once you have your settings, click on Save Config.

Upload rate table

Once you have saved your settings, you can now click the button next to Import and upload your rate table. Be sure to test your rates to see that you have properly constructed your rate table.

Carrier methods

The remaining shipping methods involve configuring UPS, USPS, FedEx, and/or DHL to provide "live" rate calculations. UPS is the only one that is set to query for live rates without the need for you to have an account with the carrier. This is both good and bad. It's good, as you only have to enable the shipping method to have it begin querying rates for your customers. On the flip side, the rates that are returned are not negotiated rates. Negotiated rates are those you may have been offered as discounted rates based on your shipping volume.

FedEx, USPS, and DHL require account-specific information in order to activate. This connection with your account should provide rates based on any discounts you have established with your carrier. If you wish to use negotiated rates for UPS, you may have to find a Magento add-on that will provide a modified rate query.