Another question about combined shipping

[Blushbookbox]

Hello and thank you to everyone who replies.

We have a business that sells one product a month. Postage is easy to calculate for our 1 kg weight, same size, box. But, now we are looking to expand the business and add merchandise that ranges in weight from 4 grams to 200 grams and beyond. We are in Australia with 87% of our business is overseas where we are already absorbing some postage costs thus postage is an issue. So we come to my question.

If the customer bought these light weight merchandise items as well as our monthly product we could easily slip it into the same box and there will be no additional postage costs to our customers and a happy customer is made. BUT, what if the customer buys just these small merchandise items then we will need to charge for postage as most of our customers are American and shipping there is not cheap. Adding the postage costs to the item and offering "free postage" in this case would make the merchandise excessive in cost.

Here lies the question and the meaning for this post. I honestly can not see how I can do this on Shopify. I thought for the merchandise shipping I could charge postage based on weight. Anything under 1kg would be the charged the small padded envelope cost, anything over 1kg would be ASSUMED to have included our main product so we wouldn't charge for the merchandise postage. With high postage this could so easily go wrong and cost us dearly. Clear as mud so far?

Any help would be appreciated. Knowing Shopify as I have come to learn, there might yet be ANOTHER app of which I will need to pay ANOTHER monthly fee for this yet additional service as Shopify itself is pretty useless anything outside the basics. Sorry Shopify, but the truth hurts. I am tired of "there's an app for that" translating to "there's yet another company that will charge you a monthly fee for things that other stores offer for free".

Thanks again for anyone who could point me in the right direction. How can I juggle multiple merchandise items alongside my monthly product when the weights are so vastly different?

Thanks.

[Erin]

Hi, @Blushbookbox. 

I'm happy to help with this! However, I have some questions to make sure I'm understanding what you mean and am giving you accurate advice. From what I understand, you are unsure how to set up your shipping for your new products, is that correct? Typically as you add new products shipping would be calculated based on the information you enter for those products. For example, if you are calculating your shipping cost based on weight you would enter the weights for your new products as you add them, and shipping would be calculated accordingly based on the rates you've added in your shipping settings. For clarity, how have you set up your shipping currently? It sounds like you are using weight to calculate your shipping, but are you using flat shipping rates or are you using calculated shipping rates? Are all of your products within the same shipping profile or are you creating a separate shipping profile for the new products you'd like to add? Once we have more information we can help further. This guide on setting up shipping rates can help in the meantime.

[Blushbookbox]

Hi Erin and thanks for replying.

Because my current product is only one product, sold once a month, being a consistent size, weight, same box size etc I have setup up flat rate with different shipping costs depending on where in the world it is going. Because the majority of my customers are in the US I actually absorb some of the high postage costs thus lowering my profit. For example. If my customer buys my product, they live in the US, I charge $20 shipping for a 1kg box . Now that I want to add merchandise, example a bookmark, I could easily slip that into the same box and it wouldn't change the postage as a bookmark is super light and wouldn't affect the shipping costs so I don't want to charge for shipping the bookmark. But if the customer orders just a bookmark by itself then shipping to the US would be the same cost as the actual bookmark so giving free shipping would mean I not making any money and possibly losing money depending on the shipping costs. Doubling the item cost so as to include "free" shipping would make the product undesirable to purchase especially if purchasing multiple bookmarks (Bookmarks is only an example as there are multiple like items that could be purchased at the same time that are lightweight and could fit into the same larger box).

What I am looking for is a "if/then" scenerio. If the customer orders a bookmark with the monthly product then no extra shipping costs. But, if the customer orders a bookmark on its own then shipping costs will incur. So I looked at shipping by weight. I'm assuming Shopify would add the weight together of all purchased items based on the invoice and charge accordingly. I think this should work for a bookmark but what about any other merchandise that is bulkier or heavier? These could drastically change the box dimensions and weight. I'm already straddling the postage costs based on weight. A little bit more weight will bump the box into the next postage category an additional $10.

I just want to be able to ensure I'm not absorbing even more  postage costs while at the same time the customer is not getting overcharged  postage and thus upsetting the customer.

I hope this explains it. Sorry if it doesn't.

[Summer · Accepted solution]

Thanks for taking the time to write this detailed explanation, @Blushbookbox! This is very helpful. 

I absolutely understand where you're coming from - high shipping costs can certainly deter customers from placing an order. Therefore, we would love to work with you to come up with the best solution. Now, so far with all the details we have discussed, it looks like setting up weight-based shipping would be the best course of action. You do have the ability to set various tiers, so you can control what weight range to set and what prices to charge. I'm thinking you can set up your rates similar to this:

What do you think? Do any potential issues come to mind with this kind of arrangement? 

[Blushbookbox]

HI Summer;

It appears this should work. Thank you so much for attention to detail and laying out the example. I can see what you're saying and I'll give it a go.

I'm going to assume that Shopify takes all the orders, calculates all the weights, and then calculates the shipping costs. If that is the case this should work. 🙂

Thank you so much.

[Summer]

My pleasure, @Blushbookbox! I believe it should work too. Don't hesitate to reach out to us if you encounter any problems and we'll help you further 😊

[Keerthi_Sree]

Hello @Blushbookbox ,

The solution provided by @Summer from Shopify is one of the simplest and easiest ways to configure accurate shipping costs. 

While flat rates could be a straightforward workaround, offering real-time rates for international shipping would always the best approach, to avoid any additional charges and ensure customs requirements are met.

If you want to explore the real-time rates and labels approach, you can check out Shopify's built-in carriers such as Sendle, FedEx, etc., as you prefer not to use additional apps.

For additional flexibility with shipping, consider the PH Multi-Carrier Shipping Label app, which allows you to add your carrier account for major global carriers such as Australia Post, FedEx, DHL Express, Sendle, TNT Australia, Aramex MyFastway, UPS, and more. Please feel free to reach out should you require further assistance.