Customers choose between two ship dates at checkout?

[twfwa]

I sell plant items to home gardeners. We hold sales in fall/winter, and then ship in spring in two big waves (one in April and another in May). I’m looking for a solution where my customers can choose April, 2022, or May, 2022, at checkout, and then my staff will know WHEN to ship their items. 

I tried to set up two unique rates (one April, 2022 and one May, 2022), but I can't figure out how to let customers choose which rate they prefer. When I add a product to one rate, it "disappears" from the other rate.

Does anyone have any solution on how to accomplish this natively in Shopify shipping settings?

[Rick]

Hey @twfwa 

That is an interesting one! I can definitley see why that sort of a setup would suit your business, as you said you host two sales and then ship at two different times.

Do you have all of your products in the same Shipping Profile? Products can only be in one shipping profile at a time, so if you wanted customers to be able to choose between different rates on an order, and not have combined shipping rates, then it would be a good idea to have them in the same profile. That way, when you add 2 x different shipping rates to a profile, the customer would have the ability to choose a rate.

You could still do this with products split across several shipping profiles, you would just need to use the same rate names everywhere to add rates together when customers buy products from multiple profiles or locations.

To demonstrate what I mean, I created a test shipping profile for two products, and set up two shipping rates within it. You can see in my screenshots below that both rates will be shown to the customer, and they can choose which one they want. If these products were split across two profiles for example, then as long as the rate names are the same, the cost would be combined to be €100 instead of €50.

That would be the way I would approach this, if I wanted to use the default shipping options to achieve this. There's a couple of other routes you could go here. You could capture the desired shipping date by requesting that the customer leaves a note in the cart when placing their order. You could change the wording of this note section to ask the customer to specify their chosen shipping date. You could also consider using an app such as Delivery Date Schedule which will allow your customers to specify their preferred date and time for the order delivery before checking out.

I hope this helps! Let me know which way you decide to go with this, just so I can make sure you get this sorted! 

[twfwa]

Yes! This is exactly what I need! I am going to endeavor to set it up this AM. Thank you!

[twfwa]

The hiccup I'm hitting is that we ship by weight in both months. I wish I could have people choose April or May, 2022, shipping natively in Shopify, and then charge them the appropriate flat rate box fee.

[Rick]

Thanks for getting back @twfwa 

You should still be able to manage weight based rates for this. It would just be a case of adding several extra rates for each month, then setting each one up to reflect the applicable weight condition and cost. For example, on my test store I added 3 x April rates, and 3 x May rates. Each one has a different weight min/max range, and a different price. You could set these up any way you like, even with price based conditions. 

The most important thing will be to mirror the April rate setup exactly the same in the May rate setup. That way, if a customers order is eligible for one, it will be eligible for the other (and they can choose which one they want at checkout). Also, if you are doing this across multiple shipping profiles, then make sure the rate names match exactly (otherwise the rates and names won't combine properly). I have included a screenshot below to show you what I mean:

Let me know if that works for you?

[twfwa · Accepted solution]

THANK YOU!! I was able to follow your example and it WORKS!!!! I have been struggling with a solution for this for weeks. I have placed a few test orders and it works beautifully. The shipping method is an option at checkout, shows up on the invoice, and is easy for everyone (staff and customer) to see when they review their order.

(The piece I was missing was: I didn't realize that I could modify the "Custom Flat Rate (no shipping time)" field.)

The only issue I still have: do you have any suggestions on how I might sort my order by shipping methods when it's time to print packing slips and ship? We typically have 7,000-8,000 orders that we ship in April/May, and I would like to be able to print only the packing slips for April when it's time to tackle those instead of manually sorting the thousands of orders (obviously!).

Do you know if there is a way to create a tag for the orders based on shipping method? I couldn't seem to find one... or is there another way to filter for this? Perhaps I should start a new thread with this question?

Thank you so, so much for your help!

Sarah

[twfwa]

There is actually an existing thread on this "Tag for shipping options?" Q from March, 2021, but no solution is posted: https://community.shopify.com/c/payments-shipping-and/automatically-add-a-tag-based-on-shipping-opti....

If anyone has any ideas I would love insight!

Sarah