How easy would it be to add Tare Weight(s) for shipping?

[AlbertOnMars]

Greetings!

I am investigating moving my store to Shopify from a self-hosted ecommerce solution.  One thing that seems to be missing is tare weights for shipping.  Most of the items I sell are fairly small, and most orders contain several items.  In order to calculate more accurate shipping costs for my customers, I really need to be able to specify at least one tare weight I can use for all packages.  Ideally I'd be able to specify the actual dimensions of each product, and the store could choose from different standard box sizes I use, and each of those unique box sizes would have its own tare weight.  However, I'd be happy to just have a single tare weight, which is how my current platform is setup.

I searched this forum and have seen older threads where people asked about tare weights, and even one where someone at Shopify said they'd pass the suggestion along to developers, but nothing must have ever come of that.  I haven't seen any third-party plugins that add this option, either. 

My question is: Howe easy would it be for me to modify Shopify to add a tare weight option and and then add that value to total weight of all products being shipped before the shipping costs are calculated?  I am a programmer by trade, so I'm not afraid to learn how to do this myself, I just want to know if it would be relatively straightforward to do so.

Thanks in advance for any insight!

[PluginHive]

Hi @AlbertOnMars,

As you have already mentioned, there are a lot of other threads mentioning the same requirement; adding the dimensions and choose from multiple boxes, not just the default box. Unfortunately, there is no option to do so in Shopify currently. 

If you are open to using an app, I would suggest you try our Multi Carrier Shipping Label app that helps you handle this with ease. With the box packing method in the app, you can set up different packages for your products based on the weight & dimensions. So, whenever your customer places an order, the app automatically chooses the right box and calculates the rates accordingly.

And Yes, the app allows you to add the tare weight (box weight) as well in your case for each of the boxes you are adding.