Shipping for live animals and best way to setup

[aquariumdude]

I am setting up a site for shipping live aquarium fish. 

I need a cost effective way to handle less than $15,000 a year in sales but be able handle the shipping.

When shipping live animals you need to use an approved shipping account and I can't use Shopify's account. 

Due to the criticality of shipping the fish, Fedex is the preferred shipper with my shipping account that is already approved for sending live animals.

Two questions - 

1. Shipping live fish requires you to understand the quantity and size of fish along with what can be bagged together (this is too complicated to automate). So how can I add shipping costs post the order.

2. How do I have a cost effective way to use an approved Fedex Shipping account. (Paying for the $3600 on $15,000 of sales is not really feasible) for the advanced Shopify plan.

[Mirdas]

Hello @aquariumdude ,

In cases where packaging is difficult to determine based on the weight or volume of the product, you may try to get approximate rates at checkout using weight or volume and provide the accurate dimensions and weight when printing the shipping label.

You will need CCS enabled on your Shopify plan and an app like the PH Ship, Rate & Track for FedEx app to achieve this use case.