Calculating Table Rates

[Ironside]

This information may help a few of you. These table rates have been giving me a headache in the last few days. I have been unable to find any information written in layman's terms that explains how to set up a table rates , even even the book I bought called "building sites with oscommerce" doesn't go into detail on how to setup table rates properly. I have been fiddling around and playing with figures and I have got my shopping cart working really well using table rates.

 

The shop I am setting up is selling handmade soap. Each block of soap weighs 100 g. Because people might buy in bulk, calculating shipping costs in weight was the easiest way to do it. Shipping costs for 500 g is £1.99. Between 500 & 1 kg is £4.00, and so on. So the first thing I did was to make the tare weight 0. This is in shipping/packaging. Then on each page that contains our products, I put just 1 as the weight. In the table rate shipping module, I put the following figures 6:1.99,10:4.00,17:5.00,32:5.50,60:6.00. If somebody purchases between one and five blocks of soap, the cost is £1.99, even if someone only purchases one the price is still £1.99. You can see that I made to setting [6:1.66] and then [10:4.00] basically, this is then from six to 10 items, or 600 g to 1 kg. I'm not going to go through the whole list, if you study it, you'll see how I've done it and it works really well.

Edited October 7, 2008 by Ironside

[Ironside]

I haven't quite finished yet. I'm still testing but it's working. Anyone who is going to be buying 100 items will probably be a business. For that, there will be a fixed price. I wouldn't have thought the average shopper will buy any more than 40 or 50 bars which is great because it is working like a dream up to that amount. after all, When was the last time you had more than three or four bars of soap in your house at one given time? I've only got shipping prices up to 5 kg, if I want to keep going, I just get more prices and so on.

[Ironside]

I'm trying something in a slightly different way. Because we have the shipping rate of £1.99 on anything up to 500 g I have put 600:1.99 in the table rate section, and on the each individual product page, 100 in the weights section, this corresponds to 100 g. I had to put 600 in because if I put 500, I could add in the order 4 items, if I did five, the price went to zero. It seems to work okay. I'm just wondering if doing it this way means I can make things work better if that say something weighs 70 g

[Ironside]

I agree that the average punter probably wouldn't buy 61 or more bars of soap - but to make it scalable (for other peoples shops) you need to allow for this...

 

The problem with both table rates and zone rates (which is basically tables rates but more than 1) is that they have an upper limit of characters you can insert.

 

Idea: why not create an open ended system of table rate (or better, zone rate) so it can handle ANY number of products. The only downside to this approach is that all the items need to be the same cost.

 

So, if we said that a bar of soap (or a widget, or a wodget, or anything) costs (say) 1.22 to post, then you could have an open ended system that will multiply 1.22 by the number of items in the order.

 

Sure, it wonn't work for everyone, but would be a nice way to offer postage for some sellers, I think.

 

Thoughts?

 

I'll have a look at what you have mentioned. However, I think I'm getting my head around table right now. I have changed things completely to what they were. This is what I have now puts in table rates: 550:1.99,999:4.00,1650:5.00,3200:5.50,5500:6.00 On each product page, I put in the actual weight in grams and everything seems to tally up the right nicely. For instance, we could have something that any weighs 10 g, if someone buys 50 of them, it will tally up to 500 g which costs£1.99. or I could have a mixture of different weights and whatever the final count is, that will correspond to a shipping fee. At the moment, I've only got up to 5 kg, I can keep going as much as I want.

 

The one thing I have found is I have to set the values in the table rate module a little more than the exact value. That sounds confusing. For example, I have several products weighing 100 g, if I set it at 500 in the module, and then put five in the shopping cart, it goes on to the next shipping fee. I actually have to set at 550 in the module. Sounds weird, but it seems to work.

 

anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that is worked out properly, I've just done some testing and it worked out absolutely spot on.

Edited October 7, 2008 by Ironside