Get More Accurate UPS(R) and United States Postal Service(R) Rate Quotes for Multiple-Item Orders

Posted by Cindy at 10/19/2006 9:08 PM
Categories: New Features
With Quick Shopping Cart(R) version 1.9.2, you can configure UPS and US Postal Service shipping to calculate the rates per box instead of per individual item.  This will generate more accurate shipping rate quotes for customers who order multiple items in one order.
 
To do this,
  1. Enable UPS or US Postal from the Processing —> Shipping menu. 
  2. For Rate Method, select Multiple products ship in the same package. 
  3. Indicate whether you want to charge a handling fee once, for the entire order, or to each package.
  4. Select the maximum package weight you want to handle.
  5. Define at least one shipping box by clicking Add in the Shipping Boxes section and defining the length, width, and height of each box.
  6. Save the shipping configuration.
  7. Make sure that each shippable product in your catalog has Charge for Shipping set to Yes, and that you have defined the weight and dimensions for each product.
  8. Publish your store.
When your customers check out, Quick Shopping Cart will look at the length, width, height and weight that you have defined for each product, and will create virtual "packages" using the box sizes and maximum weight you specify in the shipping configuration.  The dimensions and weight for these virtual packages will be sent to the rate servers to get a quote for the entire order.
 
When you go to the Quick Shopping Cart Order Manager to process the order, you will see multiple packages, each with its own fields for tracking number and ship date.  If you want to package the actual order differently from how Quick Shopping Cart packaged the virtual boxes, you can click Edit next to a box and add or delete contents.
 
The Order Manager also displays a "How was this calculated?" link that defines each virtual box, its contents, and the rate quote for that box.
 
Tips: 
  • If you use a lot of padding or other packaging material in your packages, you will need to account for this by adding to each product's length, width and height.  This will allow the packaging formula to take padding, peanuts etc. into account. 
  • If you have certain items, such as items that are very fragile or for some reason always ship in their own box, select the Ships in own package checkbox in the product shipping configuration.  This will remove this item from the pool of items to be packed in a virtual box, and get a separate rate quote for the item.
  • At this time, UPS and US Postal rates in Quick Shopping Cart only service US shipping addresses.  To collect shipping fees for Canadian orders, you will still need to use the Custom Shipping option.
Give the new shipping configuration a try! 
 
Thank you for using Quick Shopping Cart, and I wish you successful selling.
 
— Cindy

 

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  • 10/21/2006 4:56 AM Paul wrote:
    Looks like a nice solution to overcharging for shipping.
  • 10/25/2006 8:49 PM Jo Flora wrote:
    We need a Best Offer button when sending things to ebay as fixed price. We also need Google Checkout. Any thoughts on maybe setting up either one?
    Thanks1
    1. 10/29/2006 11:50 AM QSC Team wrote:
      Hi Jo,

      We spent some time looking at the eBay Best Offer functionality last week, and it looks like something we could implement if there is enough interest from the Quick Shopping Cart merchant community.  And, we are definitely keeping an eye on Google Checkout.

      Thanks for writing,

      Cindy

      1. 10/30/2006 12:51 PM Jo Flora wrote:
        Cindy, I'm EXTREMELY interested in both of these. Wonder if you could send out a question in one of the newsletters??

        I am also in very desperate need of the ability to upload more than one picture into each listing. This HTML coding the extra pix in gets really old really fast. Any hope on that one??

        Thanks,
        Jo
        1. 11/1/2006 6:23 PM Cindy wrote:
          Hi Jo,

          Support for multiple images per product is on the roadmap.  I looked at your site - your workaround for multiple photos looks really great! 

          Thanks for writing,

          Cindy
  • 11/8/2006 2:53 PM Jo Flora wrote:
    Cindy, the work around is a pain. My website isn't real cooperative with the copy/paste so I end up typing in all the html. I hate that. I'll be absolutely thrilled when we can load more pix without having to code them in.

    Still hoping for an OK on the Best Offer button too.
  • 11/9/2006 12:05 PM Sandra wrote:
    This is a question most for the QSC merchants (like me).

    Is anyone out there besides me using suppliers who drop ship so you don't have to warehouse/fulfill your own orders?

    If so, how do you manage your vendors? Do you manually create an invoice in QB for every order you get for them and email it to each vendor? Seems time consuming and error prone.

    I would really like QSC to be able to send an invoice to my suppliers for just their own products. Sounds complicated and somehow, I don't think it is in the near future.

    So, in lieu of that, I am considering setting up each of my drop shippers with a QSC of their own, that only I use and that has the wholesale rates that I have negotiated with them. They could use that to enter shipping and UPS tracking #s.

    The downside of this is that I would incur the additional cost of these shopping carts and I would have to re-enter the orders into each of the suppliers sites.

    Anyone have a better idea?
  • 11/9/2006 1:36 PM Rick wrote:
    I was wondering if there is a way to start an affiliate program if you are using QuickCart? Somehow the website owner would need to have access to the order confirmation page to install the tracking code. Maybe this can be added to a list of future improvements, Godaddy could create the affiliate tracking software as an add-on to QuickCart. Thanks for any info.
    1. 11/17/2006 11:19 AM Cindy wrote:
      Hi Rick,

      Quick Shopping Cart does not currently support affiliate programs, although I agree this would be a great enhancement.  Thanks for the suggestion.

      Thanks for writing,

      Cindy
  • 11/13/2006 7:35 AM john stocker wrote:
    Cindy,
    Why isn't the product number also part of the description when listing everything in the category?
    I've recently downloaded the new Windows Internet Exploder. Linking to my shop web page from my regular web site no longer works. What do I do?
    1. 11/14/2006 2:31 PM Cindy wrote:
      Hi John,

      We'll look at adding the part # to the product listings in the category screens.

      As far as your store not showing up properly when you link from your regular web site, this is because the link in your regular web site starts with "https://".  You will need to edit the link in the regular web site to start with "http://" (without the "s").

      This is because your Quick Shopping Site store does not have a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate (which you don't need because you are taking payments via PalPal).  If your site had an SSL certificate, you would use "https://" to link to your site.

      Thanks for writing,

      Cindy
  • 12/21/2006 9:59 PM Shizan wrote:
    There should be an options to track orders for custom shipping also ...where once order shipped the shipping info can be updated and customer can logon to there account to track the shipment.
    1. 1/30/2007 4:13 PM Rob wrote:

      Hi Shizan

      If you are custom shipping, you are selecting your own carrier, correct?  So do you mean that you would then be manually updating the shipping tracking stats for the customer?

      Thanks

      Rob


  • 12/29/2006 9:30 PM Richard Munger wrote:
    Tammy,
    for my site, I need to add personalization features to articles I am selling custom engraved items. I am pretty much at a stand still until This is done, I have read that you are looking into builds to allow this, Any Idea when this can be done. If not can you think of any workarounds?

    thank you
    1. 1/30/2007 4:21 PM Rob wrote:

      Hi Richard

      Some of our customers have included text in the Product Description advising shoppers to insert their request into the Special Instructions box.

       

      Thanks for the contribution.

      - Rob


  • 1/24/2007 12:43 AM David W wrote:
    Is it possible to enable both custom shipping and UPS at the same time? If not, do you plan to incorporate that in the near future?

    Thanks,
    David
    1. 2/5/2007 11:15 AM Kristof wrote:
      David,
      This is an enhancement that is on the roadmap, however we do not have an expected release date at this time.


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