Configuring Shipping Prices with Simple Shipping
The easiest way to create a Shipping Profile is through the product creator.
- Select "Inventory" in the top navigation of your dashboard.
- Select the "New Item" button.
- This will bring up the product creator. All products are created from here.
- Create your product, by filling out all the necessary information. When you reach the Variations section, select "Add a New Shipping Profile" from the drop down under the "Shipping" column.
- An overlay will appear where you can enter the type of Product for this Shipping Profile (CD, T-Shirt, Vinyl, etc) as well as set up different locations and their prices (see below for the difference between "alone" and "with others").
- Click save and the New Shipping Profile overlay will disappear will be automatically set on that Variation.
Please note that you can also set up new Shipping Profiles and change existing Shipping profiles by going to "Inventory", click the Gear Icon at the top left, and then scroll down to Manage Shipping.
How is Shipping for Multiple Items Calculated in a Cart?
To set shipping prices for multiple items, you should be using the "with others" field on each shipping policy. For example, if you have a shipping policy to North America for an LP and to ship one of them it's $4.00, then you could set the "with others" price to give a shipping discount for buying more than one. If for example you set the "with others" to $2.00 and someone ordered 3 LPs and were in North America, they would get charged $4.00 + $2.00 + $2.00 = $8.00 for the shipping of all 3. They get charged the "alone" price once and then for each additional item, it uses the "with others" price.
Also, let's say you have the above shipping policy for LPs to North America where it's $4.00 alone and $2.00 with others and you also have another shipping policy to North America for T-Shirts where it's $3.00 alone and $1.50 with others. If someone orders 2 LPs and 2 T-Shirts, it would use the most expensive "alone" price for one item, $4.00 in this case, and then for all other items in the cart it would use the "with others" price for each item. So it would be $4.00 (first LP) + $2.00 (second LP) + $1.50 (first T-Shirt) + $1.50 (second T-Shirt) = $9.00.
Please note that you must ensure there is some overlap in shipping methods available across product types or else your customers won't be able to check out. For example, if you're selling LPs and T-Shirts, and you support shipping via USPS Media Mail and USPS Priority, but you can't ship T-Shirts via USPS Media Mail, do not make USPS Priority unavailable for your LP's Shipping Profile. If you were to do this and your customer attempted to purchase a T-Shirt and LP at the same time, there wouldn't be any compatible Shipping Methods (one ships only via Priority and the other only Media Mail). Instead, you would only want to make Media Mail unavailable for T-Shirts and leave it so that LPs may be shipped via Media Mail or Priority. This would ensure that if your customer attempted to purchase only an LP, they would have the option between Media Mail or Priority, but if they were to add a T-Shirt to the cart, they would still have the option to have their order ship via Priority and the Media Mail option would no longer be available.
Advanced Shipping Rules
For a more advanced shipping configuration, please see our Weighted Shipping system.
