Another common practice is for stores to base the amount they charge for shipping on the total weight of items the customer is ordering. For the following example, let's suppose you operate a store where you would like to charge a base of $5.00 handling for every order. In addition to that, you'd like to charge $1.00 per pound for orders whose weights total between 0 and 10 pounds. For heavier orders totaling more than 10 pounds, you'd like to charge $0.75 per pound. This sort of policy corresponds to a "Per Weight Unit Table" shipping method type.
Example 6.3. Charging Shipping Based on the Weight of Items in the Order
- Navigate to the
Shipping Configuration -> Shipping Methodsscreen. - Click "Add New Record" to add the shipping method.
- Use "Standard" for the name of the method, "STD" for the code.
Leave Minimum Charge at 0, but change Base Charge to 5.00. This corresponds to the amount of handling charges you want applied to every order.
![[Note]](images/note.png)
Note Leave dollar signs or other currency symbols off when entering price values.
- Under Method Type, select "Per Weight Unit Table".
- Click "Add New Record" to add the new method to the store.
- Navigate back to the
Shipping Configuration -> Shipping Methodsscreen. - You should see your new method listed in the table at the center of the screen.
- Click the "Rates" link next to the new method to add the two levels of weights you need.
- Click "Add New Record" from the "Rates" screen to add the first weight range.
Use 0 for the floor of the first range, 10 as the ceiling, and use 1.00 for the amount of this first weight range.
This tells the store to use this rate if the total weight of items in the user's cart is greater or equal to 0 and less than or equal to 10.
- Click "Add New Record" to add the first rate to the shipping method.
Now enter the next range in the weight-based shipping table. Use 10 for the floor of the second range, 0 as the ceiling, and 0.75 as the amount.
This tells the store to use this rate if the total weight of items in the user's cart is greater or equal to 10, up to infinity (0 as the ceiling means no upper limit).
![[Important]](images/important.png)
Important Ranges for the Per Weight Unit Table can overlap, in which case the rate of the lower range will be used. In other words, it's ok to make the ceiling for the lower range equal to the floor for the following range. Because weights are computed as decimal values, doing this will ensure that no order will fall through the cracks (i.e. it will make sure all possibilities are accounted for if the order's weight is something like 10.01).
- Click "Add New Record" to add the second rate to the shipping method.
As an example of how this works, if a user is placing an order and the total weight of all the items in the order is 15.25 pounds, the store will compute the shipping costs for this method to be 5.00 (from the Base Charge for the method), plus 15.25 times 0.75 (because 15.25 falls in the second range). The shipping cost presented to the customer will be 16.44.
Sometimes it's simpler and more convenient to set a static rate for each weight range, rather than having the costs be multiplied out per unit of weight as they are in this example. This is done by selecting the regular "Weight Table" for the Method Type of the shipping method instead of "Per Unit Weight Table". In that case, the number you enter for the "Amount" of each weight range is the flat amount that will be charged if the user's order falls within that range (plus the Base Charge), rather than the price per unit of weight.
| Important |
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No shipping methods will show up during checkout to users unless you have switched the
"Is a Shipping Selection Required?" setting from no to yes on the |