Zone Shipping Cost based on Individual item weight, not total order weight

[klog]

Hi again,
Having slept on this idea of cloning the perweightunit pages, and actually working a bit on it, I've come to realize that as far as I can tell, this approach won't work for me, unless I make like a million clones (and zones), as I realized that there is NO consistency to the multiplier factor, eg 1.5X, 2X, 3X etc. the intital price I put in the weight fields. For example, it may cost $5 to ship product1 to the USA and $10 to Ireland (2X factor), but cost $10 to ship product2 to the USA and $40 to Ireland (4X factor).
I really wish I could get the zone rates approach to work as I attempted (which it does for single cart-items, not multiple cart items). If anyone has any ideas, word love to hear them. For example, is there any way to fake-out the php script, treating the weight fields (my "ship codes") simply as "identifiers" and not to be added?
Any way, thanks again for your help.
Cheers & all the best,
Kevin

[Ajeh]

Could you define a bit more specifically what you mean by "identifiers" and how you envision using them?

[klog]

Hi Linda, be happy to explain (better hopefully) what I mean.



Using the "weight" field I have put in "codes" that correspond to all of my possible products. My logic was/is numerals left of the decimal point are major categories of products and numerals right of the decimal are specific products within that category. In hindsight I should have used more significant digits right of the decimal point, and if I can get my shipping working the way I wish I will do that; for example instead of +3.01 I will input +3.00001, representing product #1 in category 3. The more-digit version seems to be the largest number of digits right of the decimal point the field will accept.
Using this "code" (e.g. +3.01) I put that into the "zone rates" zone Shipping Tables with different shipping charges for each zone as I wish:
ZONE 1: 1.01:2.95,1.02:14.95,2.01:10.00,2.02:12.00,3.01:5.95,3.02:,,,
ZONE 2: 1.01:4.00,1.02:20.00,2.01:16.00,2.02:18.00,3.01:12.50,3.02:,,,
Therefore, I guess my goal is to get the zones shipping module to not do any math function with my "codes", but add all the shipping charges for the corresponding products/zones that are in the cart when there is more than one product in the cart. My system worked perfectly until about 2 weeks ago. I received my first multi-product (photographs) order, and it came through with zero shipping charges, so I basically broke even on the order. Since then I've been trying to figure a way to have all my shipping variations (which are numerous because of the sizes I ship to various countries) be totaled up.
I drop-ship alot of my items, so I am already dealing with a marked-up (inflated) shipping charge, so I myself don't markup/roundup or "guesstimate" my shipping charges to make my life easy, I just simply want to automatically pass along my vendor's shipping charges. Make sense?
Cheers & all the best,
Kevin

[Ajeh]

The problem is that weight is treated as a total and not as individual components ...

You would have to customize a shipping module that manages the weight in a totally different manner to treat the weight per product as separate charges ...

The Per Unit perweightunit takes the Total weight and multiples that out by the Rate ... again this is a Total Weight and not looking specifically at each Product and its individual weight for a calculation ...

I believe in the Add Ons or Contributed Forum there are programs that can be setup for individual shipping costs per item in a more detailed manner but I have not used them ...

[klog]

Hi Linda,

Any idea how to go about customizing the shipping module?
What page(s)?
Cheers,
Kevin

[Ajeh]

I would have to write the whole shipping module from scratch to get a shipping module to work based on a per product per weight per zone ...

Currently, this is not built into Zen Cart for this method ...

It would be a lot easier if your weights were proportional per zone ...

That way, you could enter 1 weight per product then each Zone would use its own Rate against the weight, for example:
US 1.00
Canada 1.25
UK 1.75
Rest of the World 2.00

That would allow the total weight of the order to be multiplied by these Rates to calculate the shipping ...

[klog]

I would have to write the whole shipping module from scratch to get a shipping module to work based on a per product per weight per zone ...

Currently, this is not built into Zen Cart for this method ...

It would be a lot easier if your weights were proportional per zone ...

That way, you could enter 1 weight per product then each Zone would use its own Rate against the weight, for example:
US 1.00
Canada 1.25
UK 1.75
Rest of the World 2.00

That would allow the total weight of the order to be multiplied by these Rates to calculate the shipping ...

Hi Linda,
Well, I certainly wouldn't expect you to rewrite the program. I was actually thinking of giving it a go myself. I'm no expert, but I used to be smart (did a wee bit of programming in the old days, but now I am just a photographer).

That said, I THINK a shopping cart that could accurately, and I stress accurately, put forth the actual charges for shipping based on item AND zone would be a valuable addition to ZenCart.
One of these days, when I have time/energy, perhaps I will give it a go myslef.
Thanks for all your input & help!
Cheers,
Kevin