Shipping Options Problem

[scottmcclean]

Hi,
We are currently setting up our store and have a question around shipping for different customer types.

We have 2 types of customer: the main customers hold accounts with our business and as such are set up as "invoice only", and we calculate their carriage charges when we ship the goods internally - the charges are reflected on their invoice. To do this we activated the "free shipper" and marked all products as "always free shipping".

The second set of customers are non-account holding and as such we would like them to pay by credit card. The problem is all parts are set to free shipping and I cant see a way of being able to create a specific shipping flat rate for these customers.

Note: We do not weigh individual products so can only calculate the shipping on the final boxed weight.

Can anyone help?

[Ajeh]

To make Flat Rate work despite all Products being marked as Always Free Shipping, you could remove the test for Free shipping and then test if the customer is a one of the "main customers hold accounts" ...

What identifies these customers from other customers?

[scottmcclean]

Hi Ajeh,
sorry for delay in response. I am not really sure I understand about the "test" bit.

In terms of identifying customers - the "main" customers are all Invoice only if that helps?

Thanks very much for helping.

Regards
Scott

[Ajeh]

When you say:

the "main" customers are all Invoice only if that helps?

this indicates that there must be an identifier of some sort to mark the customers as "main" customers or not ...

What are you using to distinguish the two types of customers?

[scottmcclean]

Hi Ajeh,
I'm having a senior moment I think....

The only thing that is different between the two is that for my "main" customers, I installed the "Invoice Module" then assigned them via the Customer profile within admin to the Invoice group.

Is there any other way to identify this so I can answer your question?

Regards
Scott

[Ajeh]

I am guessing that you are in the Customers ... Group Pricing ... to set the Group that the customer belongs to ...

Is this correct?

[scottmcclean]

Yes that's it. I added the Invoice group, and then I select the customer and there is a drop down list that I select "Invoice" as the "discount pricing group".

[Ajeh]

Good ... this means that you can check what group a customer belongs to with:

$group_query = $db->Execute("select customers_group_pricing from " . TABLE_CUSTOMERS . " where customers_id = '" . (int)$_SESSION['customer_id'] . "'");

and the results can be used in an IF statement, something like:

if ($group_query->fields['customers_group_pricing'] != '0') { 
  // do something here
} else {
  // do something else here
}

So if you were trying to make the Flat Rate module work only for Customers in the Group where the value is 0 for the customers_group_pricing ... you can verify this by browsing the customers table to see who is assigned what value for this field ...

You can customize the Flat Rate flat shipping module to only show for customers with the value of 0 by changing the code from:

      // disable only when entire cart is free shipping
      if (zen_get_shipping_enabled($this->code)) {
          $this->enabled = ((MODULE_SHIPPING_FLAT_STATUS == 'True') ? true : false);
      }

to read:

      // disable only when entire cart is free shipping
      if (zen_get_shipping_enabled($this->code)) {
          $this->enabled = ((MODULE_SHIPPING_FLAT_STATUS == 'True') ? true : false);
      }

$group_query = $db->Execute("select customers_group_pricing from " . TABLE_CUSTOMERS . " where customers_id = '" . (int)$_SESSION['customer_id'] . "'");

if ($group_query->fields['customers_group_pricing'] != '0') { 
  // do not show to anyone not in customers_group_pricing 0
  $this->enabled = false;
}

See if this helps you out on organizing things ...