Per Weight Unit Shipping

[mikeel100]

I have a few thousand of products that have different flat rate shipping rates, several thousands products with free shipping (zero weight), and many thousands of products with UPS rates...

I have been using freeshipper and UPS successfully for almost a year. In the past, I added shipping cost back into the base price and sale price with my php scripts which enabled me to handled flat rate shipping products as "free shipping" products. Some people may not appreciate that...semantics. So I'm trying to reflect exactly how the shipping prices are handled via my supplier.

I am trying to add perweightunit to handle my products that have flat rate shipping.

When I enabled perweightunit shipping, it caused the UPS shipping price to show up with an outrageously high shipping price on products that have flat rate shipping (because the shipping price is inserted in the weight slot). I need to stop UPS prices from displaying during checkout on products that have flat rate shipping.

On products that do not have flat rate shipping (I.E. UPS rates), the flat rate shipping shows up as an option during checkout as a lower amount than the UPS rates. I do not want flat rate to display on products tagged as UPS shipping.

There are no issues with free shipping...

I hope I've made it clearer than muddy water this time...LOL.

Appreciate your help.

[Ajeh]

What would be a could indicator in the table:
products

to distinguish which Products uses UPS and which Products use Per Unit perweightunit?

Do you have a field for this? Or can master_categories_id be used for this?

[mikeel100]

I don't see any "could" indicators in the zen_products table.

The initial table (my_products_dsdi) I import my products and updates in to has columns call "SHIP_METHOD" and "SHIP_PRICE".

SHIP_METHOD can be Individual Shipping, UPS RATES, or Free Shipping

SHIP_PRICE can be 0 - whatever

I'm not sure what you are implying by "can the master_categories_id be used for this".

Thanks.

[mikeel100]

You and I went through a very long discussion on handling shipping for my website last year.

You recommended http://ceon.net/software/business/ze...vanced-shipper and I have not used that software, but I think maybe it's time to give it a second and very serious look.

If you have a simple fix for my current situation, I'll use it...otherwise, the solution may be in Ceon Advanced Shipper.

[Ajeh]

You say there is something for:

SHIP_METHOD can be Individual Shipping, UPS RATES, or Free Shipping

Is that a field in the table:
products

that holds this information?

[mikeel100]

It is not in zen_products; however, I could create a new column in zen_products that does contain the type of shipping that applies to the individual products.

I am a little cautious about changing any of the fields, code, or tables in the basic zen cart program...will adding a column to zen_products mess with the basic programming?

If I add the ship_method column to zen_products, which shopping cart, paypal, or other files would I need to modify to tell the checkout process to only show one shipping method?

Thanks again for your help.

[Ajeh]

Once you have a field in the table:
products (or in your case zen_products)

you can test for that field in your shipping modules ...

Using a field such as:
products_shipping

I would make it a tinyint 1:

ALTER TABLE products ADD products_shipping tinyint(1) DEFAULT '0';

In your case use:

ALTER TABLE zen_products ADD products_shipping tinyint(1) DEFAULT '0';

Then use 0 for Normal shipping for UPS and 1 for FREE SHIPPING! freeshipper and 2 for Per Unit perweightunit ...

You made need a programmer to help you set up the field on the import method you use ...

Now you can test the order in the shipping modules to see what kinds of Products are in there ...

NOTE: there will be several parts to this as you have Products with UPS shipping and Per Unit perweight shipping and when you have a Mixed cart for both you need your UPS to calculate the both the quote from UPS and then the Per Unit perweightunit cost has to be added on ...

The shipping weight can be adjust in the class for shipping to remove the weight from the Products for products_shipping 2 so that the quote weight for UPS is correct then utilize the weight removed for Per Unit perweightunit ...

You will need quite a few customizations for this, but it can be done ...

[mikeel100]

Thanks, I started the mods in my test cart last night...will have to study the shipping, shopping cart, and paypal modules in depth to see where I need the changes. I appreciate your insight and guidance.

If I find a solution, I will post it here.