adding option to carbon offset shipment

[simonw]

Our company, Its the Planet (www.itstheplanet.co.uk), specialises in carbon offsets which address the wider ecological and ethical dimensions of climate change (capturing carbon in trees and soils also supports sustainable livelihoods, protects habitats and restores ecosystems and the services they provide).

We would like to provide offsetting for shipping as an option with a user of the Zen-cart payment module based on a flat rate per shipment (e.g. £1 within the UK; £1.50 within Europe etc). However, they currently do not have this feature set up and so we agreed to research this question and find out if such a plug-in exists. We need to not be billed directly for each shipment but the company we want to work with can reconcile with us separately at the end of each month. As we are currently not familiar with all the possibilities of Zen-cart ourselves, can anyone advise on the most appropriate way to solve this?

Kind regards,

Simon

[Ajeh]

So you are needing a Country Count on orders to obtain a total to charge at the end of the month?

Or does the customer need to also see this amount even if they are not paying it?

[simonw]

Hi there,

Thanks for the reply. We would like to set up a module in the payments system of the Zen cart user we are working with to offer an optional carbon offset to be added to the overall postage and packing. This would work in the same way as on the ethical superstore website (http://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/car...livery-option/).

Basically a customer would have an option to add the required amount for their region by checking the appropriate box; the Zen cart user would then need need a Country Count on orders to obtain a total to submit to us at the end of each month for offsetting.

I hope this is helpful,

Kind regards,

Simon

[Ajeh]

Aha! A clue ...

So do you need a method to get the checkbox on the order to make the charge if the customer wants to do this ...

Or do you need a method to count how much was collected over the month for each Country ...

[simonw]

hi Ajeh,

yup, we need a method to get the checkbox on the order to make the charge if the customer wants to do this ... then it would be helpful to our Zen cart user if they could get an automatic total at the end of each month to pass on to us.

is it possible to set different charges for different postal regions (e.g. UK, the rest of Europe, rest of the world)?

Simon

[Ajeh]

This can be created, but it is quite a bit of work ...

You may wish to post in the Commercial Help Wanted for someone who can add an Order Total module that is able to collect an additional charge based on Country, an Admin interface to set the charge by country and then produce a report on daily, monthly or yearly totals per country from the charges collected ...

[simonw]

thanks Ajeh,

I will discuss it further with my client over the week-end.

You have a good one yourself, great to have your feedback so quickly,

Simon

[Ajeh]

You are most welcome ... let us know how this works out for you as others will probably be interested in a module like this in the future ...