How to use flat rate shipping?

[one tall man]

Hi!

After Canada Post slapped all small business owners with 2x shipping rate hike for smallest parcels, I wanted to switch to offering flat rate on lettermail size shipments. For that I enabled the Flat Rate module in the Admin, added a flat rate zone for Canada, but now I am stuck as I cannot find a way to offer flat rate shipping for any products or categories.

What do I need to set up in the Admin to offer flat rate in addition to Canada Post? Only Canada Post is showing under the product.

Thank you!

[mc12345678]

The available shipping method(s) are not normally shown adjacent to a product on the product information page without some additional modification. If this is where you are currently seeing the Canada post information, then some further modification of one or more files related to the display of includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/templates/tpl_product_info_display.php needs to be made.

If you are saying that during checkout after visiting the shopping_cart page and going next to the shipping option(s) that flat rate is not also showing, then that's an issue of a different matter.

[one tall man]

I am not looking to modify any files, just for instructions on how to use the built in flat rate shipping modules, thanks!

[one tall man]

If I enable the flat rate module, the flat rate is showing in the checkout side by side with Canada Post.
For this to work, I need a way to choose which products are flat rate, and which are Canada Post, as otherwise of course everyone will choose a cheap flat rate and I will loose my shirt. This can only make sense if I can choose one or another shipping method on a per product basis. The question is where and how.

[mc12345678]

If I enable the flat rate module, the flat rate is showing in the checkout side by side with Canada Post.
For this to work, I need a way to choose which products are flat rate, and which are Canada Post, as otherwise of course everyone will choose a cheap flat rate and I will loose my shirt. This can only make sense if I can choose one or another shipping method on a per product basis. The question is where and how.

For this part, a per product choosing, this requires code writing/editing. The coding is not exactly complex per se, but if you are wanting to apply or allow product in a shopping cart to have multiple shipping methods, then things do get more complicated. There is a commercial shipping module called Ceon Advanced Shipper that supports such "diversity" though I don't know that it has incorporated the Canada Post portion of things.

Not sure also if/how the multiple destination shipping plugin might play into this scenario. While technically the item(s) would/could go to a single destination, the method of shipment would be two methods, so it sort of seems like it could help.

As for what/where to change, may I suggest reviewing this FAQ: https://www.zen-cart.com/content.php...hipping-module

It is a little more involved to start picking and choosing individual products for say flat rate related shipping, but yes if don't then the customer is likely to do so as the cheapest shipping method tends to also be auto-picked by ZC as well...

[one tall man]

Got it! Amazon or die then.

[lindasdd]

I have a solution for this...or rather, I had swguy build a solution. Reach out to him.

I called it Volume Shipping.

Essentially create a new product field called 'volume' then populate that field for all products, then during checkout check to see if the sum of the cart contents will fit in a flat rate box. If it does, it gets the price you set in admin. If it fits in 2 boxes the price shown is for 2, etc.

It leaves room for error if you have a high variety of items, but overall accomplishes the goal.