How to set up country zones for flat rate shipping?

Hi

Posted this in a different section - even I couldn't find it - so have relisted it here:

After getting myself into a mess trying to set up a complicated shipping system I have decided to give up and use the far simpler flat rate shipping costs.

I have loaded in the Royal Mail add-on (just so you know what files I now have cluttering up my modules)!

by following another post I have managed to set up 3 different Flat Rate options but am struggling with where and how to set up the country zones.

I am looking for:

Flat UK Rate - Flat rate for Mainland UK - £2.99

Flat Europe Rate - Flat rate for Europe - £8.99

Flat Rest of World - Flat rate for Rest of World - £17.50

I have sorted out the country codes for each zone but am unsure where/how to set them up to work on the flat rate system.

Can anyone help me out?

Hi

I managed to sort this out - In the End!:clap:

I am having a similar problem, can you explain what you did?

Yes I agree, help others that have/had the same issue, that way everyone who works out their own problem helps others still stuck with it.

Im only selling at present to my UK customers, but there is ex-pats abroad that Id like to work on selling to, as at present Im dealing with them outside of the cart.

I personally have not yet fathomed Zones/Zone definitions and how UK counties are entered in the customers sign up as they are entering the county in the STATE box.

Some PayPal order in the UK are falling over with a problem stating as;
We were not able to process your order. Please try again, select
an alternate payment method, or contact the store owner for assistance.
(Shipping Address Country Empty)
But I dont know how relavant that is to zones.

Hi
Sorry for delay have only just checked back in to the forum.

I will try and explain how I set up my shipping.

1. I decided to use Flat Rate for prices and set up 3 clones (copies) using this link

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=115687

Having done that to create:
Flat Rate UK Mainland
Flat Rate Highlands, Islands & Europe
Flat Rate Rest of World

2. Then went to Admin/Modules and the new modules where shown in list so I clicked and installed the new modules and input the info eg price - at this point I couldn't choose the zone so left that.

3. To define the zones:

Then to set up the zones I went to admin/locations / taxes, Zone Definitions and for each of my shipping options I clicked on edit and entered my zone name and Description. Click update.

In the same place I then clicked details and by clicking insert I individually entered each country name with any other zones for each of my shipping tarrifs.

The countries were in a drop down list and I just had to click on them to set it up.

I am not sure how the country list appeared in my system as I had done loads of fiddling prior to using this method - they may have been part of the Big Post add-on or they may have been in the Zen Cart system automatically already - perhaps someone can advise on that.

I am not sure if these is the easiest/best way to solve what I was trying to set up but it appears to work ok for the mo. I am open to any suggestions of how better to do this.

Good Luck

A very long time later I managed to work out what I wanted to do aided by butchx5 about a year ago!
My settings are running as;

Flat Rate Postage flat 1 (The original and disabled)
Flat Rate EUROPE Postage flateu 100
Flat Rate ROW Postage flatrow 300
UK Flat Rate Postage flatuk 10
US Flat Rate Postage flatus 200
The numbers are my order settings.

My next task is to add recorded, Special, then International the three signed for optional services, but not via this option, tried 'Optional insurance' but not got that working yet.

The Flat rates are working fine. My ROW is Australia/New Zealand and a few others. US is just US/Canada.
Europe is a selected set of countries mainly EU.

I have just one Zone created, and two clones made from the Flat Rate inbuilt shipping module. However, when I set the payment method (Paypal) and the cloned modules Zones to the aforementioned single Zone, the shipping methods are not available to the user.

Any ideas?

Thanks

al

On your Cloned Flat Rate, if you take off the Zone, does it work?

Is there any customization to the Cloned Flat Rate other than it is a cloned copy of Flat Rate with a Zone on it?

Hello Linda

I had assumed it wasn't a cloning issue, because it looked as though the inbuilt Flat Rate was behaving the same way, but it doesn't if I take the Zone restriction off, so, yes, it may well be to do with some customisation I had in the previous version of ZC and carried over to this one ... . :oops:

I'll try a basic version of re-cloning the Shipping Modules, and then see where it goes wrong as I add customization back in.

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Regards,

al

I've re-cloned the Flat Rate shipping module, as per this thread:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=115687
with nothing extra added. I have left both Payment and Shipping modules without any Zone restriction at present (Zone = --none--).

However, whenever I take the Zone out, although the modules appear as options (shipping methods) for the customer, when the customer clicks on the "proceed to checkout" button, it returns the customer back to the same page:
(/index.php?main_page=checkout_shipping)

If I put a Zone restriction in the Payment and Shipping modules, the new shipping methods do not appear at all; whereas if I put '--none--', the other problem arises of never moving on from the 'Delivery Information' page.

If it's not the cloning that's the issue, what else could be causing this kind of problem?

Thank you.

al :frusty:

If you cannot get the module to work without the Zone setting then it sounds like a problem with the module ...

What is the name of the new cloned shipping module?

Do you see any debug errors in the /cache directory?

It looks as though underscores in cloned shipping module names may cause problems:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=96668
so I removed the underscores in the clones I had created.

However, there is still a problem with the Zone settings. If I put a specific Zone in the payment requirements, and '--none--' in the Shipping settings, there is a mismatch, which brings up: 'Sorry, we are not accepting payments from your area'. If I put the one specific Zone in Payments and Shipping, the new shipping methods do not appear.

Therefore, the only solution is to put both Payments and Shipping to '--none--'. If this is done, the methods appear, and the customer can check out; however, the Zone must be used, to pick up the tax rates ... .

Any ideas what the problem might be?

al

Check the Zone Definition that you created to see what the DETAILS are for the:
Country:
Zone:

and make sure that they are correct ...

Hello Ajeh

Thank you again for the reply.

There is only one Zone set up at the moment. If I click on 'Details', there is one country listed (United Kingdom) , and the Zone column displays 'All Zones'.

If I choose 'Edit' at that point, I can access the list of countries from the drop-down box, but the 'Zone' drop-down box has only one option 'All Zones'.

Does that sound right?

al

If a Country does not have a break down on individual locations, such as selecting the United States would show you the All Zones in addition to all the States, Territories, Islands and Armed Forces ... you will only see the All Zones ...

Are you using any kind of Add On for your checkout? :unsure:

Hi Ajeh

There don't seems to be any messages in the /cache which coincide with these events. There are no "Add Ons" other than the Paypal module - the cart is just Zen Cart with some customisation.

I have been experimenting with one user set up for the purpose, but when I set up a new user, the cart seems to behave differently. Both users have United Kingdom as the country, but the new user seems to be recogised as part of the Zone. If I go back to the original user, at first the cloned shipping options are not displayed, but if I choose 'Change Address', and then retain the original address, the cloned methods become available, but then the interface reports that shipping is not available for that area ... .

This test user was created prior to upgrading the cart from 1-3-8 to 1-3-9, but I don't see why it should behave differently. The country is the same for both users.

al

On the broken user ... what happens if you go to the My Account and edit all of the addresses to make sure everything is correct?

Hello Ajeh

The broken user has 3 addresses in the Address Book now, because I have added new ones for test purposes. However, the original address display 'United Kingdom' in the country drop-down box, exactly as a working account does. However, when the broken account is used, the cart reports that shipping to that address is not available.

Isn't the country code the only criterion which can be used in this sort of setup, to determine if an address falls within a given Zone? There are no regional definitions made other than the country itself. There is one Zone, with one country in it, that's all.

al

As a test, switch to the Classic Template and test your shipping ... does it work?

It sounds like something is out of date in the code if the shipping is not showing unless you edit and maintain the shipping address ...

The behaviour is the same with the Classic template loaded. Whenever I create a new user, the cart proceeds through the checkout without difficulties (it recognises the Zone it's in, and applies the appropriate tax). The issue arises with the original test account.

I think the problem is related to no address being set as default in the test account. When this happens, the country defaults to 'Aaland Islands' (first alphabetically). I became aware of this by looking under 'Customers' in Admin. However, from the user interface point of view, this is not immediately clear, since if I go to 'My Account', and then select 'Address Book', it is not obvious that a default address is missing. The page displays:
'Primary Address
This address is used as the pre-selected shipping ....
This address is also used .... '
Below this appear the Address Book Entries. A user looking at this could be forgiven for thinking that the top entry in that list is the default address, rather than the default address being missing. When the default address is not there, the cart perhaps assigns 'Aaland Islands' to the country, even though this is not apparent to the user. The funny thing is that even when an address is selected from the Address Book (with United Kingdom as the country), it still rejects the location ( - is there some underlying code that continues to select the underlying default address country?). In most cases, the default country is likely to be the same as any alternative set in the Address Book, but where the default address does not exist it will probably be different (unless the desired country is 'Aaland Islands').

As to why the default address did not exist to start with, I think this might be related to a problem exporting the address from the database and then re-importing it.

al