Tare Weight and Displayed Shipping Weight

Hi all,

I'm really struggling with the descriptions of how the Tare Weight system works. I recently noticed that a single product item with a weight of 1.75 pounds was showing a shipping weight of 6.75 on my customer invoices. I did a little more looking and even the Shipping Estimate window shows it as follows.

Estimate Shipping Costs
Total Items: 1 Weight: 1.75lbs Amount: $14.99
Country: United States
State/Province: Arizona

Post/Zip Code: 85711

Shipping quotes are based on the address information you selected:
Arizona 85711 United States
Available Shipping Methods Rates
United Parcel Service (6.75lbs) (Next Day Air) $73.36
United Parcel Service (6.75lbs) (Next Day Air Saver) $65.89
United Parcel Service (6.75lbs) (2nd Day Air AM) $41.92
United Parcel Service (6.75lbs) (2nd Day Air) $36.49
United Parcel Service (6.75lbs) (3 Day Select) $23.75
United Parcel Service (6.75lbs) (Ground) $11.12

My tare weight settings are 0:5 for small to med. packages
and 10:1 for Large packages.

Can someone tell me how the weight was calculated to be 6.75 from this information? What I want is to simply add 10% of the total weight to account for packing materials when a total weight exceeds 3 pounds. 3 pounds and under I'm willing to pay the cost of the packaging weight. But it's unclear to me how to do that.

How does it determine what is a "Small to Medium" or a "Larger" package to know which of the two configurations to use?

The config example of "Example: 10% + 1lb 10:1" isn't enough information for me. Does that mean that for each pound it's going to add 0.10 pounds to the weight? or for every pound it's going to add 10% of the shipping charges to the total charges?
Or is it something else?

I've looked through the e-Start book that I purchased and I've searched the FAQs and this forum, but I'm just not able to get my head around how this is turning my 1.75 pound item into 6.75 pounds.

I would appreciate any assistance to understanding this better.

Let me know if you need more information. I am adding $3.00 as a handling fee in the UPS mod config, but other than that it's the standard settings if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks..

Never fails, right after I post I then find the answer to my own questions.

What I discovered as that the percentage : weight is for adding that amount to the TOTAL order weight.

So if I have it set to 10:0

that makes my 1.75 lbs into 1.93

if I have it set to 0 : 5

That makes my 1.75lbs into 6.75lbs.

I'm still not sure how ZC knows what is a small to medium package verses a larger package though. So maybe that question can still be answered by someone else.

I too would really like to know the answer to that question. How does ZC determine which is a "small to medium" and which is a "large" package????

The calculation is based on the Total Weight of the Order vs the Maximum Weight setting in the Shipping/Packaging ...

If the Order weight is less than or equal to the Maximum Weight, then the package is considered Small or Medium and the Tare settings for Small/Medium will be used ...

If the Order is more than the Maximum Weight, then the pagage is considered to be Large and the Tare settings for the Large will be used ...

The number of boxes is broken down by taking the Order weight and dividing it up to keep it below the Maximum Weight ...

Maximum weight should not be higher than what the Shipping method rate quote will use ...

Example: USPS will ship lighter weight packages than UPS ... so you cannot set the Maximum Weight based on UPS shipping rules if you also want to use USPS because you will not be able to get a quote if the Order weight exceeds the limits for USPS ...