add shipping costs after the sale? and can I edit orders after placed?

1.39a clean install with paypal express and pro
no addons
couldn't find a thread about this:

here's how my business works: right now at least, I don't stock anything, it's all drop shipped from my distributor.

Customer adds items to the cart and makes the purchase

I get an email and call my distributor to find out what it would cost to ship to my customers zip.

I can't figure out a way to then add that shipping cost to their order...then I need to capture on the new amount.

btw, It will be stated on my site that prices do not include shipping

suggestions?

also how do I modify the order once it's received?, say a customer calls after placing an order an they don't want one item or they want to add something else

I tried to do a capture for 1.00 more than what was purchased but this is the error I get:

Error There was a problem capturing the transaction. (Amount limit exceeded.) 10610

I spoke with paypal and they suggested that I get the cc/shipping info and run it through later manually

You can't change an order after it's completed.

If you're using Paypal, you can't (as far as I know) 'capture' the CC info, and I don't think you really want to, anyway.

What is it about your business or your products that requires you to add the shipping later? Lots of Zenners do dropshipping, and manage to add the shipping charges inside the Zencart process.

the problem is I have no way of knowing how much shipping will be because it's not standardized by my distributor and eventually I'll be working with other distributors whom may do it differently.

it would be easier if I get the order with zip code & cc info from zen cart and then call my distributor to get the actual shipping they are going to charge me and add that to my customers order then capture

let me know your thoughts...I'm desperately trying to find a solution and I just don't think any sort of shipping calculation in zen car is going to work for me

I don't do any kind of dropshipping, so I can't offer anything from experience, but it seems strange to me that your supplier would make you jump through these hoops. Have you looked into other distributors?

You might also Google 'ceon advanced shipping'.

I'll also suggest that a lot of people (including me) would be reluctant to order from a site where the owner was able to add charges onto my credit card, even if you figure out a way.

I used the term distributor loosley...it's another shop and I'm going to be carrying their custom products. They are going to drop ship them for me.

funny you mentioned Ceon, I just found this:

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=1277

I'm testing edit orders v2 and it's working, I can add and remove items but currently it's not updating the order total, in fact it's setting it to 0.00 so I'm looking into a fix for that

Mellon:

I'm testing edit orders v2 and it's working, I can add and remove items but currently it's not updating the order total, in fact it's setting it to 0.00 so I'm looking into a fix for that

So have you had any success in getting this to work? We are installing ZenCart (1.3.9d) and also get shipping costs after the product has been drop shipped.... trust me, its just part of the business we are dealing with on a sole sourced product.

If fixed, how is it working out?

I just noticed this last night as well. I was showing our office person how to use this new cart, and that was her first question. How can I edit the shipping charges to accurately reflect what the drop shipper put on our invoice? I understand that if the charges are more then I have to get a new authorization from PayPal.

The short solution for me is to make sure that the shipping charges are inflated, so I can always capture less than what I authorized.
Looking forward to a good solution on this one.

I've worked with drop shippers in the past and had the same problem. I wish I could tell you that there is a good solution. If your drop shipper always ships from the same location you can set that as the location that shipping is calculated from. If you never know what method your drop shipper is going to use or if they ship from multiple locations then you have a bigger problem. In this situation the best you can hope for is that on average your shipping charges will make you whole. I was told that for UPS the center of their world in the USA was around Dillon, MT. If you use that zip code to calculate shipping you will never be right but on average it works out. You just need to find something that isn't so expensive that you will lose sales but doesn't cause you to lose a boatload of profit.