How to set up international shipping?

Currently I only ship to the US (flat rate). I would like to expand my customer base by shipping internationally. I'd like to have some general zones with different postal rates.

North America : Canada, Mexico
South/Central America
Asia/Pacific
Africa
Europe

How would I go about this?

Thanks in advance

You might look into the Zone Rate zones and increase the number of Zones that you can have from 3 to a higher number by reading the instructions inside:
/includes/modules/shipping/zones.php

and if you need more specific Zone definitions than Countries, look at the add on plugin for the shipping module for Zone Table Rate:
http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=478

There is a module in the plugins area called ZONETABLES - a blend of ZONES and TABLE modules.

I use this extensively for international shipping, and it works really well.

HOWEVER... before you install it, you MUST set up all your ZONES and ZONE DEFINITIONS first. So quite a bit of planning and preparation is involved.

It is a very good idea to base the STRUCTURE of the zones on those that your courier service will apply. For example, they may GROUP TOGETHER a bunch of countries under one set of rates, and other bunches of countries under their sets of rates. A shipper one of our clients uses, has EIGHTEEN global zones - so we set up all eighteen zone definitions, and applied the relevant countries to each zone definition. Took a while, but once it's set up it works like a dream.

Then, when we had finished setting up all the zones stuff, we installed the module.

The reason why you need to configure the zones FIRST is that if you add them AFTER the mod is installed, it breaks the functionality resulting in a blank screen at the shipping page.

Ajeh:

You might look into the Zone Rate zones and increase the number of Zones that you can have from 3 to a higher number by reading the instructions inside:
/includes/modules/shipping/zones.php

and if you need more specific Zone definitions than Countries, look at the add on plugin for the shipping module for Zone Table Rate:
http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=478

Hi,
I have increased the table rate in my shipping module, it is around 94 tables. Therefore, my monitor screen can see only table, but cant edit each table rate, as it have not enought space to show the edit, update and delete box. I think the current program do not support the box after expand upto 94 lines/row.

I wondering whether there are any add on programme for table rate to set each screen only displaying 1 to 20 (of 94 shipping modules)...... << page 1 of 5 >>

Example: Admin>Locations/Taxes>Countries

Thank you.:dontgetit

Orkid:

Hi,
I have increased the table rate in my shipping module, it is around 94 tables. Therefore, my monitor screen can see only table, but cant edit each table rate, as it have not enought space to show the edit, update and delete box. I think the current program do not support the box after expand upto 94 lines/row.

I wondering whether there are any add on programme for table rate to set each screen only displaying 1 to 20 (of 94 shipping modules)...... << page 1 of 5 >>

Example: Admin>Locations/Taxes>Countries

Thank you.:dontgetit

I think you are seriously "over-egging the omelette"...

You need to plan your shipping setup based on the way your shipper operates. Get their rate-card and when you do, you will probably see that they divide the world up into several ZONES.

On some of the sites I develop, a shipper used by all sites has the world divided into ELEVEN zones.

The 244 countries in the world are then divided up into these eleven zones, so you have (for example)

ZONE ONE: North America

• USA
• CANADA

ZONE TWO: Western Europe

• UK
• Republic of Ireland
• France
• Germany
• Belgium
• Netherlands
• Spain
• Portugal
• Italy
• Greece
• Austria
• Luxembourg
• Switzerland

ZONE THREE: Eastern Europe

• Poland
• Czech Republic
• Hungary
• Romania
• Bulgaria

.... and so on for ALL eleven zones

Now... in zencart... you MIRROR what your courier is doing... You set up ELEVEN ZONES, each with its own ZONE DEFINITION, and you ADD the relevant countries to each zone.

Then you install ZONETABLES module and configure accordingly.

This means you use ONE shipping module (zonetables) for all zones and countries.