US and International Shipping Flat Rates plus calculated shipping rates.

Hello. I sell leather jackets and wanted Large Package Flat Rate shipping per item based on the USPS rates. Currently $14.65 Domestic and $60.95 International.

We also sell smaller items, like shirts, caps and patches and I wanted these to be calculated either by small or medium flat rate charges based on the item.

I also want free shipping available for some items and promotions.

I have read the different posts on this and it gets more and more confusing the more I read. I was hoping this was possible with no add-ons, but if one is needed that is fine.

I have set up two zones, one US and one Non-US , but I have no idea if that is even needed...

Any and all help is appreciated, but as I said this is difficult for me to comprehend as it is.

What if I buy 2 leather jackets and 1 patch?

... or a jacket, 4 shirts and 22 patches ?

Best way to configure your shipping is to talk FIRSTLY to your courier company, to see how THEY charge for all their services. Once you know how they will charge YOU, you can translate that into a module (or several modules).

Ask for all rates, destinations, services, delivery options...

We only use USPS if that helps. Shipping by weight is not an option as I can sell two jackets made from lightweight leather that are 6 pounds total, OR one heavy jacket that is the same weight. Of course, with the flat rate shipping, only one jacket will fit in the box - so I have to pay for each box separately. That is why I was leaning toward flat rate per piece. I see what you are saying though. In the past, I have been paying for shipping calling it free shipping and raising the costs of the item to compensate because this is so confusing. There has to be a easier way to do this as there are enough e-stores out there that seem to have things working just fine. I just cannot get my head around how.

We are currently using the USPS RateV4/IntlV2 addon. It allows filtering by volume. The caveat is that the addon has not been supported, so the annual USPS updates can be problematic.

There is a sql patch to implement so that the 9th through 13th decimal place of the "Product Weight field" is used to store the product volume in cubic inches.

Our example is we have a product where 5 of them will fit within a small flatrate box, 7 will fit within a Large Video 1096L box, etc. We set the volume of that item to 13 cubic inches. The coded volume of a small FR box is 65 cu inches, so 5 will fit. If 6 of those items are added to the cart, the small flatrate option is removed from the customer choices. This works domestic and international with no special zone settings. If 8 of those items are added to the cart the Large video box is also removed, only leaving the Med and Large FR boxes (and Regional FR boxes) available to be chosen.

You would need to set the volumes of the jackets so that it would be above the Med FR and below the large FR box volumes. Set the volumes for shirts,caps, etc for the box sizes needed. I'm not sure how to implement for the instance where more than 1 jacket were purchased because the LargeFR box option would be removed from the list when the 2nd jacket is added to the cart.