Tare weight settings

Hello all-- After a search of the forums, I decided to start this new thread for others who (like me) may be confused about the tare weight settings (the added weight of the shipping container and packing materials).

In Configuration--> Shipping/Packaging there are settings regarding the tare weight, including:

Package Tare Small to Medium - added percentage:weight       0:0
Larger packages - added packaging percentage:weight          0:0

My question is-- What exactly do the "percentage" and "weight" refer to or represent, and how does one influence the other; how are they related? How does one calculate what numbers to put on either side of the colon in the settings for each?

This information is not explained in the "E-Start Your Web Store With Zen Cart" book," which in most respects is an excellent book for which I am personally grateful and appreciative. What the book does say about these two settings is this:

...both allow you to specify a tare weight in addition to the total weight of your orders. You need to pay close attention to these two options because store owners tend to forget that they affect the order weight calculations and spend a lot of time trying to figure out where the phantom weight came from.However, the book doesn't state exactly what the percentage and weight represent, how they relate to each other, and why two similar settings (for small-to-medium and larger packages) are necessary, how they relate to each other, etc.

The settings, with a colon between them, look like a ratio of some kind of percentage to weight. But they also look like the format of the shipping charges entered in the Table Rate shipping module.

At any rate, a clear explanation of these settings, exactly what they mean and how to calculate and set them would be helpful to people like me who are confused by them. I imagine that the answer and explanation are very simple--just not obvious. :lookaroun

Best wishes,

Steve
Portales, New Mexico US

OK--I'm going to answer my own question (in the first message of the topic) and hopefully clear up my own confusion as well as those of others who may not understand these settings.

Thanks to "Ajeh" ("Oba-San"), who posted some answers to these questions in other threads on the forum, I believe that the following is the explanation of these settings.

Both the Small/Medium and Large packages can have a tare weight added automatically to the total weight of all the items in a customer's order. That tare weight can be added either as a percentage of the total weight of the order, or as a fixed amount of weight per box/package, or both.

In the settings, there are two numbers separated by a colon, like 0:0 or 1:0 or 0:1 or 1:1 or 24:.0625. The first number represents the percentage of the total weight of the order that should be added to that total in order to represent the weight of both the items in the order and the package/box and packing materials that will be used to ship the items. The second number represents a fixed weight that should be added to the total weight of all items in the order; that fixed weight represents the weight of the packing material and box regardless of the combined weight of all the items that will be in the box.

So, a person (store owner) can specify a tare weight in three ways: 1) a fixed weight (example: 0:.75, which is .75 or 3/4 of a pound, a pound being the weight-unit Zen Cart uses unless that is changed to kilograms or whatever); 2) a percentage of the total weight of items in the order, calculated by zen-cart by adding the weights of each individual item, then adding a percentage of that weight to the total; 3) both a fixed weight and additionally a percentage of the total weight of items in the order.

In all three cases, extra weight is calculated and added to the order by Zen Cart in order to determine the final total weight that will be shipped, so that shipping charges can (hopefully) be calculated correctly and added to the person's order at checkout time.

Best wishes everyone, and THANK YOU Zen Cart team for providing such a great piece of software!

-Steve
New Mexico US

Good summary! :clap:

My question is, What differentiates a larger package from a small to medium package? Is it based upon weight? How do I know when the calculation crosses over into "larger packages?"

The Large package is triggered when the weight is above the Maximum Shipped ...

The weight is then split up to stay below that weight ...

The Tare is used depending on low/medium or large ...

Now it is clear! Thanks, Ajeh.

Ajeh:

The Large package is triggered when the weight is above the Maximum Shipped ...

The weight is then split up to stay below that weight ...

What if it's one product above the Maximum Shipped value, when it can't be split in real life?

How can we then hide a shipping module, or show a error text, based on that?

Or best of all, offer split shipping (different carriers/packs), when the order also contains smaller items?

Ajeh:

The Large package is triggered when the weight is above the Maximum Shipped ...

The weight is then split up to stay below that weight ...

The Tare is used depending on low/medium or large ...

Where is the Maximum Shipped Value? I just tried this varying the "Enter the Maximum Package Weight you will ship" value. Didn't seem to have any effect on shipping weights. Is this the right option? Can someone straighten me out on this?

frank

Maximum is located in the Configuration ... Shipping/Packaging ...

Enter the Maximum Package Weight you will ship
Carriers have a max weight limit for a single package. This is a common one for all.

The default is 50 per package ...

I'm shipping small and large packages. I'm not trying to split orders into multi boxes. I'm trying to use one tare for small packages and another tare for larger packages. What does zencart use to tell the difference between a small and a large package?

Ajeh:

Maximum is located in the Configuration ... Shipping/Packaging ...

The default is 50 per package ...

My previous reply:

frankielee:

I'm shipping small and large packages. I'm not trying to split orders into multi boxes. I'm trying to use one tare for small packages and another tare for larger packages. What does zencart use to tell the difference between a small and a large package?

I've tried something that seems to have had the desired effect. I commented out the following block in the shipping module (shipping.php), essentially skipping the multi-boxes feature:

/* remove to skip splitting boxes fbennett 20080724
if ($shipping_weight > SHIPPING_MAX_WEIGHT) { // Split into many boxes
$shipping_num_boxes = ceil($shipping_weight/SHIPPING_MAX_WEIGHT);
$shipping_weight = $shipping_weight/$shipping_num_boxes;
}
*/

I set seperate values in the small/medium tare and larger packages tare and set "Enter the Maximum Package Weight you will ship" value to the desired cutoff.

This works for me because I'm shipping relatively small packages and I'm never going to ship REALLY large packages from my store. The shipping module needs some attention around this function, IMHO.

frank

Not sure what shipping module you are using, but as long as it is not a Real Time Quote module that sends the Max weight to the server, then set it as high as you need and it will not split a box ...

What shipping module(s) are you using?

Hm ... wonder why my thoughts/questions was ignored by dev(s) here ...?

rued:

What if it's one product above the Maximum Shipped value, when it can't be split in real life?

How can we then hide a shipping module, or show a error text, based on that?

Or best of all, offer split shipping (different carriers/packs), when the order also contains smaller items?

This would need to be custom coded for that type of issue ...

Maximum Weight is based on what the maximum carriers can ship in one package and then the weight is split up ...

The Large Package Tare is for when this happens to offset the weight ...

When that is not enough to manage your products then you need to have a custom solution written that handles the shipping to match your specific needs ...

OK Linda, thanks for your reply.

I don't fully agree on that this should require custom coding though. Since I see it as a weakness in the existing core code, I almost go so far that I consider it to be a "bug" - because we can't always split a package/product in real life before shipping.

So ... how many hours do the team think it would require to improve this, and how much contributions (money) - to get it into core code by default?

We are aware of the limitations on shipping weights when there are products that do not fit the mold ...

To get this working properly will require quite a bit of customization to work with not only weight but also with dimensions and other customizable paramaters on a per product basis ...

I cannot give you an estimate on what it would cost to make the perfect solution as there are no one single perfect solution for everyone ...

As we continue in the development of Zen Cart we work towards improving all aspects ... the Features Wish List is a good place to post your needs and details around what you wish Zen Cart could do for you ...

We appreciate all support that we get to continue in the development of Zen Cart on all improvements to the core code ... the price of coffee and donuts rises everyday ... :smile:

Thanks Linda,

I see that there can be more into it than just this, and I will try to write up something meaningful in the features wish list forum when I get time for it.

Btw.! Some of the needed code regarding dimensions and volume might already be available in Freeway, I think I have seen something like that there - and it's GPL ... ;)

I don't like donuts, but I know all about coffe prices. :)