Using Fastway Couriers Shipping

From Spiffy Stores Knowledge Base

Spiffy Stores links in with Fastway Couriers to calculate the cost of shipping an item to your customer based on the weight of items in their cart. To add a Fastway Couriers shipping rate, go to the "Preferences >> Shipping & handling" section of your Store Toolbox, and follow the instructions below.

Enabling Fastway Couriers as a shipping agent

If you haven't already enabled Fastway Couriers as a shipping provider, go to the "Preferences >> Shipping & handling" section of your Store Toolbox, and follow the instructions below.

  1. Click on the "add a shipping agent" button in the top right of the "Shipping & handling" page
  2. From the list of available shipping agents, click the Activate button in the Fastway Couriers section
  3. Select the services from Fastway Couriers that you want to offer to your customers, then click the Activate button.

Creating a weight-based shipping rate using Fastway Couriers

  1. Click on the "Add a weight-based rate" link under the country that you want to add a new shipping rate for.
  2. Name your shipping rate. This name appears in your checkout when a customer places an order, so generally you would write the carrier that it's being shipped by, for instance "Fastway Couriers".
  3. Add the weight range that this postage rate applies to. The first box is the starting (lowest) weight that applies for this weight range. The second box is the ending (highest) weight that applies for this weight range. Note that the Fastway Couriers maximum rate is 25kg.

    Note: In order for the weight range to apply to the current contents of the shopping cart, the weight of the cart must be greater than the lowest value in the range, but less than or equal to the highest value in the weight range.
  4. Select the shipping agent that applies to this shipping rate by clicking the link "Switch to a Shipping Agent rate calculator", then choose "Fastway Couriers" as your shipping agent.
  5. Choose whether you want to add any "handling days". In the checkout, the customer is currently shown a delivery date estimate, for example, Delivery Estimate: 10th Sep, 2010. If you want to give yourself an extra day or two before you ship the item, adjust the handling days. If you add two handling days, the delivery date estimate in the example above would then be adjusted to read Delivery Estimate: 12th Sep, 2010.
  6. Choose whether you want to add a handling fee. If you want to charge a customer for packing up the item etc. you can now add a handling fee. This amount is just added to the shipping cost in the checkout. It's not displayed as a separate handling fee.
  7. Adjust your shipping rate by a percentage amount. If you want to charge a little extra (or a little less) for your shipping to cover costs, you can adjust the calculated shipping fee by a percentage amount. This also allows you to compensate for any errors in rates that a shipping carrier might return.
  8. Set your fall-back option. If for any reason the shipping carrier fails, you can set a default rate or set it to ignore that carrier.
  9. Click the "Save Rate" button.

Coming soon: If you want to adjust the price for different regions in the country (including custom regions that you've created), edit the rate that you've just created, and use the arrows to adjust the rate up or down. You can also disable the rate for any regions as well, so you can create a custom rate that only applies to customers in your local area, or a rate that applies only to a range of postcodes.

Further Reference