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How does shipping work if I don't choose to use Square shipping?

I've got an account with NetParcel and they check the realtime shipping rates from multiple different couriers, depending on the location being shipped to.  If I don't use Square shipping, how will shipping work when a customer orders something?

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Square Community Moderator

Hi @KC_Ore Great question! Unless you are including shipping into the cost of the item you'll want to setup some type of manual shipping rate. You will need to figure out the average cost based on where you are shipping, but you'll have the option of setting up the manual rate by weight, order total, item quantity, or flat rate.

 

You can also setup multiple shipping regions if you need to adjust your rules to account for distance. For example, you can create one shipping region to include states that are near you, and another region for states that are the farthest away from you. 

 

You can also use the Real Time Shipping rate feature if you have a Premium plan. These rates would probably be closer to what you would pay through your third party service. 

 

 

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If you don't set up a shipping method, how does it work if a customer chooses shipping? The options for setting up rates aren't really realistic in getting a semi-accurate shipping quote because just weight, item quantity or order total doesn't give a good enough idea for shipping costs.

Thank you! 

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Square Community Moderator

Hi @Cariboo_Acres Welcome to the Community 🎉

 

I definitely recommend making sure you have shipping rates setup for your store. If you do not set up rates, and only assign "shipping" as the fulfillment option you will see one of the following; either the item will appear as "unavailable" or free shipping will be applied at checkout. 

 

Is there anything in particular you are struggling with when setting up your shipping rates? Can you give a specific example or scenario? 

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Thanks for the quick response!

It just seems for shipping by weight, you'd have to somehow put each items weight in. And for the other options, it still wouldn't be very accurate as number of items or order total would be different every time based on what items they've ordered (changing the size and weight of the package). Just doing a flat rate (or picking a rate for the item quantity ordered,etc) and taking a hit on the shipping seems to be the only option? 

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Square Community Moderator

The manual shipping calculator will only be able to give you an estimate based on the rules you set up. 

 

For weight based, yes, you would need to assign a weight to every item in your shop. You can then make a tiered rate rule like this: 

 

 

Note: prices are not accurate rates, but I wanted to show how you can add additional weight ranges. 

 

For any of the manual shipping rate options (weight, flat rate, quantity, etc) it may be helpful to break up your shipping regions for different parts of the country. You can select the states for a region you have created by clicking Edit Region > Select States on the edit rate page. 

 

 

In this example, I choose to make a region just for the state of Arizona. Once this is saved, I can make a new region for the United States, and every state except Arizona will be included. If I edit the states for the new region to only include a few select states, I will be able to continue this process until all of the states are assigned as a region. This is helpful since I know it would cost me more money to send a package to the east coast from where I am located. I would adjust my weight tier prices accordingly.

 

If you want the most accurate shipping rates you would want to upgrade to the Premium hosting plan in order to use Real Time Shipping. Carriers provide dynamic rate estimates at checkout based on distance, weight, and the number of boxes needed to ship the items.

 

I recommend checking out our live Q&A session with Shippo next week if you are interested in using Real Time Shipping and have more questions. 😊

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I'm struggling with this as well. I really don't think anyone in these times can afford $85 a month for a website, we have record high job losses and for people who are using an eCommerce site to make enough money to eat and house themselves that $85 would be crucial. Shipping costs are different for each postal code an area so with what you are suggesting I'd have to make each area it own individual profile which is ridiculous, Victoria BC has 26 postal codes alone. Shipping rates includes fuel fees and other things that change with distance, weight and number of items so by using a flat rate, by weight, # of items ect. we would just be losing moneys or completely over charging.  Of course you would suggest we pay your company a ridiculous price for the ability to have reasonable and customer friendly shipping rates.

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Did you resolve this issue? I am considering switching from Shopify but I am very pleased with their netParcel app. This issue may be a deal breaker for me.

David

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I just ended up doing flat rates for each province. I don't ship alot but if I shipped more, I might be concerned with the methods available. Just depends if you're willing to put in the work to weigh every single item you sell or else set flat rates and sometimes have to eat the cost if shipping ends up costing more than your flat rate.

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I don't ship a huge amount either but I can't compete if I have to pay full shipping rates or with Canada Post's lack of dependability. I just went on netParcel's website and discovered the login info I used with Shopify still works independently of Shopify. If I can use netParcel alongside of Square, I may switch to Square.

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Thanks for this interesting information!

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I'm still working on converting to Square. I'm, going to use Square Shipping to generate Canada Post rates but I don't plan to use them. I am expecting to use netParcel outside of Square.

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