eCommerce Tycoon

**brianman** · 08-16-2011, 12:16 AM

Hi all. I have a client that has a unique situation. Well, it's not that unique. The client has multiple products they manufacture. When, the customer orders, the products are usually shipped together in one package. Let's say one order has 5 products. Another order has 11 products. Each product has different weights and sizes.

Is there any way to get an accurate shipping quote to the customer? FedEx live rates doesn't help because it quotes per product shipped. So, you can't tell FedEx to work out what it might cost.

The other way we have tried to manage this is to do a flat shipping rate based on total price of order. Does anyone have another suggestion?

**Scarthingwell** · 09-22-2011, 10:47 AM

If each product has a different weight and size then each order will presumably require a different size box. How many different size boxes does your client use? How does the client decide which size box to use or do they just try a few till they find the right size?

I would suggest you give each product a weight and a volume value. Then for any given order total the weight and volume values for that order to get the size of the box required to ship. For each box size get a shipping rate.

Shipping rates are sometimes calculated by weight and sometimes by volume and sometimes a combination. With a little thought you could come up with an excel sheet to cover these options and then use it as alookup table.

This is probably clear as mud but it's the best explanation I can give!