How do I manage shipment weights in Sendcloud?

Purpose: This article explains how shipment weight is imported or set in Sendcloud, how default weights and shipping rules affect it, and how to make sure the weight used for your shipment accurately reflects the parcel you hand over to the carrier.

Related articles:

→ How to calculate & automate parcel volumetric weight

My product items already have defined weights in my online store - how do I use these for Sendcloud? 

If you want to use the weights from your online store, you can import them automatically to Sendcloud if they’re expressed in kg or g. For this, the option to import the parcels’ weight must be activated in the integration’s configuration.

1. Go to Settings > Integrations and click the Configure button below the integration
2. Once on the Integration’s configuration page, select the checkbox: Import the parcels’ weight.

My product items don’t have defined weights on my online store (or I want to use different weights in Sendcloud)

You can set up weights for your items directly on Sendcloud. There are two ways to do this:

• Defining one default weight for all items (by default, this is set to 1 kg)
• Defining different weights for different items through shipping rules

Defining a default weight

This option is for assigning one unique weight to all of the items that you deliver. This is convenient when you don’t have any weights defined on your online store and all of your items weigh approximately the same, or when you’re missing one or more weights and need a fallback. By default, this unique weight is 1 kg, but you can change it. To do this:

1. Go to Shipping > Shipping defaults.
2. On the field ‘Default weight’, fill in a different value in kg.

Since this is the default weight, the imported weight of an item or the weight given by a shipping rule, will overwrite it.

Defining weights through shipping rules

This option is for giving different weights to different items. You can use this, for example, to define a weight for each one of the items that you deliver. Through a shipping rule, you can assign a weight to one or more items.

How to create shipping rules

1. Go to Shipping > Shipping rules.
2. Click the button Create new rule.

How do shipping rules work

Shipping rules work by creating "if this (and this) then that" scenarios that, once set up, will apply to all orders that meet the criteria and automatically change these orders to match the rule created.

To set up the weight of an item through a shipping rule, fill in one or more conditions. For example:

Condition:

If -  item name - is - Tiger's Eye Bracelet

Then, as an action, select ‘Set weight’ and fill in a value in Kg. For example:

Action:

Then - Set weight - 0.02 kg

Important

• If an item has no weight explicitly defined, the default weight will be applied. This will happen when there are no shipping rules that assign a weight to the item, and the option to import parcel weight is deactivated, or activated but the item has no weight on the online store.
• If no weight is provided for an order, either via shop import or a shipping rule, Sendcloud will automatically apply the default weight defined under Shipping > Shipping defaults. Keep in mind that Sendcloud does not currently sum the weights of individual items in an incoming order. Instead, it uses a single weight value per order. If no other weight is available, the default weight is used for the entire shipment.
• Shipping rules will always overwrite the weight on items that meet the rules’ criteria. Even if the original weight was the default weight or a weight imported from the online store.
• Sendcloud does not calculate or add packaging weight separately. Make sure the final shipment weight reflects the actual physical weight of the parcel you hand over to the carrier, including its packaging.