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Shipping rules overview and application

Samantha
  • Updated

Purpose: Learn the basics of our shipping rules feature, from what it is to how it works.  

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Set up your shipping rules

Go to Shipping > Shipping rules. In this overview, all of the created shipping rules are shown in the order that they will be applied in, from top to bottom. From here you can:

  • Create a new rule
  • Edit or delete existing rules
  • Change the rule order.
  • Toggle rules to be active or inactive
Important: If you deactivate a carrier, a carrier contract or an online store integration, or remove a sender address from your panel, all related shipping rules will be deleted.

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 which meet the criteria and automatically change these orders to match the rule created.

For example:

  1. If weight is less than 10kg, ship with PostNL Standard
  2. If to country is Germany ship with DPD Home
  3. If order value is greater than 200 then insure shipment by 200

Shipping rules consist of conditions and subsequent actions. The conditions determine when a rule will be applied to an order. For example, if a shipping rule is created with the condition "weight is less than 10kg" then all orders which have a weight under 10kg will have a shipping rule applied to them. The action is the change that will be made to orders that meet the conditions, e.g., "If weight is less than 10kg, ship with DPD Home".

Please note that shipping rules related to weight only apply to actual (parcel weight) and not to volumetric weight. You can use shipping rules combined with the Add Box feature to specify which box to use per parcel weight for volumetric weight purposes. Find out more here. 

Shipping rule order

Your smart shipping rules are applied in the order they are listed in the shipping rules overview. The rules are applied from top to bottom, so the rules at the top of the list will be applied first, followed by the next rule. It’s important to carefully choose the order of your smart shipping rules, ensuring that no desired actions will be canceled out by smart shipping rules listed further down in your overview. 

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For example, see the two rules below:

  • If “To Country is Germany” (CONDITION), then “Ship With DPD Home” (ACTION). 
  • If “To Country is Germany” (CONDITION) AND “Weight is Greater Than 20kg” (CONDITIONS), then Ship With DHL Parcel Connect 15 – 31kg (ACTION)

In this example, you would ideally want to place these rules in the same order as above. This will ensure that the orders that are being shipped to Germany AND are heavier than 20kg will be shipped by the right carrier (DHL Parcel Connect 15 – 31kg).

If you placed the rules the other way round, then the rule containing the weight-related condition would be overwritten. The order would be shipped with DPD Home no matter its weight because both rules include the condition “To Country is Germany”.  

How to see applied shipping rules

You can easily see which shipping rules have been automatically applied to your order. Either before the label was created (Incoming order overview) or after the label was created (Created labels).

Incoming orders

When you open/edit the order via the pencil icon,  you can see the applied Shipping rules under Shipment > Applied shipping rules.

Created labels

You can see the applied Shipping rules by going to the Created labels tab and clicking the eye icon to enter the label details view. The name of the rule which has been applied and the action will be listed.

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Related articles

→ Create your shipping rules

→ Import shipping rules in bulk/CSV file

→ How to use shipping rules with Dynamic Checkout

→ Shipping rules: guide to using pattern matching