How to profit from smart shipping rules

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 cancelled out by smart shipping rules listed further down in your overview. 

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 use pattern matching

You can now use pattern matching to further refine your shipping rules. Pattern matching is when a given sequence is checked to see if it contains certain characters. This is particularly useful for shipping rules related to postcodes or for ranges of numbers such as in product SKUs or order numbers.

To use pattern matching, select Pattern matching as the determination for your condition. Enter your characters in the pattern matching field, then apply one of four patterns as noted below directly after:

Pattern:	Meaning:	Example:
*	Matches everything
?	Matches any single character.	For this pattern, whatever it comes after 5 (letter or number) will be considered within the condition and the rule will be applied.
[seq]	Matches any character in a sequence	For this pattern, the rule will be applied when the number or letter, in the end, matches one of the letters or numbers stated within the [brackets].
[!seq]	Matches any character not in sequence	For this pattern, the shipping rule will be applied as long as the postal code does not end with 3 (or the number or letter you state within the condition).

For example, in London there are four types of postcode area: W, E, S and N. If you want to apply a shipping rule for London, but which will only apply to addresses in the W postcode area, you could apply the below rule:

• If “Postal code” (CONDITION), PATTERN MATCH "W*" then "Ship with" Hermes" (ACTION)

Match any or all conditions

You also have the option to select “Match ALL of the conditions of this rule”. If you select this option, all of the conditions have to be met before a shipping rule is applied. If you change this to "match ANY of the conditions of this rule", any of the conditions can be present and the actions will be applied to those orders.

How to see applied shipping rules

You can easily see which shipping rules have been automatically applied to your order 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.