Purpose: In this article, we explain how you can add rates for your Dynamic Checkout shipping methods, either automatically, by fetching them from your own carrier contract, or by entering them manually.
WooCommerce V2 supports Dynamic Checkout through the Sendcloud Dynamic Checkout plugin. See Set up Dynamic Checkout for WooCommerce for the complete installation and setup instructions.
What can I do with Dynamic Checkout rates?
Dynamic Checkout lets you fully customize the shipping rates you offer to your customers.
- If you ship with your own carrier contract, Sendcloud can fetch your rates automatically instead of entering them by hand. If automatic fetching isn't available for your setup, set your rates based on the default weight class of your chosen shipping method, or define your own custom weight classes.
- Add shipping rates directly in Sendcloud for any of the available Dynamic Checkout delivery options: Nominated Day, Same Day, Standard Delivery and Service Point Delivery.
- Enable free shipping above a certain amount.
Step 1: Enable shipping rates in Sendcloud
- To add rates for existing shipping methods, go to Settings > Dynamic Checkout > Edit > click a Delivery Zone > select
Edit next to the method you want to configure
- Scroll down until you see the section Shipping rates
-
Click
Set shipping rates in Sendcloud to enable shipping rate configuration via Sendcloud
If you ship with a single carrier contract using transactional (TRX) rates, Sendcloud tries to fetch your contract rates as soon as you enable this toggle. Otherwise, you'll add your rates manually. Either way, continue to Step 2.
Step 2: Review your rates
While Sendcloud checks your contract, you'll see a loading message. This usually takes a few seconds.
What happens next depends on your contract:
-
If your contract rates are found: the weight-class table is pre-filled with your contract's rates, and you'll see this message:
We've imported the rates from your contract. Review them before saving.Check the values against your contract and adjust anything that doesn't match.
-
If your contract rates aren't found: the weight-class table shows the default weight classes for your shipping service (see Step 3a), with the rate fields left empty for you to fill in. You'll see a message explaining why, for example:
Contract rate could not be loaded for this carrier. We've pre-filled weight classes from the shipping method, enter your prices manually, or refetch rates to try again.Rates couldn't be loaded. Your account has multiple contracts for this carrier, so we can't determine which rate to use. We've pre-filled weight classes for the shipping method, enter your prices manually.
Either way, you can:
- Add new weightclass if you want to add a range that wasn't included automatically.
-
Refetch rates and classes if your contract has changed, or if you want to try fetching again. Since this replaces what's currently in the table, you'll be asked to confirm:
Replace your current rates?
Refetching will overwrite all weight classes and rates. You'll need to verify the new rates before saving.Click Yes, refetch prices to continue, or No, keep rates to cancel.
Why rates can't always be fetched
Automatic fetching doesn't work for:
- Zonal pricing with your carrier.
- Carrier contracts that use live rates.
- Multi-contract setups, for example, a transactional and a direct contract on the same shipping method, more than one transactional contract, or multiple carriers selected for the same method.
In these cases, enter your rates manually, see Step 3a or Step 3b below.
Step 3a: Add rates per default weight classes
You can easily add rates for your chosen shipping method based on the default weight classes included in the selected shipping service. This is the easiest and quickest method of configuring rates.
- Select Default weight classes to use the weight classes that are incorporated into your selected shipping service
- Enter the price you want to charge per weight class into the rate amount fields.
- All available weight classes are enabled by default, but you can
untick a class to disable it from appearing on your checkout page.
- For example, if you want to offer shipping with UPS but only for parcels weighing up to 30 kg, you can disable the UPS weight class 30-70 kg to prevent your customers from being able to select this shipping option at checkout.
- At least one rate must be enabled as default. This is the rate that will be displayed if a product in the cart does not have an item weight associated to it.
How do weight classes work?
You can set different shipping rates based on the total weight of the order when all the items are packaged into the same box.
- The shipping price shown to your customers at checkout will be based on the total order weight.
- E.g. In the example above, if the order weight is 6 kg, your customer will be charged 3.00 EUR.
- If the order weight is 6.01 kg, the customer will be charged 5.00 EUR.
- If the order weight falls within a weight class that you have disabled, this delivery method won't be displayed at checkout.
- E.g. In the example above, if the order weight is above 20 kg, this delivery method won't be displayed.
- If the customer removes some items from the cart, and the weight is now 19 kg, the method will appear on the checkout page with a delivery cost of 9.00 EUR.
For rates to be applied to parcels based on total order weight, you need to have configured item weights for all of your products. If no parcel weight can be determined because a product weight is not configured, then the weight class set as default will be displayed.
Step 3b: Define rates based on custom weight classes
This feature is currently only available for beta users.
If you want more flexibility over your shipping rates, or if the shipping service you select has very broad weight classes (e.g. 0-31.5 kg), you can choose to define your own custom weight classes.
- Select Define custom weight classes
- Click +New weight class
- Enter a minimum and maximum weight to define the range of your custom class (e.g. Min: 2 kg Max: 4 kg). Note that the maximum weight must not exceed the limit defined in the shipping service.
- Enter a rate and click Save class
- At least one rate must be enabled as default. This is the rate that will be displayed if a product in the cart does not have an item weight associated to it.
Step 4: Enable free shipping above an order value
You can offer free shipping to your customers over a specified cart value by editing a shipping method and enabling the Offer free shipping... option. Enter a value into the From amount field to have free shipping apply for orders with a total value above this amount:
Step 5: Continue configuring your Dynamic Checkout methods
Return to the set-up guide for your shipping method to continue adding Holidays, specify your Cut-off times, and to save and publish your configuration.