Shipping Management

Learning Objective

After reading this guide you should have a better understanding of:

• How shipping works through the Visualsoft Admin

• How to add/amend courier on the admin

• How to change the rates applied to couriers

• How to blacklist addresses

Contents

Written Guide

Overview

The shipping management section allows you to set up couriers that can deliver to countries of your choice, at the price you allocate based on order value or basket weight.

Countries can be grouped together for delivery, meaning they will get the same cost and shipping time. You can also post to individual countries and not use groups.

Shipping Management is split into two sections Countries & Groups and Couriers & Rates.

Countries and Groups

To get to this section, you will need to go to the Catalogue Menu and choose Shipping Management followed by Countries and Groups.

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This screen will bring you to a list of countries that have already been set up in your admin. You will see two tabs on the left-hand side consisting of Countries and Country Groups.

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Countries

This section will allow you to set up all the country options available when creating the couriers, or you can group the countries together into country groups where you can apply the same rate to many countries at once.

You will also see headings across the top of the page.

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Group: As default, countries will be in one of three country groups, either Local (UK), European or International depending on their geographical location. You can click to edit any country to change the group it belongs to.

Code: This is the country code that Paypal and Google checkout use. The default countries in your admin will have these codes assigned to them. If you need to add any additional countries, you can find this code on the internet.

ISO 3116 Code: This is the code used by the payment gateway for that country and will also be pre-populated on default countries. ISO 3116 is a standard developed for the current list of countries maintained by the ISO 3166 Maintenance agency.

Is Default: This is the default delivery country for postage which you can tick. Your website will recognise the country of purchase and offer the correct postage option.

Taxable: If the country of purchase is a taxable country then the tick icon needs to be selected so that it is green. This is important to be accurate as it affects the charging of VAT.

Requires Postcode: If the country you are delivering to needs a postcode in order to fulfil the delivery, it should be ticked.  By having this selected, the website will not allow the order to be made without a postcode from the customer.

Active: This allows you to choose which countries you will deliver to. If you do not want to deliver to a certain country, you can un-tick it. (Within the country groups section you can un-tick a whole group, such as International or European). Note: If you make a Country inactive it won't show to a customer in the basket screen. If you make the group inactive, the country will show, however, when selected a message will appear telling customers that there are courier restrictions in place.

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Country Groups

In this section you can see the country groups that are set up, you can make them active or inactive and slide the arrows to rearrange the order.

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This is the default country group set up in Visualsoft

Editing a country group

You can edit the name of each country group by clicking on the edit button on the right-hand side of the country group.  This will also display a list of all countries included in that group. 

Adding a country group

Should you ever need to add another country group you can do so by hovering the mouse over the grey I want to box in the top left-hand corner and choosing to Add a shipping country group. Enter the title of the country group and click on add country group. You will then be able to add countries to the group from the Countries tab.

Couriers and Rates

To get to this section, you will need to go to the Catalogue Menu and choose Shipping Management followed by Couriers & Rates.

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Couriers

In this section, you will be shown a screen showing a list of your entire courier services, along with other tabs for Courier Countries and Holidays.

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You will see the red/black arrows on the left-hand side to re-order the couriers, as well as a number of options that you can tick to make these couriers either active or inactive.

Editing or Adding a Courier

By pressing the edit button at the end of the courier, you will be taken to the following screen where you can amend the information connected to the courier. Alternatively, if you are wanting to add a new courier, you can do this by clicking the Add Shipping Courier located in the top right-hand side of the page.

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You can enter/rename the courier, input the till system reference number (where relevant) and choose from a number of delivery options that may apply to the courier (including blacklisting / whitelisting products against this courier).

Next Day: Tick this option if this courier is a next-day delivery courier.

Named Day:  Tick this option if customers can choose the day to have their items delivered.

Delivery Notes: Tick this option if you want customers to inform you of any delivery notes relating to the order. The notes will appear on the order within the orders section of your admin. It would be then your responsibility to communicate these to your couriers.

Available to PayPal Customers: Tick this option if this courier is available for those paying via PayPal.

Only Available in the Offline Order Screen (Visible if you have Offline Orders): Tick this option if you only want this courier to be available in the admin for offline orders and not on the website.

Product-Based Courier: Tick this option if you want this courier to be product based. Product-based couriers are used to apply an additional shipping charge on top of the normal courier charge. The same product can not be associated with two product-based couriers. Once this is ticked, you will notice a new menu called bound products on the top left of the screen. This allows you to add the products that will receive the extra charges to this courier.

Blacklisting & Whitelisting Products against a courier

Any courier can have products blacklisted and whitelisted against it, which is a great method to make sure certain items aren’t sent through the incorrect courier.

You can achieve this by going to the relevant Blacklist/Whitelist tab and clicking the Add Product.

Courier Countries

The Courier countries section is a view of your couriers that shows what settings are attached to each courier.  When you click edit in this view it will take you to editing courier rates which you can find further down this page.

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Holidays

This section allows you to enter dates that couriers won’t deliver or you won't send any orders out such as festive holidays etc. In order to create a holiday, click on the Holidays tab on the left-hand side, followed by clicking on the grey I want to box in the top left of the screen. Enter a title and choose the date followed by clicking on Add Holiday. 

Viewing Courier Rates

On the Couriers tab, click on View Courier Rates, which is underlined in blue, and then click on the Edit button on the right-hand side and you will see the screen below.

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Overview Tab

Country: This shows the country that this courier delivers to.

Country Group: This shows the country group that this courier delivers to.

Cut-Off Hour: This is the cut-off hour you will take orders up to for the postage option, and relates to the No. of Processing Days field further down the page. If the cut-off hour is passed, then the processing day will be counted as +1 day. If the order is made before the cut-off hour, then the processing day will be as the No. of Processing Days below. As an example, if the Cutoff Time was 3 pm for same-day dispatch, The No. of Processing Days would be 0. If a customer orders after 3 pm, the system will auto-change this to 1 day as they have missed the cut-off. If you offer next-day dispatch, then the No. of Days Processing would be 1. 

Available After Cut-off: Tick this option if people can still choose this delivery option after the cut-off hour has passed.

Display After Cut-off: Tick this option if you still want this delivery option to be displayed in the checkout after the cut-off time elapses each day.

Processing Days: Days you pack and parcel your products. Select the applicable days from the drop-down box, clicking the red Add as you select each relevant day.

Dispatch Days: Days you post or your courier picks up items. Select the applicable days from the drop-down box, clicking the red Add as you select each relevant day.

Shipping Days: Days your courier company move products around; the courier may not deliver Saturday - Sunday but the parcel could still be in transport to its final depot. Select the applicable days from the drop-down box, clicking the red Add as you select each relevant day.

Delivery Days: The days the courier will deliver products. Select the applicable days from the drop-down box, clicking the red Add as you select each relevant day

No. of Processing Days: This box allows you to enter the number of days it takes you from receiving the order to posting it out to the customer. This number is associated with the cut-off hour and if an order is made before the cut-off hour and you have a 0 in the lead time box, then that order should be sent to the customer on the same day

Min No. of Shipping Days: This box allows you to enter the minimum shipping time once products are posted. The website will use this along with the maximum shipping time and your lead time to predict to a customer when their parcel will arrive. 

Shipping Time Max: This box allows you to enter the maximum shipping time once products are posted. The website will use this, along with the minimum shipping time and your lead time, to predict for a customer when their parcel will arrive. 

Show Delivery Estimate: Place a tick in the box if you want the website to inform customers when their parcel will arrive. The delivery and processing days, lead time and shipping times are used to make this calculation.

Show Dispatch Estimate: Place a tick in the box if you want the website to inform customers when their parcel will be dispatched; this uses your processing days, lead time and shipping times to make this calculation.

Available Today Only: This option is used in conjunction with same-day only and if ticked, the delivery option can not be changed to the next day.

Require some in Stock: This option is only relevant if you have our Pre-Order feature for your site. With this feature, if a site user has filled their basket with a mix of items that are available now and items that are available only to pre-order, you are happy to allow the customer to check out using this courier. The courier will send the items that you have available for delivery now and a second delivery when the pre-ordered items become available.

Require all in Stock: This option is only relevant if you have our Pre Order feature for your site. Selecting this feature means that you require all products ordered to be in stock to use this courier.

Ship Without Rate: If ship without rate is selected and an order is placed which doesn't fall into the rates criteria you have set up, then the admin will still offer this courier and default to the cheapest courier rate for this courier. If want to be strict with your courier rates, then make sure that this option is not selected. 

Product Only: This should be ticked when you have your postage set to be product-based couriers, which is when you attach each product to a specific courier. 

Visible: Use the drop-down box to display or hide this courier from the website.

Rates Tab

Click on the Rates tab to the left of the screen under the overview menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

You will see that there is a row with information for basket weight and order value as you can structure your postage costs either way. To base delivery rates on weight, you will need to attach the weight to each individual product in the stocks and weights tab when editing products.

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Min Weight: Here you can enter the minimum weight value for the rate you are creating such as 0.000.

Max Weight: Here you can add the maximum value of weight for the rate you are creating. If you base your shipping costs on tiers of basket weight, then you would add the maximum basket weight and enter the price for orders weighing between these weights in the Price field to the right of the row.

You can then add new rows so you can create different price bands. To add rows, click on Add New in the top left-hand corner of the screen. You can add as many rows as you like or alternatively set up weight increments so every additional kg would cost £1, as an example.

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The above example shows the customer pays £7.99 for an order that weighs between 0-1KG, with an additional £1.50 added for every additional KG added to the basket.

The same principle works when adding rates based on Order Value.

Min Order Value: Here you can enter the minimum order value for the rate you are creating such as 0.000.

Max Order Value: Here you can add the maximum order value for the rate you are creating. If you base your shipping costs on tiers of basket weight, then you would add the maximum basket weight and enter the price for orders weighing between these weights in the Price field to the right of the row. If you do not wish to calculate shipping charges based on order value, input 0's into the Min Order Value and 9999999999 in the Max Order value. You will need to repeat this process to cover all order eventualities.

You can also set both weight and cost minimums to 0 and the maximums to 999999999.99 which would allow you to set a standard price regardless of order value or weight.

Price: Enter your price for postage for each row that you have created.

Charge Type: The charge type will be set to normal as default. You can change this to a percentage using the drop-down box which would then show two fields allowing you to type in the % of the total order you will charge for delivery, such as 10%.

You can also change the drop-down box to be set to increment.  This allows you to choose the incremental type which will bolt on to the final rate you add. You can then type in the incremental amount for the charges to apply, such as 1kg and then type how much that increment would cost, such as £1.00, resulting in £1 for every additional kg over the maximum weight you have set.

Whitelisting & Blacklisting Addresses

You will also have the ability to whitelist and blacklist addresses, you can either add the first part of the postcode which will either blacklist/whitelist all postcodes starting with these letters and numbers, or you can use the full postcode if you would like to blacklist/whitelist a specific postcode area, ie. TS17 6QY.

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Whitelisting (Applicable postcodes) - This means only postcodes referenced here can use this courier.

Blacklisting - This means any postcodes referenced here cannot use this courier.

Click on Update Couriers Countries to save.

Summary

You should hopefully now have a better understanding of how to use the shipping element of the Visualsoft Admin, including how to add new couriers or even blacklist addresses.

Frequently Asked Questions

Further Reading