I am completely confused about the new shipping option “Items in a box”. I may be dense so can someone explain it to me?
From what I gather if I fill out the two field say as 1 and 2 then it means that we can put up to “2” of these products in one box. So If I have 4 items I am shipping it will use two boxes? (of course I have the items box dimensions filled out)
If I am correct in my above analogy then why would you have two boxes to fill out? what would be the purpose of defining the minimum amount?
Sorry for 'bumping' this thread, but it appears to be the only one on this subject that I can find.
I also wondered what the purpose of 'Items in a box' was. I thought it may be related to minimum order quantities, but as this is already covered on the General tab, I doubt it. So, this would presumably create a conflict for customers - say I can only sell X product in a quantity of 2, which the customer can collect in store. But for the purposes of shipping, I can only ship a minimum quantity of 4.
Very confusing…anyone had any further thoughts since the OP?
[quote name='StellarBytes' timestamp='1312813574' post='119123']
Sorry for 'bumping' this thread, but it appears to be the only one on this subject that I can find.
I also wondered what the purpose of 'Items in a box' was. I thought it may be related to minimum order quantities, but as this is already covered on the General tab, I doubt it. So, this would presumably create a conflict for customers - say I can only sell X product in a quantity of 2, which the customer can collect in store. But for the purposes of shipping, I can only ship a minimum quantity of 4.
Very confusing…anyone had any further thoughts since the OP?
[/quote]
the purpose of items in a box is to define how many of said item will ship in a box by itself. For example, we sell items that we receive in master carton amounts from our vendors. if a customer buys 500 of one of our items, it will ship in a box by itself. so i set the minimum and maximum to 500. this allows us to make our shipping very accurate, because we can have a “ship by itself” amount for every item in the store, and define the box size that it will ship in. let's say i have another item that will ship by itself if the customer buys between 400 & 500. I would make the settings: min 400, max 500. if the customer buys 450 it will ship by itself, if they buy less than 400, it will ship in the box set by my global shipping parameters, if they buy 600, 500 will ship by itself and 100 will go with the global settings. hope this helps. if you want a better description, go to the roadmap section regarding the release of 2.1.4
fyi, this has nothing to do the minimum quantities on the general tab. if your min qty is 2 and you set items in a box to 4, 4, then you will still sell a min qty of 2, but if the customer buys 4, then that item will ship by itself
[quote name='kamaladg' timestamp='1312900961' post='119207']
the purpose of items in a box is to define how many of said item will ship in a box by itself. For example, we sell items that we receive in master carton amounts from our vendors. if a customer buys 500 of one of our items, it will ship in a box by itself. so i set the minimum and maximum to 500. this allows us to make our shipping very accurate, because we can have a “ship by itself” amount for every item in the store, and define the box size that it will ship in. let's say i have another item that will ship by itself if the customer buys between 400 & 500. I would make the settings: min 400, max 500. if the customer buys 450 it will ship by itself, if they buy less than 400, it will ship in the box set by my global shipping parameters, if they buy 600, 500 will ship by itself and 100 will go with the global settings. hope this helps. if you want a better description, go to the roadmap section regarding the release of 2.1.4
fyi, this has nothing to do the minimum quantities on the general tab. if your min qty is 2 and you set items in a box to 4, 4, then you will still sell a min qty of 2, but if the customer buys 4, then that item will ship by itself
[/quote]
This kind of goes along the same question as asked above, but just a little further in getting a more accurate price. I am using the per item in a box and box dimensions for real-time shipping calculations as described above, but if I have multiple different items that can go in the single box, CS cart adds too much. What I mean is:
Item A - 5 items can fit in a box of 5"x5"x5"
Item B - 5 items can fit in a box of 5"x5"x5"
I can put 1 of Item A and 1 of Item B in the same box, however CS Cart calculates it as they are going to be shipped in different boxes. I understand I may be getting into a more complex shipping algorithm, but is there a way to group certain items together so CS Cart knows they can go in the same box and thus calculate a cheaper rate?
Thank you!
- Donald
Thanks for the explanation. This confirms my experience with v2.1.4 shipping calculations. There is still the lack of functionality that is needed by store owners to correctly charge their customers for shipping.
Ive spent weeks trying to get this sorted but it still cant correctly calculate .
Adding to this issue is the inability to use a product as an option of another product . And the inability to define min/max dimensions for “Options in the Product Box” .
I just posted topic very similar to this. We sell things like CFL light bulbs which has a case quantity of 48 in a specific box size but if a customer wants 10 bulbs that will get packed into a different sized box, this makes it very hard to set dimensional weight with various, “custom” box sizes along with the various quantities. The same applies to a lot of our products. We are using realtime calculations with UPS and are having a real hard time getting the shipping rates, with various quantities, to come out accurately. I hope there is a solution to this sometime soon.
Nikmark,
For your scenario, by you entering specific “Box Dimensions” at the product level you are actually causing far more harm than good because you are essentially hardcoding full sized carton dimensions to be calculated for these products on each & every rate call regardless of if the quantity added to the cart is 1 Pc or 48 Pcs.
I would suggest you try this:
- Determine your actual product weight, then add a tare weight to this, for example, if your product weighs 1 Lb, you might enter a weight of 1.05 Lbs within the “Shipping Properties” tab area.
- Leave Items in a Box as 0 0
- Leave all box dimensions as 0
Now re-test your realtime shipping calculations with various order quantity scenarios and you should find the rates being charged to your customers are far more closely matched to your actual shipment charges.
The key will be in determining the additional Tare weight you add to each of your products, get it right and your rates will be incredibly accurate. Also keep in mind that UPS & Fedex will round your shipment calculations to the next highest Lb, so an actual cart weight calculation of 2.10 Lbs will be calculated as 3.0 Lbs which is an ideal situation on small, low dollar order shipping charges.
Note: Another way to really fine tune your returned rates for your actual business scenario is to enter a “Maximum Box Weight” under the Configure Tab for each of your individual shipping methods.
Has this function been improved in CS-Cart 3?
I can't figure out this “items in a box”. No changes appear in the cart if i set it as 0-0, 1-1, 2-1 or any other setting for that matter. Does anyone know if this function even work?
Diamentional shipping is impossible for stores who sell lots of different sized items. CSC seems desgined for a regular stock turnover with staff to enter hours of details for each product. I find it impossble to be acurate and I don't use online services like DHL at all.
A far better solution would be to have a Tere system where you create boxes in the shipping systen - as many as you need. Each box would have it's own atributes but these don't need to be entered. You create a box on past orders - so if you get a lot of orders that ship in the same shape box size these items are tagged to a box type.
Each box takes a maximum weight each item can go into a box they will fit. For example Magazines 340mm x 240mm x 5mm might go in the largest box but not any of the others. Each magazine is 500gs and a box takes ten magazines so it's max tere weight would be 5kgs. Each box has a cost also.
When an order goes over the maximun weight for a box the checkout shows how many boxes will be used. If for example the products in an order are not compatable with sending out in one box - 1 item is 100mm x 100mm x 100mm and another is 5mm x 300m x 300m for example - then checkout shows more then one box will be used and the costs are adjusted as so.
Come on @kickoff you want shipping to work in the real world? 
Shipping has been an issue in cs-cart from the beginning. It was completely revamped in V2.1 (I think) to account for multiple items in a box. Unfortunately this only applies to how many of a single item will fit into a single box (one box size assumed).
But there is no concept of a “shipping manager” aspect of cs-cart. But it should behave precisely how you describe. What would be needed is for each product to have it’s shipping dimensions specified. I.e. what amount of box space does it occupy in addition to its weight?
The calculations could then be performed to determine how many boxes, what their dimensions are and the total weight per box (including the weight of the box itself) to provide info for any shipping method one might be using and meet the needs of most shipping (and freight) carriers. Note you may have to mix products to get the best fit within a box.
The rules need to be clear enough so that a merchant can manage to them and also so that shipping estimation can be accurate.
So, to cut a long story short, there's no general-purpose way to calculate shipping by total volume for an arbitrary selection of items?
That is, to be able to specify the dimensions of a given item () and calculate the shipping properties of the total order based on the total volume.
And is there also no way to (e.g.) specify a shipping-size restrictions on a given service so that (e.g.) a light, but 4m-long pole couldn't be ordered via a service that has a 1m length restriction?
() Or the effective dimensions (e.g. smallest rectangle able to enclose an item) since non-rectangular objects would be harder to pack- or at least calculate- with 100% efficiency.
- Smich
In standard cs-cart you ar correct to the best of my knowledge.