Ups Billable Weight

Store Builder Questions
1

Hello, I have a couple of shipping questions that I was hoping to get some advice on. I sincerely appreciate any input as I have searched and have not found any definite and recent answers to the following questions:


  1. UPS Billable weight, Our largest supplier has started publishing “billable weight” for all of their products. Is it WISE for us to change all of the actual weights on these products to the new billable weight within CS-Cart? In other words, will CS-Cart return more accurate shipping charges using this billable weight over the actual weight?


  2. Multiple packages - we assemble kits, the largest of these kits ship in two boxes. To achieve the correct shipping charges, could, or should I use the “Dim Weight” for each box totaled. Meaning box #1 25 lbs + Box #2 15 lbs …



    Or should I look at using the “Items in a box” method? Which in all honesty I do not understand. I have tried to use this method in the past and have had terrible luck coming up with consistant shipping charges.



    Any incite and advice is much appreciated …
2

Can a Brother Get Some Love… HBO … Help a brother out :-)

3

hi,


[quote]1. UPS Billable weight, Our largest supplier has started publishing “billable weight” for all of their products. Is it WISE for us to change all of the actual weights on these products to the new billable weight within CS-Cart? In other words, will CS-Cart return more accurate shipping charges using this billable weight over the actual weight?[/quote]



[color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif]if billable weight is different from actual for this supplier, then yes - it is better to replace weight in cs-cart with billable weight.[/font][/color]


[quote]



[color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif]2. Multiple packages - we assemble kits, the largest of these kits ship in two boxes. To achieve the correct shipping charges, could, or should I use the “Dim Weight” for each box totaled. Meaning box #1 25 lbs + Box #2 15 lbs …[/font][/color]



[/quote]



As far as I know it is not supported by default cs-cart functionality and there are no custom modules for that.


[quote]

[color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif]Or should I look at using the “Items in a box” method? Which in all honesty I do not understand. I have tried to use this method in the past and have had terrible luck coming up with consistant shipping charges.[/font][/color]

[/quote]



Actually, you should check this method.

The idea is to set dimensions on product editing page (per every product) and set package size in shipping method settings.

Then cs-cart algorithm distibutes products among packages.



Best regards,

WSA team

4

The billable weight is volumetric weight. Most of the major shipping companies work with volumetric weight. As CS-Cart does not support volumetric weight, its needed to provide this to get an accurate shipping cost calculation. However, I am not entirely sure that this would work on a per product basis. If there are multiple products in a box then this may not work in CS-Cart. I would suggest to just try it and check if the calculations match.

5

Here is some information about the “Items in a box” function from the reference guide



▪ Items in a box – Minimum and maximum number of product items to be shipped in a separate box.
▪ Box length – Length of a separate box.
▪ Box width – Width of a separate box.
▪ Box height – Height of a separate box.
The last four options are required for a more accurate shipping cost estimation when a real-time shipping method with the support for multi-box shipping is used (UPS, FedEx and DHL.) If you do not specify box dimensions, values will be taken from the global configuration settings of a particular shipping carrier. Also see topic Shipping & Taxes.

6

IMO, what CS-Cart needs first is Product Dimensions. 3 dimensions for each product: Length (longest distance), Width, Height (shortest distance).

Then multiple product dimensions can be added together with an algorithm that selects the longest length, selects the widest width, and adds together each product height. The calculated dimensions could be massaged by a set of rules with values that the store owner defines for minimum dimensions, fill/packing material dimensions, a list of predefined container dimensions, etc. After applying the rules, three new dimensions can be sent to the carrier and fetch a more accurate dimensional (billable) weight.



UPS, FedEx, USPS, freight carriers, cargo carriers, air carriers, rail carriers… Worldwide everyone has changed to dimensional weight. (My wife works in international and domestic logistics - so I hear it all.) CS-Cart just released v4, and even though the entire shipping industry was in the process of finalizing the change to Dimensional Weight Only (meaning they had given developers enough time to implement the changes and were now retiring the old process) there are still no Product Dimensions, or any Dimensional Weight logic, for CS-Cart.

7

Thanks everyone. What we have done on the two box scenario is simply calculated the Dim weight for the two boxes and added them as one box. Comparing this in UPS worldship gets us closest to the accurate charges.Tried the “items in a box” and the charges were all over the board.