Multi-box shipment

Dear friends,

As far as you know, the “SHIPPING: Add support for multi-box shipments and for dimensional weight” idea collected most of votes, which gives us reason to think that this functionality is really an essential one. That is why, we will start preparing a specification for changing the current principle of shipping methods’ work.



Main steps:

[SIZE=3]1.Shipping methods will be changed to work like payment methods.[/SIZE]

In other words, you will be able to select several shipping services of one carrier, and define own settings for each shipping method.



[SIZE=3]2. It will be possible to distribute the purchased products among boxes.[/SIZE]

This will be done automatically according to the shipping options of each product.

Below, you will be able to find the information necessary to manage multibox shipments.


  • By default, all products will be shipped in one box which sizes are defined in the global options of the shipping method.
  • The “The max weight of products in box” option will be added to shipping methods settings. If the weight of products at checkout exceeds this value, the delivery will be distributed among several boxes.
  • If the customer orders a quantity that lies within the allowed range of the “Number of items to be shipped in a separate box with the dimensons defined bellow” option, the ordered product items are shipped to the customer in separate box(es). For details, see [url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showpost.php?p=96113&postcount=35[/url]

    [size=1]For example, with the allowed range of 3 to 5, the customer orders 12 items. In this case, 10 items will be shipped in two boxes (with the demensions specified on the product details page), and the other 2 items will be shipped in the box (with the dimensiones specified in the general shipping settings).[/size]



    [SIZE=3]3. Negotioated rates will be added to UPS & Fedex.[/SIZE]
  • At the moment we are not quite sure if it is possible to add this to FedEx and that it can work correctly with them. We’ll keep you up to date regarding this issue during the development.



    [color=darkgreen]Is it necessary to also define the sizes of a product together with the sizes of a box in which to ship this product in order to calculate how many products will fit into one box?[/color]





    We welcome a more detailed description of how you see the process of working with shipping methods, with examples from some certain carriers. Please point out all the weak points at once, and we will try to get rid of them as far as possible.



    Our aim on this forum is to study everything in the smallest details and to prepare a final specification. Please do participate in the discussion in order that we can do our best to meet all your requirements.

    shipping_product.jpg

Glad to hear it. It sounds like you have the right idea.

What about a “Max size of products in a box”?

[quote name=‘Tool Outfitters’]What about a “Max size of products in a box”?[/QUOTE]



What is it and how does it supposed to work?

Similar to the “max weight of products in a box”. Using the default size in global options, calculate the size of the number of products and if they exceed the default size, then distribute among several boxes.

[quote name=‘Tool Outfitters’]Similar to the “max weight of products in a box”. Using the default size in global options, calculate the size of the number of products and if they exceed the default size, then distribute among several boxes.[/QUOTE]



Wait a second, let’s try to figure it out step by step:

  1. On the product details page, we have the “ship in separate box” setting, and if it is enabled, we use the box size defined at the same page. See the screenshot.
  2. Otherwise, we use the box size defined on the shipping settings page, but in this case we do not have a product size. The only thing we have is a product weight and the max possible weight.



    Actually, we can do the following trick.
  • if the “ship in separate box” setting is enabled, then we define the dimensions of the box in which this product will be shipped;
  • if the “ship in separate box” setting is disabled, we use these dimension settings on the product page to configure the parcel within the box defined on the shipping settings page.

I don’t know imac. I am just tryng to give ideas to a more automated way of the system. It’s not going to be easy for those of us who have 30,000+ products to go through and enable/disable “ship in a separate box” for each product.

I’m getting confused the more I think about this.



My way of thinking is to have…

  • By default, all products will be shipped in one box which sizes and weights are defined in the global options of the shipping method. (These will be the max size and weights per box)
  • The “max weight of products in box” option will be added to shipping methods settings. If the weight of products at checkout exceeds this value, the delivery will be distributed among several boxes.
  • The “max size of products in box” option will be added to shipping methods settings. If the size of products at checkout exceeds this value, the delivery will be distributed among several boxes.



    In this case there would not be a need for “ship in a separate box” because it will do it automatically.



    It will need to be coded to use one or the other (some users may only be able to provide a weight rather than size or vice versa) and a combination of both.



    I don’t. Sounds good in my head anyway. LOL

I actually had something like this custom coded for me back in the 1.3.5 series. The mod was pretty simple.



You had three options per product.



Combined Shipping (Default, the way it is now)

Separate Box

Freight



Because I ship large aquariums I needed the freight option. Basically this option made it so that if it was selected for a product the customer would still be able to checkout, but also got a message saying that they would be contacted with an exact shipping amount.



These three options worked great. The separate box option was the best for me.



If these options were combined with a “max weight of products in box” setting than the shipping would be pretty sweet.



@Tool Outfitters,



If you have a “max size of products in box” wouldn’t you have to enter in the sizes of all your products? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the shipping sizes of all my products. Plus the time to enter in all this data would be huge.



This is where the separate box option would be great. I sell metal halide lights that can get up to 6 feet in length. I know that they are already at the max size so they would automatically go into a separate box.



Anyways, this all sounds pretty good.



Brandon

[quote name=‘Tool Outfitters’]I don’t know imac. I am just tryng to give ideas to a more automated way of the system. It’s not going to be easy for those of us who have 30,000+ products to go through and enable/disable “ship in a separate box” for each product.[/QUOTE]



But, anyway, you should specify the size of a box for a product. I don’t think that the same box can be used to ship all the 30000+ products.

I see what you mean Brandon. I would think that in that case you would have an if statement saying that if the size and/or weight of that one product exceeds the default max then it ships by itself. I already have the shipping set up to where if the weight is under 70 lbs then it ships FedEx, UPS, etc…and if over 70 lbs it ships by freight company so that is not an issue for me at the moment.



imac, I wasn’t talking about the possibility of having to ship 30,000 products in one order. I was talking about having to go through each of the 30,000 products to determine whether it should “ship in a separate box” or not.



Anyway, that’s what we are here for…to throw ideas around and figure out the best solution.

We have already had a couple of addons made that I think most would benefit from and would ideally be included in any changes:


  • Exclude products in a certain category from a particular shipping method (could be extended to individual products).


  • Define a minimum shipment weight used for when products are less than the minimum amount.


  • Define a weight for packaging to be added to the product weight. We currently have a fixed weight added per shipping method, but an uplift factor as a % of the product weight ontop of the fixed weight would probably be useful as well.



    Regarding the other changes proposed, I like the idea of the separate box function.



    Also the multiple boxes function is useful, but only on a per shipping method basis…



    Regarding box sizing, I think it is incredibly difficult to try and work from measurements of multiple products to try and size a box size that will be shipped. What I think would work better is to work out the cubic weight for the product, and the actual weight for the product, and enter the greater of the two as the shipping weight. We then set the box size in the global settings to the smallest box we have as the shipping weight will take care of the rest.



    Ideally this would be done automatically by having fields to enter the dimensions of every product (need to allow for different dimensions in product options as well).



    A cubic weight ratio should be able to set on a per shipper basis as these can be negotiated (we have different cubing rates with different shippers, currently we just use the highest one when working out the cubic weight for each product).



    The cart would then for each product calculate the cubic weight for each shipper, compare with actual weight and use the greater of the two. The box size then becomes irrelevant in calculations and just needs to be set to the smallest shipping box used.

[quote name=‘Tool Outfitters’]

imac, I wasn’t talking about the possibility of having to ship 30,000 products in one order. I was talking about having to go through each of the 30,000 products to determine whether it should “ship in a separate box” or not.

[/QUOTE]



Actually a meant the same as brandonvd said:

[quote]

@Tool Outfitters,



If you have a “max size of products in box” wouldn’t you have to enter in the sizes of all your products? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the shipping sizes of all my products. Plus the time to enter in all this data would be huge.

[/quote]

[quote name=‘Jayson’]

Regarding box sizing, I think it is incredibly difficult to try and work from measurements of multiple products to try and size a box size that will be shipped. What I think would work better is to work out the cubic weight for the product, and the actual weight for the product, and enter the greater of the two as the shipping weight. We then set the box size in the global settings to the smallest box we have as the shipping weight will take care of the rest.



Ideally this would be done automatically by having fields to enter the dimensions of every product (need to allow for different dimensions in product options as well).



A cubic weight ratio should be able to set on a per shipper basis as these can be negotiated (we have different cubing rates with different shippers, currently we just use the highest one when working out the cubic weight for each product).



The cart would then for each product calculate the cubic weight for each shipper, compare with actual weight and use the greater of the two. The box size then becomes irrelevant in calculations and just needs to be set to the smallest shipping box used.[/QUOTE]



It is not clear enough to me what the cubic weight means. Could you please give some practical examples?

Maybe you meant the dimensional weight, but in this case you should send a box size anyway because the shipper calculates it by its own.

Having the ability to set global maximum shipping weight per box per shipping method and if the order total weight is more than the maximum shipping weight will trigger a second box also ship in a separate box per product setting gets my vote this definitely helps for those bulky products that must ship separately .



Any improvements to the shipping calculations is a very welcome change.



Thank You

Joe

Hello Imac,



Your initial description of the shipping improvements looks quite good!


[QUOTE]Is it necessary to also define the sizes of a product together with the sizes of a box in which to ship this product in order to calculate how many products will fit into one box?[/QUOTE]



I don’t believe this is truly necessary, especially considering that per your image, there will already be the option to for us to choose how many of each individual product items can be added to a box if we need to determine this. The other issue is that it would not be good to have “excessive” calculations going on in the background every time a realtime shipping calculation is being performed by the cart causing a delay in obtaining rates (especially if you are requesting realtime rates from multiple carriers all at the same time as we do. :wink:



Another very important improvement which should be implemented is to have the option of having your business “contract, negotiated” rates or “List Rates” returned to your store. UPS & Fedex both offer to choose which rates are being returned in realtime calculations through their API.



Having control over this option is critical for higher volume shippers.



Thanks!

Another issue we all need to work out is determining a practical way to utilize US Postal Service “Priority Mail Flat Rate Boxes” !



So, because of this oversight on my part, I may have to retract my comments regarding: [QUOTE]Is it necessary to also define the sizes of a product together with the sizes of a box in which to ship this product in order to calculate how many products will fit into one box?[/QUOTE]



Knowone ever said realtime shipping calculation scenarios were easy! :confused:

Just a quick thought, however, perhaps having the ability at the product level to choose “Can Ship in Priority Mail Flat Rate Box” along with “How Many of This Item Can be Contained in Flat Rate Box”



This may not be the absolute, most thorough way of doing this, but perhaps it would be enough of an improvement to be beneficial for the majority of us currently using Priority Mail as a shipping option. :wink:

[quote name=‘Struck’]

Another very important improvement which should be implemented is to have the option of having your business “contract, negotiated” rates or “List Rates” returned to your store. UPS & Fedex both offer to choose which rates are being returned in realtime calculations through their API.



Having control over this option is critical for higher volume shippers.



Thanks![/QUOTE]



Dear Struck please provide us with more detailed information on it.

The sound of all this makes me cringe. I sure hope CS isn’t getting rid of the the ability to manually enter flat rate shipping charges.



My comments are I see there is a “The max weight of products in box” setting but should’nt this really be “The max volume of products in box” because the volume will determine how many products will fit into a box NOT the weight?



Imac to make things simple this is what we do here:



A customer orders 1 recipe box that weighs 1.75 lbs. and it ships in a 6 x 8 x 10 box for $9.95



A customer orders 2 recipe boxes that together weigh 3.5 lbs. and they ship together in a 8 x 8 x 12 box for $11.95



What’s important to note here is that the box size is determined by volume NOT weight, though we do need to know what the combined weight is that is not what determines if the the order gets split into multiple boxes.



Not to sound confusing but what determines a multi-box shipment for us is the product itself NOT the weight or volume of the product. Example is a customer orders a breadbox and a spice rack then the 17 lb. bread box would ship in a 20 x 14 x 12 box and the 4.5 lb. spice rack in a 14 x 18 x 4 box BUT if a customer ordered 2 spice racks they would be shipped together in a 14 x 18 x 10 box. The product “breadbox” would basically need to have a setting to say it ships by itself.



Here’s another example:



A customer orders a recipe box, a mug tree and a napkin holder:



recipe box order by itself ships in a 6 x 8 x 10 box

mug tree ordered by itself ships in a 8 x 8 x 14 box

napkin holder ordered by itself ships in a 6 x 6 x 6 box



BUT ordered together they ship in a 8 x 8 x 20 box, again the box size is automatically selected based on product volume NOT weight.



Imac, I described what our business does to ship products for your information in developing this functionality. My personal opinion is that we use flat rate shipping and it works absolutely great and I will continue to use it even if this is implemented #1 because flat rate is easy and works. #2 this is opening up a huge can of worms that will wiggle around and make a huge stink for years to come, however the above information relates to most businesses and I hope you find it useful and consider the requirements - Sno



On a very important side note, Yes theirs 241 votes for this but only like what 5 people participating. If people are not willing to participate then it’s not worth pursuing in my opinion. Example, I’ve complained for years for CS to fix the banners addon by adding pagination, search and saved search functionality. I’d get more sales if this was fixed then by re-arraigning how shipping works - Sno