Table of Contents

Rate Shopping

Rate Shopping in ShipStream enables users to select a virtual shipping method for an order, which is then resolved to the most cost-effect real shipping method or methods based on the rating data that you supply. The same rating data is also used to deliver rate quotes to API consumers and integrations that support rate quoting, such as the Shopify integration.

This feature ties together many other features of ShipStream, so it helps to have a good understanding of the following concepts before you begin:

See the Order Processing Loop page for a greater understanding of how all of these features work in conjunction with each other.

Requirements

At a high level, the requirements for achieving accurate rate shopping are:

  1. Rating Zone Map tables to map the destination country and postcode to a zone for a given origin warehouse
  2. Days In Transit Map tables defining expected days in transit from the origin to the destination country and postcode (not needed in some cases, may be optional in others)
  3. DAS Map tables describing areas affected by delivery area surcharges (optional)
  4. A Fee Schedule defining the applicable surcharges (optional)
  5. Rating Plan tables defining the base cost for a given package weight and zone
  6. A Rating Group defining a set of Rating Plans
  7. A Merchant Rate which assigns a merchant to a Rating Group
  8. One or more Fee Adjustments to apply on top of the base rate and fees (optional)
  9. A Virtual Shipping Method to be assigned to orders that are to be rate-shopped

When all of this data is in place, ShipStream will use it to calculate the shipping costs in real-time, ensuring that your orders are allocated to the optimal warehouses and shipping via the optimal carrier and service to minimize costs while meeting your customers’ expectations.

Even if you don't use rate shopping with a Virtual Shipping Method, the shipping estimate will still be added to the order history any time the shipments are generated or updated as long as there is sufficient rating data to supply a quote.

Setting up Rate Shopping

To break it down, the steps to achieving rate shopping are:

  1. Upload the tables described in requirements 1-3. See Rating Maps.
  2. Create Fee Schedules for the services you support. See Fee Schedules.
  3. Create a Rate Group and the appropriate Rate Plans, assigning the appropriate Fee Schedules from step 2. See Rate Groups and Plans.
It is optional but recommended to create a Base Rate Group and then a Rate Group that inherits from the Base Rate Group so that you can maintain variations of your base rates more easily.
  1. Create a Merchant Rate, assigning a Merchant to the Rate Group created in step 3. See Add a Merchant Rate.
  2. Create your Fee Adjustments as needed (negotiated discounts, surcharge adjustments, etc...). See Fee Adjustments.
  3. Create one or more Virtual Shipping Methods if needed. See Virtual Shipping Methods.
  4. Enable one or more Virtual Shipping Methods for the merchant. See Enable Virtual Methods.

Now, when a virtual shipping method is designated as an order's shipping method, ShipStream will use all the data provided above to determine which shipping service is the best fit for each of the order's shipments!

The rate shopping will only occur when an order is Ready to Ship and the shipping method chosen can be seen in the Shipment section on the Order page.

If the order is split into multiple shipments, each shipment is rate-shopped separately and could be assigned a different shipping carrier or service than the other shipments even for the same order.

The actual shipping method will be re-evaluated and therefore could change any time an order's key details change, such as when backordered items come in stock, or the address changes classification, etc.

If there is an issue resolving the shipping method, an error will be visible in the order History tab with a message such as: "Errors resolving virtual shipping method: {Warehouse}: Could not determine estimated delivery date for {Shipping Method}". These errors should provide sufficient information to determine if data is missing somewhere. In this example, the Days in Transit Map may not exist or may be missing a value for the country/postcode combination.

Add a Merchant Rate

A Merchant Rate assigns a single Merchant to a single Rate Group for a range of dates. Multiple Merchant Rates can be used to schedule automatic change-overs in pricing.

If there are multiple Merchant Rates active for the same merchant, only the first one sorted by the order in which they were created will apply!
  1. Navigate to Rating > Merchant Rates
  2. Click Add New Merchant Rate
  3. Select a Merchant to which this rate assignment will apply
  4. Select a Rate Group that applies to your selected merchant
  5. Set the Active status and Active From and Active To dates according to your needs
  6. Click Save Merchant Rate

Enable Virtual Methods

  1. Navigate to System > Configuration and click the Shipping Methods tab under Sales.
  2. Expand the Virtual Shipping Methods pane.
  3. Set Enabled to Yes.
  4. Select the virtual methods which you would like to enable.
You may change to a specific merchant scope to enable or disable certain methods only for the desired merchants.

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