ZippyCart Overview

The most common example is the 'zone' system used by the Postal system, UPS, Fedex and others. ZippyCart includes a custom chart which compares your customers zip code to yours to determine the zone. The zone is then used as the 'distance' factor to compute the exact cost of shipping.

This cost plus any handling fees you charge are then presented to your customer in real time! Your customer sees exactly what the shipping charge will be for the total order each time they add or remove an item!

ZippyCart includes many variables and settings to provide fine-tuning for you shipping calculations no matter what type of inventory you sell. Default values are provided as sample values, but defaults also provide a cart that is ready to use in many cases.

• Paypal Compatible ZippyCart is designed to use the same type of order buttons and field content as the cart available from Paypal. If your web pages already contain links and order buttons for paypal you can save hours of editing and reuse the data you have already entered. (you must add a field for weight)

• Weight-distance based shipping. When your customer clicks on an order button, ZippyCart receives the weight of that item along with price and description. The program then calculates the total weight of the order by multiplying items times the weight of each item times quantity. If you have specified some additional weight for packing material, that weight is added as well.

  ZippyCart next determines the distance the package must travel by consulting a zone chart which was created using your zip code as the origin. The customer's zip code is used to obtain a 'destination zone' from this table. Once the zone is known, ZippyCart looks at a rate table to determine the charges for a package of x weight transported to zone y. ZippyCart does not place calls to any other web address when calculating charges. All calculations are made using internal rate tables which you may edit.

• Optional Expedited Shipping calculator ZippyCart provides an alternate shipping method which can be used to allow your customer to request rush shipments. If enabled, the shipping upgrade is offered to your customer along with a comparison price and may be selected by the shopper or declined.

• Seller Defined Checkout. Using the confirmation and alternate payment features of ZippyCart allows the seller to fully customize the buyer's check out experience. No need to accept the limited options of Paypal's checkout dialog, plus you can accept payment from Paypal or any other method you want.

• ZippyCart does not allow the customer to choose how an item will ship. Instead, ZippyCart provides two methods of shipment, Standard and Alternate. Your customer must choose from one of these two methods. You may name these methods using any phrase you choose. I.E. you may list 'UPS Ground' as the standard method and 'FedEx Overnight' as the alternate method.

  In practice, by editing the rate tables in your account, you have complete control over rates charged and you may further explain the carriers used within your normal web content or the custom areas of ZippyCart.

• ZippyCart does not calculate weight by package dimension. Our rationale for omitting this feature is the time required to measure each product item and input those measurements into the cart buttons. Most sellers will have only a few oversize products if any. The proper way to accomodate oversize packages with ZippyCart is to determine the dimensional weight for the item in question and indicate the higher number in the order button. We maintain a calculator here. This is a javascript calculator which may be saved on your local PC for quick access.

Our imaginary store owner deals in HAM radio equipment. His inventory includes such things as heavy transmitters and power supplies and extremly light weight items such as small electronic components and tools. This seller does not anticipate overnight orders from the web site and would prefer to handle extremely urgent orders by telephone anyway. The main concern is a shipping policy which will provide the customer with reasonable shipping costs on the heavy items and reasonable speed for the smaller items.

ZippyCart default domestic rate is Priority Mail, but the owner prefers to ship the heavy power supplies by UPS for economy. For this seller, we will recommend creating composite rates based on the US Postal Zone chart.

For the domestic standard rates, we use the composite rate tool to merge rates from US Postal Priority charts and UPS Ground. Package weights up to 10 pounds will go by Priority Mail, and anything heavier will go by UPS.

Using the tool is simple, click Priority Rates and UPS Ground rates then display the editor. For each pound of weight, both rates will be shown. for the first ten rows, select Priority, then Select UPS for the rest. Copy the output to your ZippyCart script, and and the rates are fixed to match the policy defined.

Because UPS does not deliver ground shipments to Alaska and Hawii, we must define a special rate for each of these two states. For these destinations, we indicate Priority Mail rates for all weights in an effort to avoid the expense of UPS Air methods.

Some common situations

I only ship by (UPS/FEDEX) I never use the Postal system how should I set up my rates?

First determine the adjustment needed to bring your carrier's published rates up to your actual contract. (see rate references in the FAQ) When the adjustment amount is known, use the rate editor to reset domestic rates to those of your carrier and request a new zone chart if needed. If shipping to Alaska, Hawaii or US Possesions, you will need to create a special rate section for each.

We currently only have country clasifications available for the Postal System. If you want to use a non-postal carrier for International shipments, you must create a custom rate for each country you will ship to.

Edit the script and create a modified rate table for Media rates.

If your carrier uses a zone chart similar to the Postal service, just use a spreadsheet program like Excel to create a custom rate. Using one of the stock rate tables as a template, create your spreadsheet with one row for each pound of weight and one column for each of the eight postal zones. (9 columns total, the first column must contain the weight) When your spreadsheet is prepared, save it as file type 'csv' which means 'comma separated values'. Copy this table to the script and save.

Because you can edit the rates used in this calculation, you will be able to create accurate calculations using any carrier. Default rates are provided for both domestic and international shipments, plus, you can easily add custom rates for any destination