Real Time Rates

Overview

Squirrelcart supports obtaining real time shipping rates (RTR) for:

USPS - Using either Endicia or USPS Web Tools.
UPS
FedEx
Canada Post
Australia Post.

This greatly reduces the time spent managing your shipping rates.

How it Works

Customer adds item to cart and clicks checkout
Customer specifies shipping address and clicks continue
Squirrelcart sends a request to shipping courier requesting rates
Shipping courier returns rates
Squirrelcart presents rates to customer

Steps 3 through 5 all happen behind the scenes without customer interaction.

Relation to Shipping Rules

Squirrelcart automatically treats each rate obtained via a real time rate lookup as a Shipping Rule with a default priority of 2. This allows you to offer your customers a combination of dynamic real time rates and manually created rates (Shipping Rules). To change the default priority, use the field RTR Shipping Rule Priority on the record for each Shipping Courier.

Enabling Real Time Rates

In order for real time rates to work, Squirrelcart needs to know the weight of your products, your company's address, and what shipping methods you want to use.

Enable Real Time Rates for your courier.
- For USPS, see the Endicia or USPS Web Tools topics
- For FedEx, see the FedEx Web Services topic
- For UPS, see the UPS Developer Kit topic.
- For Australia Post, see the Australia Post topic
- For Canada Post, see the Canada Post Sell Online topic
Set Product Weights
Make sure that you have weights associated with every product record. If you do not, real time rates will fail.
Specify Your "Ship From" Address
Squirrelcart uses the address specified on your Store Settings page as the address to ship from. If this address is blank or incorrect, real time rates will fail. If you are using the warehouse feature, the address of the warehouse is used as the ship from address.
Enable the shipping services you wish to use.
Test
To test, add an item to the cart in your storefront. Continue through checkout, specifying a valid shipping address. If real time rates are working, you should be shown rates for the courier you enabled. If they fail, enable diagnostics mode to watch the data sent to your courier, and the response they return.

Real time rate information is provided on a per package basis. To handle this, Squirrelcart has a packing function that it uses to determine a rough estimate of the number of packages that are in the order. It then requests rate information for each package, totals the amount per package, and offers the total amount to the customer for the corresponding shipping method. Squirrelcart uses the value of the Max. Weight field on the Shipping Method's record to determine how to pack the order. This method is not foolproof, but does work very well. If you wish your shipping rates to be more accurate, we recommend you check the Ship as a separate package option on your product records. The cart will then assume that you are shipping every item ordered in a separate package.

Padding Real Time Rates

If you need to add an amount to the real time rates returned by a courier to account for packaging, follow the steps below.

Keep in mind that couriers frown upon presenting padded rates as the actual rate being offered by the courier. If you do pad your real time rates, you should add a notice somewhere on your site indicating that you are adding an additional charge for packaging.

For all Rates Returned by a Courier

You can pad all the real time rates returned for a particular courier by a set amount. Just enter the amount you wish to pad by in the Pad RTR By field on the courier's record under Shipping > Couriers in your control panel.

For Individual Shipping Methods

You can pad all the real time rates returned for individual shipping methods by a set amount. If you are also padding rates at the courier level (see above), any padding done at the shipping method level takes precedence. Just enter the amount you wish to pad by in the Pad RTR By field on the shipping method's record under Shipping > Methods in your control panel.