ShoppingBasket Postage Costs

Following the enormous increase in online sales, Royal Mail launched a new initiative enabling people to buy and print their postage online. Each item of mail is given a barcode, the label can then be printed and stuck to the package and regular mail can be even posted in a post box. Of course, recorded and special delivery items do still have to taken to a Post Office. They also offer a free postage calculator so you can work out how much to charge your customers before purchasing the postage required. This can be very helpful when you first set up your shopping basket, as it will help you to work out how much you should be charging for different items. Check out their Online Postage info on www.royalmail.com.

Once you’ve worked out your postage costs, you’ll need to set this up in your Shopping Basket System Control Panel - Mals Ecommerce. Login to your control panel at https://www.mals-e.com/ Sign in to your account your Username and Password. (Username is normally an 8 digit number beginning with 6 - there is a “Forgotten Password” link if you need it).

Next Click on Cart Setup > Tax and Shipping > Shipping.

There are eight different ways of calculating shipping on your Mals control panel, but 3 of the options only work if you assigned a unit or value to each item, as you added them in Step 4 on your website. Not everyone will have done this so let’s look at most common options, which do not required this.

Free Postage for orders over a certain value. This is a simple way to encourage more sales. Set the value as required. (Leave it as 0.00 if you don’t want to offer this option)

Flat handling fee, this is always added whatever postage option you choose. Set the value to 0.00 (zero) if you don't want this.

No shipping. (Choose this option if you’ve added the individual postage costs to each price when you added each item to your cart)

Option 1: Fixed Value – A simple fixed amount, added to every order.
 
Option 2: Calculated from quantity – One postage fee will be multiplied by the number of items in the order. 
 
Option 4: Calculated by quantity from an array – Calculate the postage based on the
the number of items ordered. For example, the first item might cost £10, the second £5, and for more than ten items, free of charge. You can set the bands where you want. You can also set postage zones such as UK or Overseas.
 
Option 6: Calculated by quantity in bands - This option is similar to option 4 except that the same postage charge is made for all orders that fall within the bands you set. For example, the first item might be charged £10 and for any additional quantity between two and five items an extra £2 is charged. So a customer is charged £12 regardless of whether they buy two items or six items. Note that the charges and quantities are cumulative. You can also set postage zones such as UK or Overseas.

Once you have set your preferred Postage options, click Update Shipping.

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