Manaing Carriers
You must have carriers added to your PrestaShop installation – that is, a clear indicator of who will deliver your products. It might be just yourself or your shop (for instance if you are selling downloadable products, or only work locally), but as soon as you are actually sending packages using stamps and a 3rd-party delivery such as your local postal service, or FedEx, UPS and such, then you must have their details added to your shop's database. This will enable your customers to better choose which carrier to use, based on their delivery ranges, fees and dates.
The "Carrier" page presents you with a list of all your current carriers. From there, you can directly change their status, indicate that why of shipping is free or not, and change their position when presented to customers.
By default, you have two carriers in your database:
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It is up to you to remove these default carriers and add new ones for your customers. At the very least, you should edit the "My carrier" carrier and replace its data with that of a real carrier: name, details, and ranges.
Creating a New Carrier
In this section, we are going to create a complete carrier, from A to Z, using the Carrier Wizard. You can create as many carriers as you wish.
If one carrier has different shipping services, you should create as many carriers in PrestaShop, and differentiate them with their names.
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To create a new carrier, click on the "Add new" button in the "Carriers" page. This will open the Carrier Wizard on the first of its four panels.
Panel 1: General settings
This is where you describe the carrier, giving information that the customer will need in order to recognize and choose the carrier he prefers.
Let's examine all of the information you need to enter:
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Click "Next" to reach the second panel.
Panel 2: Shipping locations and costs
First, this panel presents a handful of settings:
- Shipping and Add handling costs. Include or exclude shipping & handling costs in this carrier's price, as set in the "Shipping" page.
- Apply Free shipping cost. If enabled, the final order price will include both the carrier's regular shipping fee, along with specific per-product fees, if there are anyyou will not be able to indicate shipping prices.
If disabled, the final order price will only include the product's shipping fee – making this carrier basically free.
Per-product fees are configured on each product's "Shipping" tab, with the "Additional shipping cost (per quantity)" field.Billing. Choose whether you want to calculate the shipping costs by total price or total weight. This depends on the way your carrier handles billing, you will be able to edit the ranges and per-country costs in the form below. - Billing. When billing the customer, PrestaShop can apply one of two behaviors, which you have to set depending on how you carrier handles billing (so make sure to check their documentation about this):
- According to total price. Billing depends on the total price of the order.
- According to total weight. Billing depends on the total weight of the order.
- Tax. Indicates if this carrier requires a local tax in order to deliver, and if so, which one. The tax must already exist in PrestaShop (which can be done in the "Taxes" page of the "Localization" menu).
- Out-of-range behavior. In case the chosen carrier has not set shipping cost for the required zone or weight, you can indicate how PrestaShop should react. You have two options:
- Apply the cost of the highest defined range. PrestaShop will take the most costly range and apply its conditions.
- Disable carrier. PrestaShop will not suggest this carrier, since it probably cannot deliver this order.
Then comes the important part: the creation of the carrier's range. This is a very important step, as PrestaShop needs this information to present the customer with carriers which can actually deliver the ordered package. Indeed, depending on the order's total price or total weight, some carrier options will not be available while others will only appear at a certain value. You must be very precise when filling these values, and preferably those suggested by each carrier's documentation.
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The weight and price units are the default ones for your PrestaShop installation, and the ones your products use. You can change these units "Localization" page of the "Localization" menu. |
Finally comes one final option:
- Out-of-range behavior. In case the chosen carrier has not set shipping cost for the required zone or weight, you can indicate how PrestaShop should react. You have two options:
- Apply the cost of the highest defined range. PrestaShop will take the most costly range and apply its conditions.
- Disable carrier. PrestaShop will not suggest this carrier, since it probably cannot deliver this order.
Click "Next" to reach the third panel.
Panel 3: Size, weight and group access
This panel presents two sets of options:
- Maximum package height/width/depth/weight. You can now indicate the minimum and maximum package height and weight, which are an essential part of choosing a package carrier. The value is to use the default weight and dimension units, as set in the "Localization" page of the "Localization" menu.
- Group Accessaccess. You might want only some user groups to be able to use a carrier. This option serves this purpose.
Click "Next" to reach the fourth and final panel.
Panel 4: Summary
This last panel gives you an overview of your settings for this carrier.
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