Managing Shipping
How you choose to ship your products is a key element to the management and success of your store. You must account for the great variety of available methods, which can mix carriers, regional and international taxes, package weight and the price of a product itself. Luckily, PrestaShop makes it easy for you to handle it all in just a few screens.
A product's shipping price is basically calculated using either of two methods: the total price of the order, or the total weight of the order. This is how most carriers calculate their shipping fees, and this is why you should fill-in the weight setting when creating a product in the catalog, and also why you absolutely must indicate the per-weight and per-price costs for each carrier in the "Carriers" page.
PrestaShop computes shipping price according to a system of either weight ranges or price ranges. That system can only work for one or the other of these types of range.
The shipping settings work closely with the local settings of your PrestaShop installation. While in PrestaShop 1.4 some of these settings were also found in the "Shipping" menu, since version 1.5 all local settings have been moved in a new menu, named "Localization". This is where you will be able to edit geographical zones, countries, currencies, etc. Therefore, make sure to have a serious look at the "Localization" menu, which is explained in the next chapter of this guide, "Understanding Local Settings". For instance, in order to create a complete carrier in PrestaShop, you must have clearly defined your geographical zones before; this is done in the "Zones" page under the "Localization" menu.
The way carriers are created in PrestaShop was completed reworked in version 1.5.5.0: you now build new carriers using the Carrier Wizard.
This chapter contains the following sections: