Explains the Checkout Rates feature: requirements, how it works, and things to know.
ShipStation's Checkout Rates feature allows you to configure rates for your customers to select during their checkout process from your stores. Enabling this feature will let you control the services and rates your customers can select during their store checkout.
To use Checkout Rates, you must first connect your store to ShipStation (if not connected already), connect the Checkout Rates feature in your store setup, then configure the rates you'd like your customers to see.
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A U.S.- or Australia-based ShipStation account.
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The account must be on the new layout (this feature is not available in ShipStation Legacy).
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An active account with a supported selling channel connected to ShipStation (Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, and Wix are currently supported).
If you have not connected your store to ShipStation, follow the instructions from your store's help article:
Store-specific Requirements:
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Shopify: requires the Shopify Advanced plan or higher.
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Magento: requires the most recent version of the Auctane plug-in to be installed in your Magento account.
You can configure three types of checkout rates: Live Rates, Flat Rate, and Free. Live Rates pulls a rate from your carrier accounts for the services you define in the Checkout Rates settings. For example, you could create a standard option using a live rate for a carrier and service that ships within 3-5 days. Flat Rate and Free allow you to apply the same price to all shipments regardless of shipping cost (in the case of the Free option, that price would automatically be $0).
When using the live rate pricing method, ShipStation takes the package weight sent from the store, ship-to zip code from the order, and ship-from address in ShipStation and requests rates for all the carrier services you specified. ShipStation compares those rates and passes back the least expensive result with its transit time to display on the store checkout screen.
Currently, the Checkout Rates feature must make the following assumptions about the shipments:
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Shipments are shipped from your default Ship From location.
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Shipments use package type: Package. There is currently no way to designate other package types or receive rates for other package types.
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Product weights from your ecommerce platform are the same as the shipping weight. For the most accurate rates, you may need to adjust the product weights to represent the shipping weights.
If this is not possible with your workflow, an alternate option would be to use the Rate Adjustment option provided in the Checkout Rates setup. This allows you to add a percentage or set amount to any rate returned by the carrier's API to compensate for any rate increase the package weight will incur.
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The Checkout Rates feature is currently only available for US- and Australia-based ShipStation accounts.
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Some selling channels may have store-specific requirements for Checkout Rates to work.
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To calculate rates for your checkout options, ShipStation uses product weights from the ecommerce platform. Please make sure those product weights represent the shipping weights.
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The Checkout Rates feature assumes all shipments are shipping from your default Ship From Location and using a package type of Package. There is currently no way to choose other package types or enter package dimensions.
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Troubleshooting tip: If a rate is not appearing as an option in checkout:
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It was not the least expensive rate.
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The active checkbox for the rate may be unchecked. This box must be checked for ShipStation to send the option to your store checkout.
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Troubleshooting tip: If you see a blank page under Checkout after ShipStation enables Checkout Rates on your account, you must add a Ship From Location.