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GoCart Questions

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GoCart Questions
Hi,

1. Under the Surcharges/Taxes section, can the country and state list be modified to whatever I like? ie. cut the country list down to 1 country and only have 2 states listed?

2. In regard to the above, would it be possible to have the states auto selected depending on what country the user chose? For eg. If I only had 2 countries entered, if the user selected country 1 then the 5 states in that country would be listed. Or country 2, the 7 states in that country would be listed.

3. If I want to charge shipping by weight, how and where can I enter the various price brackets for the total weight of the order? For eg. up to 1kg = $5.00, 1kg to 1.5kg = $5.50, 1.5 to 1.75kg = $6.00. Is this possible with the standard install?

Thanks,

R.
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Re: [ryel01] GoCart Questions In reply to
Just extending a bit on what I need to do with the shipping setup...

- I am only going to be shipping locally to different cities and towns.
- Each city and town will fall within 1 of 5 different shipping zones.
- Each of the 5 zones will have various shipping charges, depending on the total weight of the order. So up to 5kg, then from 5 to 10kg etc.
- It would also be good if I could somehow flag some clients as being Rural as this will attract a small surcharge also.

After looking closer at the shipping section, I think a solution would be to change the "anywhere, local, international" option to be the shipping zones 1 to 5, and then change the country list to be the cities and towns?

Unless someone else can offer another suggestion?

Thanks,
Regan.
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Re: [ryel01] GoCart Questions In reply to
Hi Regan,

1. Yes, there's a file called country.txt and state.txt in which you change the list of available cities/countries.

2. No, not currently. That could be done with a javascript solution, however, the cart does not have automatic state list creation

3. You can set up so that the order shipping is "keyed" by weight and an interface will be created in which you can configured your weight range to shipping costs.

Cheers,
Aki
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Re: [ryel01] GoCart Questions In reply to
This is not available in the plugin. However, this could be easily done with a customization. I had tried out the interface with the ability to define multiple zones but unfortunately the page loaded too slowly.

The customization is actually quite easy, just open up MANUAL.pm and the function that calculates the total cost just returns a hash of "Shipping Method" => "Shipping Cost". (You can have multiple selectable shipping options such as "normal" or "expidited" ) All the values to do with the order are available so you'd only really need to create a rack of "ifs".

Last edited by:

Aki: Mar 25, 2003, 1:56 PM
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Re: [ryel01] GoCart Questions In reply to
Shipping zones can get really hairy.

I'm trying to work out a way to calculate shipping, without overcharging, or undercharging. With 50 states, and some most likely in different zones, it's a big job, but using zip codes, is even bigger. At least by state, you can get a reasonable approximate. Then, there is UPS, USPS, and FedEx. <sigh> <G>

I like the idea of loading different tables on select. There are several javascript examples on the net, but alex had pointed out awhiile back, it might be easier just to refresh the page and let perl (or php) do it.

Many of the companies I deal with for wholesale accounts take the order, then figure shipping after the fact. Consumers don't like that, since studies show most bail at the point of seeing what the shipping charges are. That seems to be the make/break point. They want to know the shipping -- not be surprised.

In your case, though, if you have 5 defined/discrete zones, Aki's suggestion will work really well. It would also be fairly easy to maintain if prices change -- the only issue is would it survive upgrades.

How to work out reasonable UPS, USPS and/or FedEx pricing is going to be trickier, even if I don't ship Internationally.

I'm still working on getting GOCart running all the way, but may end up having to continue to develop my simple cart I started back in vesion 1.1.

I need a feature of quantities and 1-of-a-kind, so that when an item is moved to someones cart, a "hold" is put on it (like Half.com), and the quantity available is decreased. Once bought, the quantity is permanently lowered, and if necessary, marked "Sold Out." If the user doesn't complete the sale in x-hours, then the item is moved back to "available" -- but still stays in their cart as a "wish list" type item. It just becomes available for someone else to buy first. Because we'll accept checks, I also need a way to "hold" items, and take names for a waiting list, if the sale is not completed in x-days. I actually had this working pretty well, but never got around to finishing the order system to go beyond "reserving" and "relisting" items. I need a way to remove items that are sold in my shop as well, so some sort of "Mark as sold" admin feature on a link is another tweak.

I really need/want quantities available to be reflected in real time, since one of my distributors has a cart that can lag weeks behind their real inventory levels, I never know if I order something, if I'm going to get it. That is _distressing_ to say the least, and could cost retail customers if it happens in a retail shopping cart.

Once I get GOCart running, I'll see if it can be modified, or added to, or if I'll have to take a different route for the unique items.


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