ChannelShipper's shipping rules are designed to save you time and effort by automatically applying postage to your orders depending on a variety of different conditions that you can set.

Contents:

1. What do Shipping Rules do?

2. What do shipping rules mean when processing an order?

3. How do I create a shipping rule?

4. How do I reapply shipping rules to my old orders?

5. Troubleshooting your shipping rules

1. What do shipping rules do?

Shipping rules automatically apply a shipping service to an order based on specific criteria that you select. New orders affected by your shipping rules will go straight to 'Postage applied' status.

For example, you can apply a particular service, such as Royal Mail International Tracked, to all orders from a particular country or region, to orders of a certain weight, or to orders in a particular price bracket. 

2. What do shipping rules mean when processing an order?

If a new order meets the criteria of one of your shipping rules, the selected shipping service will be automatically applied.

If your orders contain Products, the weight and packaging type will be automatically applied as well. 

Please note that shipping rules only act on orders without postage already applied. If you import via spreadsheet, and assign a particular service to an order, then your shipping rules will not apply to that order. 

3. How do I create a shipping rule?

To begin, click the 'Settings' cog icon in the top right corner of any page within ChannelShipper, and click 'Shipping rules'.

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All your shipping rules will be listed here. To begin creating a new one, click the 'Add a new shipping rule' button.

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A form will appear for you to fill in your criteria. All fields marked with a red asterisk are mandatory and must be filled in.

Page 1 has the following options:

Give the rule a name: This should be something relevant and helpful where possible.

Country: Select the country or region your rule will apply to. You can choose multiple countries or region per rule.

This rule applies to orders from the following store: Select your online store or marketplace. If you do not use an online store or marketplace, and instead create your orders or import them via spreadsheet, select your trading name under 'Manual order entry'. 

Store postage method: Choose your in-store shipping methods from the list. ChannelShipper will display these for you. If you do not use an online store or marketplace, you can leave this field blank.

Click the 'Next' button to continue.

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Page 2 has the following additional options:

Order Value: Insert to and from values in pounds (£).

Store Postage Cost: The cost your customer pays for postage.

Weight: The weight of the order. Choose from and to values in grams or kilograms.

Package format: Choose an option. This is set to 'Any package format' by default. 

Click the 'Next' button to continue.

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Page 3 has the following options:

Shipping service to be applied: Select the shipping service from the drop down list. You must select one service per shipping rule.

Once you have selected your service, other options may become available depending on the particular service.

Consequential loss: Choose an available value in £

Department (OBA only): Select the OBA department that will be applied to your order. Departments can be managed through your Royal Mail OBA portal.
If you have recently added or removed a department, and this change is not yet visible in ChannelShipper, please log out and then log back in to update.  

Mark order as despatched by other courier: Click only if you wish for this rule to mark orders as depatched by a courier other than Royal Mail. For more information, please see this guide: How to mark an order as Despatched by other courier.

Additional service enhancements, Provide SMS notification to the recipient, Provide email notification to the recipient, Obtain a signature upon delivery, and Local Collect may become available depending on the service you have chosen. If a box is grey, it means that service enhancement is not available. 

Click the 'Next' button to continue.

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On the last page you can review your criteria.

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Be sure to check the 'Make this shipping rule active' button if you wish for your rule to apply to your orders straight away, and Click the 'Save' button to finish.

If you need to make any changes, you can use the 'Back' button to navigate to the previous pages. 

Once you have clicked 'Save', you will be directed back to your shipping rules page where your new rule will be visible. A green tick icon at the end of the row will be present if you have set your rule to 'Active'.

AddNewShippingRule.pngTo review, change, or edit your shipping rule, you can click anywhere within the row open it up to reveal more data. The following buttons will also become available:

Delete: Removes the shipping rule

Clone: Creates another rule which is an exact copy. You will need to edit the new rule to make them different. 

Edit: Opens the criteria window again so you can edit your choices. 

To create a new shipping rule, click the 'Add a new shipping rule' button again to repeat the process.

4. How do I reapply shipping rules to my old orders?

Shipping rules only apply automatically to newly created orders. If you have recently added or edited a shipping rule, you can attempt to reapply it to old orders. Only orders in 'New' status can be reprocessed this way. 

You can do this in two ways:

1. Select one or more orders from the Orders page.

In the additional actions dropdown in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, select 'reprocess order' and then click 'Go'. ChannelShipper will attempt to reapply the most appropriate shipping rule to the selected orders. 

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2. Reprocess orders individually

When you click into an order, select 'Reprocess order' from the 'other actions' drop down menu, and click 'Go'. ChannelShipper will attempt to reapply the most appropriate shipping rule to the selected orders. 

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5. Troubleshooting your shipping rules

My shipping rule is not applying a package size

If your shipping rules are not applying a package size, please check that your shipping rules do not contain more than one product. If they do, you will need to manually verify the package size by applying postage to your order.

The first time an order downloads from a channel, you will need to set the weight manually in order to generate a label for your orders. This is because the weight of a product in a channel does not always equal the total weight of the product plus the packaging materials that are used to prepare it for sending. After you have entered the weight, it will be remembered the next time an order downloads into ChannelShipper containing the same product.