How to set up flat rate shipping per item category per country?

[megchandoodles]

1. Is there a way to set up different flat rates for different countries for 1 item?

Essentially I need 3 flat rates per single item for the different countries I sell to (Canada, US, rest of the world). In total I need 3 flat rates per item category (I have 5 item categories so I need 18 different flat rates)

Example, Item category - Stickers

Canada - $1.3

US - $1.8

International - $3.20

Item category - Art prints

Canada - $2.5

US - $4

International - $8

However, when I create a shipping profile, add selected items, add the countries I can ship to (Canada, US, rest of the world) it only lets me add ONE flat rate for ALL countries, there's no option to add a flat rate for Canada, a flat rate for US and a flat rate for international.

So I thought "Okay, I'll make a shipping profile for each country/region."

So I make 3 profiles

Stickers to Canada

Stickers to US

Stickers to International.

However, I can't have the same items in different profiles. For example, if I add a selected item to one profile (example Stickers to Canada), then try to add the same sticker to another profile (example Stickers to US) it removes it from initial shipping profile it was added to.

Am I missing something here or am I just unable to do that?

2. When people buy items from two different shipping profiles, the shipping price combines together. Is there a way to have Square go with the higher shipping profile only rather than combining?

[BernadetteA]

Hi @megchandoodles 👋

Thank you for posting. I'm actually in the process of gathering some information for this exact issue for another Seller. I'll let you both know once I have confirmed with the team regarding expected behavior for multiple shipping profiles. 

[BernadetteA]

Hi again, @megchandoodles 

Checking in with you to see how it's going. Do you plan on customers only buying one of each item? Or are you anticipating each flat rate to show if they add multiple items to the cart? 

The issue you are running into is creating your shipping profiles for each country as "custom" and not "default". Items can only be added to one custom profile, however a default profile will include all items that are not already assigned to a custom profile. 

Based on what you have explained so far, I don't think the flat rate option is going to work out for you. Would a weight-based tier work for you? For example orders under 1lb charged $xx.xx, orders 1.1lb-3lb charged $xx.xx, and orders 3.1lb-5lb charged $xx.xx

To recap, you can setup weight-based tiers for all of your shipping profiles as long as you make them "default". Please let me know if you think this may work for you. 😊

[megchandoodles]

I unfortunately haven't had time to work on my Square online site since I posed the initial forum message and probably won't for awhile (just got a huge shipment of pre-orders I need to package from my other site). Shipping by weight may possibly work, I'm not really sure. I'll have to test it out, I do use multiple shipping carriers so that may cause an issue.

The flat rate system is what I've been using the 4+ years since I started my own shop so I know it works what for what I need (at least at the moment). I was a bit surprised to see Square's system shipping doesn't allow this kind of shipping setup, it's what I've seen as the default every time I tried a shopping site.

I'll try out the weight-based tiers when I have time in a few weeks but I would really love to see a more flexible flat rate system

[BernadetteA]

Do you have a link to your other site that uses flat rate shipping? I can take a look to see if there's something I may be overlooking as far as the difference between the other shipping and ours. 

No worries if you do not have time to address this right now. You can always comment on this thread and ping me when you do have time to revisit. 😊