Ok so sorry in advance for the lengthy read but I can’t really explain this any simpler and can really use some help 😫.
I have 2 small business operating exclusively online through Square but I am having trouble figuring out how to go about charging shipping for my products, 1 business is selling custom 3D Printed,laser cut and die cut items, the second is selling isopods (aka pillbugs or Rollie polies to some), reptiles and fish that I breed. I cannot afford or justify the $75 plan that includes the real-time shipping calculator until I have revenue coming in.
Now the animal one obviously has to use next day air shipping only, while the first one even though all items will have different sizes and weights I think I can make use of USPS flat rate boxes.
That said, so far what I came up with for the one that can’t use flat rate boxes is to use the zip code furthest from me in each state to estimate the shipping cost and set rates per a state as I only ship and sell within the US anyway now where I’m having the issue is Square only allows me to set a minimum and maximum weight = $X rate I cannot set individual item shipping overrides or a max number of items per a rate along side the Min/Max weight and so if I do something like say use 3 different size boxes a small being a 6x6x6, a medium and a large and set the max weight to be a little under the DIM weight of the box for example a 6x6x6 box has a DIM weight of 2LB and costs $49.99 to ship to California UPS next day air from me, meaning as long as the package as a whole including the products inside, the box and the shipping material weights less than 2LB there should be no issue shipping with a rate of $50 flat but even if I do this what do I do when someone orders more light items than what can fit in the 6x6x6 box?
For example I can fit a maximum of 3 8oz delicups with 20 isopods of 1 species in each inside a 6x6x6 box and still have room for the shipping materials and all in all it still would be under 2 pounds , but what if someone orders 4 species which then requires a 4th 8oz delicup which then makes it necessary to use a larger box but weight wise still will not be even 2LB, because all the postal services use DIM weight regardless of the fact the package in and of itself is only say 1 pound if the DIM weight is 2 ponds they charge the fee based on which ever is higher so how do I set my shipping rates up so that if someone orders more than what will fit in the “small” size box it’ll present them with the rate I set for the next weight class for example say it bumps up to a 8x8x8 medium box that DIM weight is 4 pounds so it’d cost more for the next day air than the 6x6x6 box they would of been charged for still because their items didn’t push the weight over 2LB in order to prompt the increased shipping rate to be charged.
If anyone has experience with this sort of thing and can help guide me as to how I would go about setting shipping up like this I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks in advance!
