You set up carrier-calculated or table-based shipping rates for your products. Still, you want to increase the amount you charge customers for shipping to cover additional expenses like insurance or packing cost. You can do it by adding a handling fee. In X-Cart 5, the handling fee is a fixed surcharge applied to orders shipped using a specific shipping method. The handling fee is added at checkout and merged with your standard shipping rates, so the tariff remains invisible to the buyers.
To set up a handling fee for some shipping methods:
In your store's Admin area, go to the Shipping Methods section (Store setup -> Shipping).
In the list of your store's shipping methods, locate the one to add a surcharge.
Click inside the "Handling fee" field for the selected shipping method and specify the surcharge amount you require either as a fixed amount or as a percentage (calculated based on the regular shipping fee defined for this shipping method).
To understand the rules better, let us consider the following example.
You have a "One Day Shipping" shipping method, and the shipping cost formula for it isSHIPPING = 100+SUBTOTAL * 10%
You add a handling fee to this shipping method:
If you set the handling fee as a fixed amount (e.g., $5), this sum is added to the regular shipping method formula, and the final delivery cost becomes100 + SUBTOTAL*10% + 5
If you define the handling fee as a percentage (e.g., 5%), the final delivery cost formula will be100 + SUBTOTAL*10% + (100 + SUBTOTAL*10%)*5%
If an order subtotal is $100, the delivery cost will be $115 ($5 + $100 + $100 * 10%) for the first case and $115,5 ($100 + $100 * 10% + ($100 + $100 * 10%) * 5%) for the second one.Save your changes by clicking Save changes.
That's it! The handling fee value has been added.
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