Free shipping settings in product details
When the Free Shipping and Shipping Freights add-on is active in your X-Cart store, the product details of all products that require shipping (Requires shipping=On) include two settings related to free shipping:
These settings can be used as follows:
Free shipping | Enable to mark the product as eligible for free shipping. This ensures the product will always ship at no cost. |
Exclude from shipping cost calculation | Enable to exclude the product's shipping fee from the total cost. The product will always ship for free, regardless of the shipping method selected by the customer. |
Below are some examples that show how these settings affect a product’s shipping cost calculation and the set of shipping methods made available at checkout.
Imagine that you have three types of products in your store:
with none of the options selected – let’s name it P;
with “Free shipping” selected – P(FS);
with “Exclude from shipping cost calculation” option selected (or both “Exclude from shipping cost calculation” and “Free shipping” options selected) – P(Exc).
and two shipping methods:
Standard - 5$
Express - 10$
Case 1: P + P(Exc)
Available methods: Standard (5$), Express (10$)
Actions: a customer selects any of the available methods and pays for shipping of P only.
Case 2: P + P(FS)
Available methods: Standard (5$), Express (10$)
Actions: a customer selects any of the available methods and pays for shipping of both P and P(FS).
Case 3: P(FS) + P(FS)
Available methods: Standard (5$), Express (10$), Free shipping (0$)
Actions: Though a free method is also available at checkout now, a customer may prefer not to use it, if they want faster delivery, for example. If so, they will need to pay for shipping of all the items in their cart.
Case 4: P(Exc) + P(Exc)
Available methods: Standard (0$), Express (0$)
Actions: A customer can choose any of the methods you offer and won’t need to pay the shipping fee. Such case can be rather costly for merchants, so if you want to save as much as possible and still be able to offer free shipping for particular products, use the “Free shipping” option, rather than “Exclude from shipping cost calculation”.
Case 5: P(Exc) + P(FS)
Available methods: Standard (5$), Express (10$), Free shipping (0$)
Actions: A customer may choose either free shipping, and pay nothing, or any of the paid methods and pay only for the shipping of P(FS).
The "Free shipping" method
The add-on provides a special "Free shipping" method. This method shows during checkout only if:
all the products in the cart are eligible for free shipping - the cart contains:
only products with Free shipping=On, or
only products with Free shipping=On and Exclude from shipping cost calculation=On;
there are no other shipping methods available.
You can view this method as follows:
X-Cart 5.6.x
Navigate to Store > Shipping and switch to the Carriers & Special Methods tab.
Scroll down to the Special Shipping Methods section. The method named "Free shipping" will be there.
X-Cart 5.5.x
Navigate to the Shipping page (Store > Shipping).
Scroll down to the Flat Shipping Rates section. The method named "Free shipping" will be there.
Note that you can edit the name and description of the "Free shipping" method, but cannot remove or disable it.
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