How to setup parcel and rates adjustments?

In this document we will go over parcel and shipping rates adjustment settings of WooCommerce shipping plugin and talk about what they control and when you might want to change them.

Parcel Adjustments #

Parcel adjustments let you define adjustments to the dimensions and weight of a parcel before plugin will request shipping rates for it.

Min Length, Width and Height #

Plugin comes with the most common minimum parcel length, width and height defined out of the box. These values are needed to make sure that plugin will be able to quote shipping rates even when products don’t have any dimensions set or too small.

The way it works is that after plugin has estimated parcel dimensions, either by picking the best matching box or combing product dimensions in the cart, it will compare these dimensions against the values specified in Min Length, Min Width and Min Height fields and change them to use these values when they are smaller.

Typically it is recommended to keep these values as is, but if you’ve observed that rates quoted by the shipping plugin are higher than what you’ve used to see and you are sure that your parcel’s overall dimensions are smaller than these values, then you can modify them to reflect your particular use case.

Min Weight #

All carriers require weight to be known before they will return any shipping rates. To help to mitigate the cases when products don’t have any weight specified or too light for the carriers to offer any rates, plugin comes with the most common minimum parcel weight defined out of the box.

The way it works is that after plugin has estimated parcel weight, by either picking the best matching box or combing weight of all the products in the cart, it will compare resulting weight to the value specified in Min Weight field and use it when estimated value is smaller.

Typically it is recommended to keep this values as is, but if you’ve observed that rates quoted by the shipping plugin are higher than what you’ve used to see and you are sure that your parcel’s average weight is smaller than this value, then you can modify it to reflect your particular use case.

Add to Weight #

If you typically include something extra with your parcels, like promotional materials, extra packaging materials and so on, then you might set this value to the weight of these extras, so plugin will add it the estimated weight of a parcel before it will request a quote from the carriers.

Please note that adding any extra weight to the estimated weight will almost certainly increase the rates returned by the carriers.

Multiply Weight By #

Plugin lets you to do advanced adjustment of the weight by specifying a value which will be used to multiply an estimated weight before plugin will attempt to quote shipping rates.

Please note that weight is multiplied that value before Add to Weight value is added to the weight of a parcel.

Shipping Rate Adjustments #

Plugin can optionally adjust shipping rates returned by the carriers, before they will be displayed to the customers. The typical use case is when you want to include extra handling fee or implement a currency conversion.

Add to Rate #

This value will be added to all shipping rates returned by the carriers.
You can use it to implement addition of an extra handling fee to all shipping rates.

Multiply Rate By #

Plugin will multiply all shipping rates with this value. It is useful when you want to dynamically increase of decrease all returned rates before they will be displayed to the customers.