To enable the vendor flat rate shipping, here's what you do:
- In your admin, Click on the gear icon and select Inventory Settings
- Click on the Vendors
- Here you will see a checkbox that says "Allow each Vendor to have their own flat rate shipping based on the shipping zone."
- Once you check this, go to Inventory (left-hand menu) > View Vendors
- Edit a vendor and you'll now see two new fields: Zone Inclusive Flat Rate and Zone Exclusive Flat Rate. Here you can set one rate for addresses within the vendor's zone (inclusive) and another for addresses outside the vendor's zone (exclusive).
- Now go to Settings →
Shipping Settings > Setup Shipping Zones - Edit a zone
- You'll see a new shipping radio button called Vendor Flat Rate. Select this, and you're all done!
So how does this work exactly?
Here is how checkout will work:
- The customer is checking out and enters their shipping info. The system determines they are in a zone using Vendor Flat Rate. Let's say the state is California and the zip code is 90210. There's a zone for California and another for 90210, so the system will choose 90210 as it's more specific.
- The system will then take each product in the cart and see which vendor is tied to it. Let's say one product is tied to Vendor A and another is tied to Vendor B.
- Then using the vendor's address, the system will determine which zone a vendor would "reside in." Let's say Vendor A is in CA 90210 and Vendor B is CA 90212.
- The customer's zone, 90210, determines the vendor rate. Vendor A lives in 90210, so that vendor product will use the Zone Inclusive Flat Rate. Vendor B is not in 90210, so the Zone Exclusive Flat Rate will be used for that product.
- Please note: The rate is flat so it charges a FLAT RATE for all products tied to one vendor, not the rate x quantity of products.
- Once the system has the flat rate for each product (or rather, for each vendor), it will add them together to get the final rate.