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What If You Still Need to Use Table Rates on Magento for Your E-commerce?

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Image of Nikolay Pasholok
Nikolay Pasholok
Product Owner, Calcurates
Imagine you own an online furniture store with products of different sizes, and the frequency of orders varies a lot from customer to customer. Let's compare these two scenarios: on the one hand, you have a customer who orders small products at your shop infrequently. On the other hand, you have a customer who has bigger orders and orders frequently. Now, if you offer flat rate shipping these two customers could end up with the same shipping costs, which is pretty unfair and also doesn't make any sense to you or them. Why would these two customers pay the same for completely different orders?

Here is the advantage of shipping with Table Rates, you can easily offer customized shipping rates depending on shipping scenarios. Why? Because Table Rates are specially tailored for your E-commerce, and you are free to set them the way it suits you. Flat rates are simple to use and are usually the easy way out, but they are not as flexible and can not be perfected to your E-commerce.

Naturally, calculating Table Rates can be time-consuming but using flat rates you will end up spending too much money on the shipping itself. Plus, Table Rates can be fully automated which saves a lot of time.
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What Is Table Rate Shipping?

What Is a Table Rate Shipping? Table Rates allow you to create complex shipping rules and methods to ship products to various customers in different countries, for the least amount possible. You can define Table Rates based on any condition such as geographic location, product weight, size, or quantity. It is like configuring shipping rules within a single table.

Table Rates allow you to configure the most accurate condition-based shipping rates even on individual products, product groups, or cart levels — that what does table rates mean in shipping.

Table Rates shipping is based on a combination of conditions, including:

Geographical conditions - shipping area, country, region or state, city, postal codes, and even address line.

Cart and Product conditions - price, subtotal, weight, range, quantity, category, or any other product attribute from your Magento.

Feel free to select where to apply rate conditions either to Entire Cart, Individual Products, or Grouped Products.

How Does Table Rates Shipping Work?

The best time to implement Table Rates shipping is if your online E-commerce is within one of the following categories: strong geographical dependence, product diversity, low shipping budget. Have a look at the list below for further information.
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    Geographical conditions
    The first thing that needs to be set for your backend is the shipping zone which is based on certain countries, regions, cities, postal codes, or even the address lines. Each different shipping zone can be charged differently, for instance, you could charge for domestic delivery 5€, for international delivery 15€, and all other worldwide delivery 20€.
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    Cart and Product conditions
    To preconfigure different shipping scenarios, create large and small items lists, this way you can ship large items like furniture for 10€ and small products like flower pots for 5€. Additionally, you could create a “tiny" shipping class consisting of accessories like tools, cleaning supplies that can be shipped together with larger items, and thus no extra shipping cost is required.
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    Shipping Rate Calculations
    Shipping rate calculation algorithms depend on the shipping method algorithm (Entire Cart, Individual Products, Grouped Products). There is a number of rate calculation algorithms for each shipping method to choose from: FPO (fixed per order), FPI (fixed per item), FPUW (fixed per unit of weight), and POS (percentage of order subtotal). For example, you can select the shipping method for the entire cart, and apply the shipping rate for the whole cart, for every product item in the cart, the cart weight, or based on the cart subtotal. You can even combine those calculation algorithms.
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Additional Features Compatible with Table Rates

There is a bunch of additional features that can work well with the Table Rates feature.
  • This feature works well with Table Rates and provides even more flexibility.
  • Estimated Delivery Dates is another feature that can be used in combination with Table Rates shipping easily.
  • Using the Volumetric Weight feature improves the accuracy of real-time rates from carriers. This feature can be used in combination with Table Rates shipping as well.

When Using Table Rates Shipping is More Beneficial Than Flat Rate?

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    Geographical Dependence
    There is a strong correlation between geographical location and shipping costs. For example, in the United Kingdom, shipping costs vary a lot from postal code to postal code. Shipping costs within one city can be higher or lower depending on the postal code of the receiver. The variation can be very diverse and increase shipping costs significantly.
  • 2
    Product Diversity
    Items that are different in dimensions will most likely have different shipping costs.
    Thus, it is recommended to use Table Rate shipping, if the product catalog includes items of different weight, dimensions, and product prices. The process might be time-consuming but Table Rate shipping is more cost-effective than flat rate shipping.
  • 3
    Shipping Options
    Establishing shipping margins is critical to the profitability of any E-commerce. As mentioned before, flat rate shipping is less complex and is easier to use than Table Rates shipping. Table rate shipping on the other hand is far more flexible and can be easily customized compared to rigid Flat rate shipping. Table Rates offer an individual approach to shipping costs on a product level, so to say. 
    However,  it won’t save you a single cent if you ship lightweight packages with Flat rate shipping. Flat Rate shipping is best used for heavier packages. Thus, it is advised to use Flat Rate shipping if your E-commerce ships mainly heavier items as furniture for instance.
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What Are the Advantages of Magento Table Rates Shipping?

The advantages of Magento Table Rates shipping are information clarity, CSV import and export, multiple calculation algorithms, multiple shipping methods, and multi-conditioning, flexible calculation algorithm. Have a look at the detailed explanation of each one of them below.
  • Multiple Calculation Algorithms
    Calculate shipping rates based on any shipping method that is the most suitable for your E-commerce. The shipping method can be selected by item, order, unit of weight or a percentage of an order subtotal. Use these separately or all together. It is possible to base the algorithm on shipping conditions such as geographical location, price, quantity, weight, or delivery dates.
  • Flexibility of Calculation algorithms
    The last advantage of Table Rates shipping is its flexible calculation algorithm. This means that after all of the shipping methods are set up, you will be able to optimize the methods even further. Create a shipping rule to change the actual rate the customer sees under a given condition.
  • Multiple Shipping Methods
    Create many shipping methods inside one table rate shipping option. This allows you to have multiple shipping rates for different products, or addresses within one table. Inside of Table Rates shipping, there is an option to select shipping methods. Within the shipping methods, you can apply rate conditions to an entire cart, individual products, or grouped products. Each has a different totaling algorithm that can be applied to specific shipping methods, options are cumulative, highest cost, highest single cost, lowest cost, and lowest single cost.
  • Multi-conditioning
    Each shipping method can be further based on various conditions such as shipping areas, product attributes, and delivery dates.
  • CSV Import and Export
    If you have too many conditions for your Table Rates shipping then it is not easy to set up. For mass edits Table Rates, settings can be easily done by importing and exporting them in a CSV file.

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Use Case Solved: How to Configure Royal Mail Shipping Using Table Rates

Royal Mail domestic shipping rates taken from the official Websites

Here is an example of Royal Mail shipping rates taken from the carrier's official website. Royal Mail prices depend on weight parameters only.
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Royal Mail domestic shipping rates configured using Table Rates

With Table Rates shipping option in Calcurates you can easily add shipping methods and rates depending on weight according to Royal Mail prices taken from their website.

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Why Use Calcurates Table Rates Shipping Instead of Magento 2 Shipping Table Rates?

Magento 2 shipping table rates are not as flexible in the terms of calculation algorithms. Plus, they are missing additional features such as Shipping Rules, Volumetric Weight, and Delivery Dates which are built-in Calcurates.

Calcurates offers Table Rate Shipping also in combination with other shipping features. Calcurates uses API connection only, which means there will be no other conflicts with other Magento extensions you might have installed in the past. Each shipping method can be configured to work with various conditions such as shipping zones, other geo attributes, product weight, quantity, or price ranges.

There are other e-commerce platforms that offer Table Rate Shipping like Mageplaza.
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