Shipping Rules are automated shipping profiles in Cloud Commerce Pro that make decisions based on your business rules to decide which courier and which service you will send a consignment with.

Each time an order is downloaded from one of your channels, CCP tries to match against your shipping rules to see which one to select. You will always have at least one rule called Manual Shipping created by your project manager which is a default fall-back rule if no other rules are suitable.

You will need to create rules for each scenario you wish to automate. Cloud Commerce Pro checks each order against all of your rules and scores each rule. The rule with the most matching criteria is given the highest score and selected automatically.

If a rule you create has a compulsory criteria that does not apply to your order (for example if the order value exceeds the maximum order value criteria you set) then the rule will be excluded.

Once you have created or amended the shipping rules you can use the “Recalculate Couriers” option in the dispatch queue to test your changes.

You can also click on the current rule selected for the order and you will be presented with all other rules that may be applicable and their score. You can select to change the rule and the new rule is stored against the order.

There are two types of shipping rules, the default called location based rules which in fact cover many criteria and product based rules. Product based rules are tied to a specific product or range of products and override the general location rules.

To create new shipping rules please follow the guide.

Click configuration to load the settings screen.

From the list on the left hand side of the screen click on the shipping option in the tree view.

Click on the Rules option.

You can filter to see just location based generic rules or just product based rules.

Click All to see all rules in each category.

To create a new rule click the new location rule button.

To create a product based rule first select one of the product based filters then click new product rule

To set the criteria for a rule first give the rule a name that is meaningful to you. If you are going to let customers process their own orders (trade type orders) it is useful to make the rules names descriptive.

For this example we have called the rule “Priority Orders Under £10”. We now need to make sure that the correct criteria are set to ensure this rule triggers correctly.

Select the courier. Please note, you will only see couriers you have enabled in the Couriers section of these configuration screens.

Select the courier service you wish to apply to this rule.
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The bonus score is used when you have created two or more rules that match certain criteria and you wish to give one priority over the other. For example if two rules score for a certain order and both have the score 6, setting a bonus score of 1 on this rule will mean that after the scoring is done 1 will be added to the score making a total of seven and prioritising this order over the other similar one.

Bonus scores should be used sparingly because they add a level of complexity to your rules scoring and generally you will be able to make your criteria match unique sets of circumstances without bonus scores.

Cloud Commerce Pro will also score two orders the same but pick the lowest cost one for you if you enter costs that the courier charge you.

Set a base cost where applicable for example if the courier charges you £2.95 for the first 5kg.

These costs will also be added to orders in the trade ordering section when the rule is selected.

Enter how many kg’s are included in the base cost (if any).
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Enter the cost your courier charges you for each additional kg of weight in a consignment.

Enter how many additional labels you wish to print. The default is 0, i.e. if you leave this setting at 0 CCP will print one label and no additional labels.

If you always require two courier labels when this rule is activated, then enter 1 in the additional label field.

If you are creating a manual label choose a HTML label design from your templates section.

Please note if you are using a couriers own label, you do not need to select a label and you can leave the setting as default.

If you wish orders that trigger this rule to show in your priority section in your dispatch queue please tick the priority box.
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Set the number of days that it should take you to dispatch the order. For priority orders the default is usually zero, which means it should be dispatched today.
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You can choose either label, secondary label or an A4 label type.

Label and secondary label are the same thing, but may be configured for different size printers.For example, one courier might need 6 x 4 labels whereas another courier may need 4×4 labels.

The base weight is a minimum default weight that should be passed through to the courier. Weights are normally passed through from the products on the order, but in some cases you may not have added the weight to the product in CCP. Most couriers require a minimum weight to be passed through or the label request will fail, so this option enables you to set a weight that will always be passed through even if you haven’t set any product weights. The product weights override the minimum base weight unless they are less than the base weight.
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There are three different options for label type, they are as follows:

1. Calculated by order: This is the default setting on all orders and the system tries to intelligently handle how many labels it needs for the order.

2. Label per item: This will produce a label for each line on the order. For example if you have three lines on the order you will get three labels, even if one of those lines contains 100 items that would need to go in five boxes.

3. Label per product: This setting will produce a label for every single item on the order. Taking the example above if there was a line with 100 item quantity on it then that would produce 100 labels.

If you are unsure which setting to use, please leave this as the default or speak to your project manager.

The CSV file option allows you to generate a text CSV (Comma Separated Values) file to send to your courier.

You can choose to generate a label and a CSV file or just generate a CSV file for this order.

Please note that Cloud Commerce Pro will generate the CSV file and store it when this order is processed. You will also need to use the Cloud Commerce Pro print watch software to download the CSV file to your computer. Please see the setup guide for print watch.

Cloud Commerce Pro can also provide software add-ons that may be able to upload your CSV file to your chosen destination automatically. Speak to your project manager for more information.

Cloud Commerce Pro supports many courier accounts and more than one account for each individual courier if required. For example, you may choose to use one account with Royal Mail for orders from certain channels and the second Royal Mail account for other channels. To achieve this, just set the account required in each rule.
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The estimated days to deliver setting is to set how long this courier service will take for the goods to arrive with the customer. This time period, together with the delivery days setting and any product based settings will be added together to show the estimated delivery date. For example if the service is a two day service, set this to 2.
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The shipping rules are controlled by the rules and filters that are applied. For example, if you set that this rule only applies to orders under 1 kg, then it will be automatically excluded from any orders where total weight of the order exceeds 1 kg.

You must have at least one rule in every shipping rule so in this example we will add that the weight in grams must exceed zero.

You will also see the rules can have an optional status applied. This means that the rule will be taken into account for scoring, but the whole shipping rule will not be specifically excluded if it doesn’t apply.

Each rule or criteria that you add will be displayed below the add new rule section.

You can also delete any applied criteria by clicking the delete link at the end.

Add as many criteria as you wish. For each one that is matched this shipping rule will score higher. So for example, if one shipping rule has just one criteria that matches and another has three criteria that match then the second one will be chosen.

For this example we select the order value in pence criteria. You will of course select the criteria you wish to apply to your rules normally.
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Choose how to match the criteria. In this example the < (less than) symbol is applied.
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In this example we have entered the value (in pence) that the order must be below to trigger this shipping rule.
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You can add as many criteria as required.
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There are many criteria that can help your orders choose the right shipping rule.

1. Weight in GM – The total weight of the order in grams.

2. Max Width, Length, Height in MM – Example: The length of the longest item on the order in millimetres.

3. Total Width, Length, Height in MM – Example: The total height of all the items on the order in millimetres.

4. Any dimension in MM – Example: If any of the dimensions exceed a certain size in millimetres.

5. Total Volume in MM – The total volumetric size of the order in millimetres.

6. Total Volume in MM – The total volumetric size of any item on the order in millimetres7. Formula is true/not true – Example: The longest dimension multiplied by two.

8. Total order value in pence – The sum total of the order in pence.

9. Total Item value in pence – Example: If any items value in pence exceeds a certain value.

10. Next day of the week from order placed – Example: If the next day of the week is Friday and the order must be delivered next day choose a Saturday service.

11. Day of the week placed – If the day of the week equals your criteria.

12. Large Letter Compatible – If the large letter compatible flag is/is not set on the product.

13. Postcode, Town, Country, Country – Example: If postcode equals or contains your criteria. You can also add criteria to the shipping rule to say if it "does not contain" a certain postcode or start of a postcode.

14. Product option equals or does not equal – Use to make the rule match an of your product options. For example of the colour is red choose this rule.

15. Total number of products ordered – The total quantity of each order line multiplied by the quantity.

16. Maximum number of items order – Example: If the maximum number of any item on the order is greater than your criteria.

17. Total number of distinct products on the order – If you order has three line items and you wish to exclude this rule if greater than one different item.

18. Customer Name – Example: Customer name contains Lord or Sir, add special gift wrap.

19. Shipping Name – If the shipping name contains a certain character set (not usually required as shipping services names are set in the filters).

20. Product Supplier – If a product supplier matches your criteria then send by this rule. Example: All products by this supplier have to be sent recorded delivery.

There are many different criteria and they can be used in many combinations of ways to make sure that the rule only triggers when your ideal circumstances are matched. In addition to these criteria please also see the filters section, which follows further in this tutorial.

Once you’ve added your criteria, if you wish to add filters click the save and add filters button.
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Click save to exit without adding filters.
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You can also add filters by clicking the actions menu and selecting filters.
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The filters menu shows additional criteria that can be used to ensure that the rule is only triggered in certain circumstances.

The three criteria that can be added using filters are countries, channels, shipping types.

Countries – Choose countries that the order must come from to trigger this rule.

Channels – Choose channels that the order must come from to trigger this rule.

Shipping Types – Choose shipping types that the order must include to trigger this rule. The shipping types listed are common shipping types used in various commerce packages including Amazon and eBay. Hover over the title to see the shipping methods that are included. These will be the shipping types that have been passed through from the commerce package or sales channel.

Filters are used in conjunction with criteria. Your shipping rule must contain at least one criteria, but does not need to contain any filters. If you do not wish.

Click save to save your filters and exit the menu.
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Exclusions are another type of filtering, but these are being deprecated. Unless you are already using exclusions, you should not need to add or edit them. If you are unsure speak to your project manager.
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Product-based rules are only activated when the selected products match the order. These are specific rules where you wish a certain shipping rule to activate when the order contains these products. For example, you may ship lots of small items, but occasionally have a very large item that requires a special delivery service. Rather than setting weight and size-based criteria, you can simply create a product rule and select the products.

Product rules are automatically given a very high score so will almost always come before any general location-based rules.

You should use the product rules sparingly.

To create a new product rule. Click the new single product rule button.
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Enter a distinctive name for your product rule.
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Select the courier service.
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Then select the applicable courier method.
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Search for and select your product or products that this rule must contain.
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Enter a quantity to and from, for example, between one and five of the same item will still trigger the rule.
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Enter an initial shipping cost, for example, £1 for every five items.
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Enter additional shipping costs, for example £0.50 for every 5 extra items.
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You can also apply the rule to all products in this range, for example, if it is a range of products with several different sizes, the rule will automatically apply without you selecting all the other products in the range.
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The item required option means that the item must be on the order. This allows you to have product rules that have one or more compulsory items and one or more optional items. The shipping rule will activate so long as the compulsory item is on the order, but may also activate if it contains any of the optional items too.
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Click save to exit.
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You can delete shipping rules by clicking on the actions menu and then choosing the delete option.