Many Whiplash customers use flat rate shipping, often with one rate for domestic and one for international. You can add complexity (and accuracy) by building a matrix of rates for regions and/or weights.

If the average cost is $8.85 for your US orders, charging the customer $8 or $9 is a common approach.

Create postage Data for a Rate Matrix

Any strategy should be re-evaluated every few months as rates slowly change over time.

Exporting shipped orders

Using historic data saves you the trouble of generating mock shipments. Exporting too many orders will take a long time without adding much benefit, so we usually use 100. If you're looking for something specific—like "What does shipping cost for all the available methods for a 1lb package to the US?" you may only need 10–20.

1. Edit the Shipped search in Orders view. You can narrow it down by weight, origin, or any other criteria, or just export all orders. Your goal should be about 100 orders at most; this is a great amount of data compared to how long it takes to export. If you have too many orders in your search, filter by date to narrow it down.

   

    

2. Export the orders by selecting Download CSV, and selecting "Compare shipping rates." This may take some time—Whiplash is querying our up-to-date carrier rates for every order, and making postage estimates. 

3. You now have rates for every valid shipping method for every order in your search. You can create find out the average cost to ship 2 units of SKU-001 to Lithuania, or see what the price difference would be if you upgraded every USPS First Class shipment to FedEx 2-day.

Generate the matrix

Use this data to generate average costs in as granular a matrix as you'd like—commonly, sellers will create a different rate every 1 lb for a few regions (e.g. USA, North America, EU, and ROW).

You can tweak this average over time as shipping rates fluctuate; holidays tend to be more expensive for most carriers, and things like fuel surcharges change over time. Many sellers opt to make a bit of money on shipping, or subsidize.

Don't forget to account for pick & pack rates, as well as packaging!

Tiered pricing

If you'd like to offer flat rate or free shipping for orders over a certain dollar amount—or nearly any other criteria— check out our rules information or our Support team can help you set up a rule. Click Support from the widget in the bottom right corner, then Contact Support to reach them.

There are a few things to keep in mind that can effect the cost:

1. Shipping Options such as Saturday Delivery or Signature Guarantee

2. Insurance requested 

3. Dimensional weight of packages with are calculated as follows: 

Boxes and Tubes use the outermost dimensions of the box or tube, so the package dimensions = the box's or tube's dimensions.
Bags and Packs use the contents' dimensions. We stack in the shortest dimension (height), and use the maximum of the remaining widths and lengths. So, a package with two items 12"x12"x0.5" and 5"x15"x1.0" would result in total dimensions of 12"x15"x1.5".
Bubble Mailers, Envelopes, and Flats have a fixed length and width, but the height can expand to fit multiple items.