Freight Surcharges
When it comes to eCommerce checkout, calculating Freight properly can be very tricky. This is because there can be a myriad of conditions that need to be satisfied such as:
- Metro versus Interstate
- Handling bulky items
- Special customer discounts or exemptions
- Carrier restrictions
- International shipping
- Various delivery modes (road, air, express)
- Dropshipment
The Order Surcharge Rules feature in TOTECS allows you to control your own freight logic through a simple tree view. Different rules are nested in the tree according to the logic required. When a user proceeds through the checkout process, TOTECS works through the order surcharge rules accumulating the freight costs as it goes.
Freight costs can be set as fixed Inc or Ex rates, or calculated using advanced formulas. Often, its useful to iterate the shopping cart and apply additional surcharges for bulky goods.
If you need absolutely accurate freight quotes, consider our Integrated Freight using a 3rd party tool such as SmartFreight. Better still, the Integrate Freight features are available as Order Surcharge Rules. Once SmartFreight comes back with a quoted price, you could markup the freight by an extra % to cater for losses elsewhere.
The TOTECS Order Surcharge Rules gives you unlimited governance over freight rules to handle extremely complex scenarios and calculations. If you have a complex freight requirement, consider posting a question in our Forums.
Order Surcharges
The Order Surcharge Rules feature in TOTECS allows you to set rules that influence the surcharges applied to an order at the point of checkout. Surcharges calculated can be:
- Freight Fees
- Credit Card Discount/ Surcharges
- Minimum Order Discount/ Surcharges
The Order Surcharge Rule manager is a simple tree view. Different rules are nested in the tree according to the logic required. When a user proceeds through the checkout process, TOTECS works through the order surcharge rules accumulating the fees as it goes.
Warehouse Switching
For companies with multiple warehouses across different states or territories, there is generally a need to post the
online order to the warehouse closest to the delivery destination. This can be tricky in the case where a user is
purchasing for a company and they want the goods shipped to a specific office. In this case, the warehouse the order
is to be applied to needs to switch based on the postcode in the delivery address.
Fortunately, there is an Order Surcharge Rule that allows you to switch warehouse codes based on any conditions you like. This powerful feature cuts the cost of handling and makes logistics much simpler. Better still, TOTECS does all the work saving staff time and eliminating confusion.
If you have a specific order surcharge requirement, consider browsing and posting your question in our Forums.
Checkout Freight Calculator
In countless cases, a surprise freight fee is snuck in at the end of the ordering process and often leads to an abandoned shopping cart and a lost sale.
TOTECS offers a clever and popular solution to overcome this blocker by embedding a Freight Calculator function in the shopping basket summary page prior to checkout. It allows the customer to enter details such as a postcode and method of shipment to obtain an on-the-spot freight quote. This rather simple mechanism builds trust at a crucial point in the ordering process and liberates the customer by giving back control over their purchasing cost.
The Freight Calculator feature is highly recommended for companies who need to build trust fast such as a consumer facing eCommerce website.
Checkout Drop Shipment
TOTECS offers a powerful drop-shipment switch that can be activated for the checkout process.
For bulk distributors who sell to resellers, often a reseller would like to request their order be drop shipped directly to their customer whilst it appears to have been sent from the reseller. Other than the convenience of a swift dispatch, resellers can avoid stocking the goods in question and operate as satellite sales channels. This approach reduces overheads significantly.
Drop shipment workflows are slightly more complicated than it appears. Firstly, the distributor must appear invisible. This means the paper work sent to the customer must state the invoice / order is from the Reseller.
It is this last bit that is difficult to implement. Fortunately, TOTECS offers a dropshipment flag in the order that is submitted through to the suppliers Accounting / ERP System. Once the order has been submitted, the Accounting / ERP must receive the order by checking the dropshipment flag and then altering the internal documents and workflow so warehouse staff know what to do.
Integrated SmartFreight
Many retail and wholesale distributors use SmartFreight to provide quotes and automate the booking process across their shipping carriers using SmartFreight software.
The benefits of SmartFreight is significant. Staff simply enter the sender and destination addresses for an order and SmartFreight works out the carrier of choice based on business logic already configured. A quote is provided and if accepted, the SmartFreight software raises the freight order with the carrier and prints the labels ready to go onto boxes and out the door.
Where TOTECS Fits In
Raising the freight order is often a manual process where staff must key the sender and delivery addresses and
freight costs can only be quoted after the order is received. That's where TOTECS raises the bar.
TOTECS can be connected to your SmartFreight profile so that real-time freight quotes and carrier options can be presented to the customer during online checkout. Workflow configurations can be configured from the TOTECS Administration Centre.
The Order Surcharges manager provides additional flexibility to decide which customers/order conditions will trigger the use of SmartFreight for both quoting and posting freight consignments.
A special mode called partial import is also available where TOTECS simply raises the freight order header. This saves staff from keying in sender and delivery address details.
TOTECS and SmartFreight totally automates the quoting and booking of freight consignments.
Prerequisites:
- Weight data must be stored for every product (for user quoting and raising consignments)
- You will need to establish a SmartFreight account visit SmartFreight and nominate / configure your carriers
- Optionally a list of rules where SmartFreight will not be used to calculate freight automatically. Ie, [INVALID FORM VAR]