I'm trying to establish a shipping configuration to allow free shipping on only some items in our catalog. In prior versions of AC, we used a "Free Shipping Warehouse" and assigned that warehouse to products that were supposed to ship at no charge in all cases. It works except that if a free shipping product and charged shipping products were ordered at the same time, you would get two Shipments for the customer to specify methods and also have two shipments in the order processing queue.

With AC9, I was hoping that Shipping Groups might provide improvements to achieving the same results but I'm having difficulty making it work as I envisioned. Consider the following for simplicity:
1. All products ship from one warehouse.
2. Most products have shipping charged with some method (flat rate, variable by weight, order value, etc.)
3. Some items in the catalog ship for Free in all cases whether they are ordered alone or if they are ordered with other charged shipping products

I've set up a "Always Ships Free" Method.
I've also set up a "Ships Free" Shipping Group.
I have set the "Always Ships Free" Method to the "Ships Free" Group, as shown in attached.

Free_Shipping_Setup01.JPG (51kb) downloaded 4 time(s).

I have taken one of the products and assigned "Ships Free" shipping group to it, while other products in the catalog have "Ships Standard" as their only Shipping Group.
Free_Shipping_Setup02.JPG (64kb) downloaded 3 time(s).

With the above configuration, if the "Ships Free" product is alone in the cart, it works.
If other "Ships Standard" products are alone in the cart, they work.
But if we have a mix of "Ships Free" & "Ships Standard" in the cart, we get a message saying "No shipping methods are available for the current items and/or the given destination."

I suspect this error is a condition of the notation on Shipping Groups warning "For products using multiple ship groups, only the common shipping methods will be available, so make sure to provide overlapping shipping methods where possible." In our configuration, there would be no overlapping shipping methods.

If I add the "Ships Standard" group to our Free Shipping product the cart will then calculate a shipping rate, but the rate increases according to the value/properties of this product that should ship for free (or no additional shipping charge).

What I'm trying to find out is whether the desired configuration is possible at all or if we will need to revert back to the "Free Shipping Warehouse" technique? Or am I missing out on something with the Shipping Group intended usage?

Thanks for your guidance!

-Jeff

Thanks for your help Katie... I had considered the zero weight scenario and maybe that could still work...I'll give it a look and worst case scenario we go back to the Free Shipping Warehouse.

Do you have an example of where Shipping Groups would be used? That might help us better understand situations where we can take advantage.

Thanks again!

-Jeff

Hi Judy,

Please check the changes we made on the shipping page w.r.t. display of grouping. The free products are all together in the same shipment with the free shipping method. I believe in Gold, they would each be listed separately.

The difficulty arises when you have product weights combined with real time shipping methods. The shipping gateway is expecting a valid weight for the items being sent in for calculation of the shipment. If you weren't going to use real time shipping, then it can be accomplished with a 0 weight product.

When you have a situation where a product is very unique and can only ship with certain methods, then using the warehouse is still the best way to go. This is where we made improvements to how the shipments are grouped and displayed on the shipping option page.

I'll be working on this section of the documentation guide next. Hopefully, it will clear things up with working examples.

Thanks
Katie

I've done a bit more testing on the new Shipping Groups and have a good idea now where they will be useful. Joe, your explanation helped here.

Katie, the sorting of the Free Shipping Warehouse items in the cart for easier identification looks good. It does still set up a second shipment that the admin would merge into the primary shipment if appropriate.

However, simplicity that Judy mentioned and that I was searching for aren't really improved. There actually appears to be some complications for upgraded product databases because in AC9 shipping Methods cannot be assigned to a specific warehouse (like a Free Shipping Warehouse) the way they were in AC7, etc.

Instead, it appears that you must assign a Free Shipping method into a Shipping Group, which in turn is specified in the Product in conjunction with specifying "Free Shipping Warehouse" to get things working.

I might still be missing something here that I'll keep testing, but I've run into a couple configurations where the shipping options presented aren't as desired.

One of them is where let's say you have an item that ships free if it meets a $20.00 minimum. For that item you create a "Free Shipping Over $20" method. Assign that method to a "Allow Free Shipments Group" and assign that shipping group to the Product. You assign this product to the "Free Shipping Warehouse". We are using real-time shipping calculations so we cannot use a 0.00 weight for the product, otherwise we won't get any rates.
FreeShippingProduct.JPG (45kb) downloaded 1 time(s).


If the tally for this item is over $20 and there are other items in the order, you get two shipments presented, one of which is "Free". This is good and is easy for the customer to choose the options. It is clear that the customer will pay shipping for some items but others ship for no charge. This is quite nice and looks good...the customer could optionally "speed up" their free items if they wish...
FreeShippingWarehouseOK.JPG (75kb) downloaded 3 time(s).

But in a case where the tally of the item is less than $20.00, because this product is isolated in the "Free Shipping Warehouse", it still creates an extra, redundant shipment when it would be desired to have it merged with the first shipment at a lower incremental cost. The customer may abandon the order at this point or is forced to select the extra shipping cost option that admin will need to merge & override with a message back to the customer. AC9 behaves the same in this situation as prior releases. Is there any other method that we could use to improve this customer experience?
FreeShippingWarehouseExtraCharge.JPG (72kb) downloaded 4 time(s).

Edited by user Wednesday, November 6, 2019 11:48:24 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Thanks Katie...it would really be helpful and save lots of configuration and admin effort.

-Jeff

If both the products are shipped from same warehouse to same destination address, and both share the same ship group for a particular shipping method, in that case both products should be placed in single shipment.

There may be something wrong with the product or shipping method configuration.

Please provide screen capture of order shipments, and make sure products are not marked as ship separately.

Thanks,