[SOLVED] Dimensional Weight

Dimensional Weight 11 Apr 2014 18:05 #1

HOTKEY33
Topic Author

Hello,

International shippers often use the so-called 'Dimensional Weight':

'To calculate the Dimensional Weight : divide the cubic size of your package in centimetres by 5,000. Increase any fraction to the next half kilogram.' (UPS)

That should be easy to do with Advanced Shipping by Rules Plugin.

The tricky part is that you have to compare the actual weight and dimensional weight and select whichever is the heavier :

"Compare the package's actual weight to its dimensional weight. The larger of the two weights is the billable weight and should be used to calculate the rate." (UPS)

Could I use Advanced Shipping by Rules Plugin to make conditional statements of the type :
"if Dimensional Weight > actual weight" use Dimensional Weight
else use actual weight, followed by the rest of the rule 01000<=ZIP<96000;0.01<Weight<=0.25;ShippingWithTax=5.9 ?

Sincerely,

Michael.

Dimensional Weight 18 Apr 2014 14:55 #2

Reinhold
Offline
Posts: 1588

The problem is that the dimensional weight depens on how you package your products into a box. This is nothing that a computer can determine automatically.
You can of course use the volume of your order (the sum of the volums of all products in the order) as a lower bound. But depending on how you stack those products, there will be more or less empty space in the box, so the actual volume of the box might be considerably larger...

If you Still want to base the calculation on the total volume of the products (i.e. on the lower bound of the volume), you can use a custom variable definition for the BillableWeight (make sure to set the length dimension to cm):

Variable=DimensionalWeight; Value=ceil(Volume/5000, 0.5)
Variable=BillableWeight; Value=max(Weight, DimensionalWeight)
Name="your actual rule:"; 01000<=ZIP<96000; 0.01<DimensionalWeight<=0.25; ShippingWithTax=5.9

As I argued above, this DimensionalWeight value will be smaller than the actual dimensional weight. You can of course try to add some security margin to the value, but a computer can never automatically Determine how much free space you will leave in the box when packing your items...

Best regards,
Reinhold

Dimensional Weight 22 Apr 2014 20:17 #3

HOTKEY33
Topic Author

Hello,

Thank you very much for this answer.

I was mostly concerned about the logic of switching between the two calculation rules : my problem is now solved.

We are mostly selling big electric appliances which are anyway individually shipped in their factory packaging and I am not much worried about the calculation on the total volume of the products in the cart.

Best regards,
Michael.