How shipping works

Shipping decides how much a customer pays to receive their order and which delivery options appear at checkout. CIQRA includes a shipping engine that calculates this from rules you define. This page explains the model behind it.

Conceptual overview, and here is the honest reason

The admin does have Shipping carriers and Shipping rates screens under Settings. This page still explains the model rather than walking through those screens, because the steps have not been checked against them as they are today. The limit is this documentation, not the product.

The zone-and-rate model

CIQRA’s shipping engine is built on two ideas that work together:

1. Shipping zones — groups of destinations. A zone answers where an order is going, so you can treat different regions differently.
2. Methods and rates — the delivery options and prices attached to a zone. These answer how much shipping costs and what the shopper can choose.

Put simply: a zone captures the destination, and the rates on that zone capture the price. A shopper only sees options from the zone that matches where their order is headed.

What happens at checkout

When a shopper reaches checkout, the engine works through the same logic every time:

1. It looks at the order’s destination and finds the shipping zone that covers it.
2. It gathers the methods and rates attached to that zone.
3. For any table-rate methods, it works out the price from the order — for example its total weight or value.
4. The matching options are presented to the shopper as delivery choices.

If no zone matches the destination, or a matching zone has no rate, there’s nothing to quote — and no delivery option appears. That’s the most common reason shipping seems “missing” at checkout; see Shipping isn’t calculating at checkout.

Where to go next

• Group your destinations with Shipping zones.
• Attach prices with Shipping rates and methods, including flat and table-rate options.

Tip

Because a rate only appears when a matching zone exists and has a rate, think of the two together: a zone with no rate is as invisible to shoppers as no zone at all.