We sell products of 5, 10 and 15 kg.
Using the country weight plugin and selling all around europe could give us easily 500 shipping rates to set.
We are worried about the fact that having so many rates VM takes ages to make calculations at the checkout and makes it slower.
We have tried searching for a shipping plugin or component but none seem to do what we want:
we will have to set rates this way: until 5 kg, until 10 kg, until 15 kg etc etc maybe until 100. and that for a particular zip code interval in Spain. only in this country we have like 6 intervals to fill.
Then some european countries again: until 5,10,15 kg etc etc to 100 kg. This ones are easier as theres no interval in zip codes and just prices for european countries grouped in 2 zones.
So we are going to have a lot of shipping rates, is that an issue in Virtuemart a part from the nightmare it is for us setting them all up.
We can deal with that, but not if we make the effort and then the website runs slow.
Thanks
Hola?
what version?
I know getOrderWeight has been cached in the newest version
2.016
this is exactly why I made my own plugin, 0to have it all under 1 plugin.
I have forwarded this to the devs to see if they know a solution
thanks Pro
I prefer you use custom plugin, or modified the existing one (weight_countries).
if you want to do it quick, i prefer you modifiy weight_countries and using array() to store countries and fees.
Hi veeco could you explain a bit more what you mean?
We found a plugin by states http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/extension-specific/virtuemart-extensions/virtuemart-shipping/9840
This one at least makes us have to enter half the shipping rates, at least for Spain we can avoid all the zip intervals and just choose the states.
The standard virtuemart plugin by weight, country and zip code is too limited, they seem to forget that the weight is multiplied by quantity or another way of saying it, is not the same cost sending 10 than 40 kg and is not the same sending 1 box of 5 kg than sending 5 boxes of 5 kg.
We found another plugin that afte reading the description seemed a perfect solution http://www.wegotballs.co.za/index.php?product_id=447&page=shop.product_details&category_id=209&flypage=flypage.pbv.v1.tpl&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=162
but after sending an email to the south african ::) developer you are lucky if he replies more than 1 phrase and not even answering if his component works with latest version or multilingual websites so the shipping by states will do for us.
Regards
maybe my one helps you?
http://www.gjcwebdesign.com/joomla-downloads/virtuemart-20-postcode-zip-code-shipping-plugin.html (http://www.gjcwebdesign.com/joomla-downloads/virtuemart-20-postcode-zip-code-shipping-plugin.html)
feel free to ask me any questions relating to this...
Hello GJC I looked at your plugin before and seems to have a lot of functionality but not for us and to be honest I consider it very expensive. I bought the shipping by states for 15 € and your plugin costs 40 €.
Is obvious the hard work there but is just too much money for a shipping plugin.
However we would have bought it if the explanation was a bit more clear, I don't really understand the price multiplier and the price trigger but the real issue for us is that our shipping methods have 21% VAT applied so they all end up being a round number (to avoid decimals in cash on delivery payment) so they look this way. 5.00 €, 7.00 €. 9.00 € with 21% vat applied and we didnt understand how to round those additional prices per units/kg with the tax to obtain those results with your plugin.
Anyway im sure it will be useful for a lot of people.
Regards
Hello, i was just working on the same issue with 500 shipping methods installed into VM2 and it seems that raising memory limit by your hosting to at least 256mb per php process solves many issues here. I also would recommend to hire a programmer to do the logic of the shipping method in an unique way.
Best Regards,
Stan
Hi thanks, didnt know that of the php process.
I was told by a programmer that even if you had 1000 rates maybe the calculation takes 300ms to load, so ithe real pain seems just having to manually add them.
Using the shipping by states plugin and using intervals of 10 kg instead of 5 kg in higher weights saves us from entering a lot.
About hiring a programmer we though of that, the problem is that sometimes logic doesn't work.
Many shipping plugin developers though about the logic of adding an additional charge per units, but they dind't though that the Tax applied in the additional charge will give decimal results which for some people won't be valid. At least that happened on the ones we tried.
Imagine charging someone 56.78 € in cash on delivery.
Regards
Quote from: lindapowers on January 09, 2013, 13:55:10 PM
Imagine charging someone 56.78 € in cash on delivery.
this could easily be rounded down or up
by using
ceil() & floor()
From the description of your problem, it appears to me that my "Shipping by Rules for VirtueMart 2" plugin is the perfect solution to your problem... You only need to set up one shipping method and define the different shipping rates in one line of text each, by simply writing the conditions for a rate in normal text notation. See:
http://open-tools.net/virtuemart-2-extensions/vm2-shipping-by-rules-plugin.html
I suppose the free version would already fulfill your needs (although I'm not entirely opposed if you want to buy the advanced version ;-) ).
Quote from: lindapowers on January 06, 2013, 20:35:19 PM
we will have to set rates this way: until 5 kg, until 10 kg, until 15 kg etc etc maybe until 100. and that for a particular zip code interval in Spain. only in this country we have like 6 intervals to fill.
So you would set up "Country set 1" as Spain, and then write rules like:
Name=Spain Alicante, below 5kg; 03000<=ZIP<03999; Weight<5; Shipping=4
Name=Spain Alicante, below 10kg; 03000<=ZIP<03999; 5<=Weight<10; Shipping=6
Name=Spain Alicante, below 15kg; 03000<=ZIP<03999; 10<=Weight<15; Shipping=7
...
If you can express the shipping cost as a function of the weight, then the Advanced (Paid) version of the plugin might even reduce the number of rules.
But even if that is not possible, copying a line of text and changing it in a text editor is much faster than having to create a complete shipping method with the default shipping plugin of VM. (Plus, changing the quantity in the cart will leave the shipping method selected, even if the order falls into a new weight category.)
Quote from: lindapowers on January 06, 2013, 20:35:19 PM
Then some european countries again: until 5,10,15 kg etc etc to 100 kg. This ones are easier as theres no interval in zip codes and just prices for european countries grouped in 2 zones.
So you would set up two more country zones (Country set 2 and Country set 3), which have similar rules to the spanish provinces (only without the ZIP condition).
I hope my plugin can help you easily set up your shipping cost structure. Please ask if you have any questions or encounter any problems. It's a brand new plugin (which I needed for the webshop of my own music score edition), so it's not listed at the Joomla extensions directory. But I'd be really happy about feedback of other users, how well it works and how it can be improved.
Cheers,
Reinhold
Hi Reinhold, I'm really interested in testing it, is your website down or my connection having problems?
Im trying to access the link but it won't let me, neither your homepage. I accessed it before without issues when I was looking at other plugin from you (invoices numbers etc)
Regards
PD: The only thing I saw you didnt mention is the Tax in your example line. We need to apply a Tax to our shipping costs.
Quote from: lindapowers on January 17, 2013, 09:11:26 AM
Hi Reinhold, I'm really interested in testing it, is your website down or my connection having problems?
Sorry, had a hardware failure this morning at ~8:04. Server should be up and running again.
Quote from: lindapowers on January 17, 2013, 09:11:26 AM
PD: The only thing I saw you didnt mention is the Tax in your example line. We need to apply a Tax to our shipping costs.
For each country set you can select the tax to be applied (or not). The tax ID is then passed on to virtuemart, just like in the default weight countries shipping plugin.
Thanks Reinhold
Im testing the free version and works great, saves us the day for our european zones, so many thanks.
However, I think the advanced plugin will be even better for us If I could understand exactly how it works ;D.
We would like to apply additional charges per 5 kg, 10kg etc (we sell boxes of 5, 10 and 15 kg so the kg are always intervals of 5)
If you notice below our shipping costs + tax of the shipping cost gives us rounded results= 5.00 €, 7.00 €
We need them that way cause we use "cash on delivery" as one of our methods so we can't charge decimals and for marketing reasons too, decimals are not nice.
Example of shipping cost for us:
5 kg= shipping base cost (4.1322) + 21% transport tax = shipping cost 5.00 €
10 kg= shipping base cost (5.7851) + 21% transport tax= shipping cost 7.00 €
As you can see our shipping costs always end up being .00 (we previously calculate them that way so that applying the tax gives us those quantities)
Now the question is, can you see a way of using that "additional charge per kg's or units" to make us achieve that?
I think you call it "Weight-dependent shipping with weight bands"
Maybe a method like this one could avoid us from entering a lot of shipping rates and just add additional charges per kg, that way shipping will be calculated even if the customer wanted to buy 4000 kg, text from your website:
"Consider a weight-based shipping cost structure with weight bands. For example, assume that the first 5kg will cost 5€/kg, the next 5kg will cost only 4€/kg, and everything above 10kg will cost 3€/kg. So an order with 7.5kg will cost 35€ (25€ for the first 5kg at 5€/kg, and 10€ for the remaining 2.5kg at 4€/kg), while an order of 20kg will cost 75€."
The problem is that those 4€/kg will get Tax applied too and final result will be a decimal. We would like to obtain an additional charge for units but with rounded results and Tax applied.
Don't know if you can understand what im trying to explain ;D
BTW= Tested in PHP 5.2.13, joomla 2.58 and VM 2.018a
Actually, I'm not really sure I understand your shipping costs exactly. If I understand you correctly, you only ship 5, 10, 15, 20, .. kg, so you have a discrete set of possible weights.
For each of them, you want to set a shipping fee so that after 21% taxes you get a nice €-value.
I don't think one can easily express this as a mathematical formula (one might find a general formula, but I have not implemented mathematical functions like round or roundlower, which would be needed).
So, I don't think that one can find a proper mathematical expression to use with the Advanced version.
However, with the advanced version, you can save the time to calculate the net shipping costs (without taxes) from the actual, rounded values that you want to charge your user. E.g. if you want the user to pay 4€ shipping (including taxes), than you might specify the shipping cost as 4/1.21 (i.e. simply take out the 21% taxes). In the standard version, you'll have to do those calculations manually.
Yes Reinhold is exactly what you described.
The shipping fee is interesting for us cause you have unlimited rates while the other method will make us introduce each line for.. lets say until 100 kg. (5, 10, 15, 20, 25 etc)
But what happens for shipping rates over 100 kg which we have not defined? That was our concern with the core VM plugin. Imagine a customer wants to buy products that weight 200 kg and you don't have that line defined.
--------------------------------------
4/1.21 how does virtuemart understand that 1.21 is the shipping rate if you leave the default tax selection without any calculation rule? Is connected I guess.
Anyway thanks a lot for the plugin and for posting, we searched and tried most of the plugins in JED but none except the shipping by states saved us time, your plugin saves us a looot of work.
Regards
Quote from: lindapowers on January 18, 2013, 00:13:07 AM
But what happens for shipping rates over 100 kg which we have not defined? That was our concern with the core VM plugin. Imagine a customer wants to buy products that weight 200 kg and you don't have that line defined.
In that case, the shipping plugin does not return any shipping rate, and is thus not offered as a shipping method.
You might use the advanced plugin to set shipping costs of e.g. 4€ per 5kg (i.e. 0.8€/kg), reduced by 21% taxes, for higher weights. I.e.
Weight>100; Shipping=Weight*4/5/1.21
This charges 4€/5kg (that's 0.8€/kg) gross shipping costs (meaning 0.8/1.21=0.661157 net shipping costs per kg, on which 21% tax is then applied).
Quote from: lindapowers on January 18, 2013, 00:13:07 AM
4/1.21 how does virtuemart understand that 1.21 is the shipping rate if you leave the default tax selection without any calculation rule? Is connected I guess.
It doesn't know. This is just a workaround that hardcodes the tax rate of 21% into the shipping costs. In particular, if you want the customer to pay 4€, you need to calculate out the 21% tax, which means you have to divide 4€ by 1.21 (i.e. 1+21/100).
Regarding support for future versions: As I'm using all my plugins on my own webshop (that's actually the main reason why I developed them, and IMO that's the only way to create software that is usable), I'll need to keep them up to date with new VM versions, anyway. So, yes, I'll try to support them as good as possible for new versions (but please understand that I cannot give a legal guarantee). And all future versions of the plugins are made available to all buyers (i.e. I do not use something like "1 year updates are included", rather all future updates are included).
Thanks Reinhold
That line there solves it for us:
We have just removed the hardcoded tax so it takes the one already applied in the rest of the lines.
We don't require a legal guarantee but just understand our concern when we are gonna use your plugin as our main system to calculate all shipping rates and VM is constantly getting updated. We are happy knowing you use them in your own shop.
Regards
BTW, the latest version of the "Shipping by Rules" plugin now allows you to give the shipping costs either without taxes (Shipping=...) or with taxes applied (ShippingWithTax=...).
http://open-tools.net/virtuemart-2-extensions/vm2-advanced-shipping-by-rules-plugin.html
So now there is no need any more to add the /1.21 to subtract the 21% taxes. Simply give the shipping costs with taxes and the correct tax amount will be determined from the final shipping costs.
Excellent Reinhold! we really appreciate your work.
Regards