CONTENTS
Why do we need to enter our Delivery Charges so early on?
Is it possible to combine the above systems at all?
How do I choose which system I want to use?
What if I want different Delivery Charges to different UK regions?
What is the ‘Avg kgs’ field for?
What if my different Couriers use different Weight or Value Bands?
How to record the Weight of each Product
Creating Delivery Charge Products
Introduction
This manual will describe the various ways in which you can set Cybertill to automatically calculate and add delivery charges to Customer Orders.
This manual presumes the reader is a relative newcomer to the system.
Even if you do not intend to offer a delivery service, you will still need to enter a minimal amount of data in the Couriers sections before certain other parts of the system will work correctly. For example, you won’t be able to enter any Product details or perform any Inter-Branch Transfers). We’d strongly recommend that at the very least, you turn to the relevant chapter at the end of this manual and follow the instructions there before moving onto the next manual.
Why do we need to enter our Delivery Charges so early on?
If you do deliver to your Customers, there are a few different methods the system can use to calculate your delivery charges (these will be outlined shortly). Depending on which method you decide to use, when you come to enter your Products’ details into the system, you may need to record a little extra information against each of them.
Example: if you want your delivery charges to be higher for heavier orders, you’ll need to tell Cybertill how much each of your Products weigh.
It can be frustrating to spend a lot of time entering your Products’ basic info (i.e. Names and Prices), then realise you’ll need to go back and put weight info in for each of your Products too. Also, as previously mentioned, you’ll need to enter a minimum amount of data in certain parts of the Courier setup screens in order to make other areas of the system work.
For these reasons, it’s worth considering how you’ll be charging for delivery here at the beginning. Nevertheless, it isn’t absolutely required that you enter every bit of your delivery information now.
We’d recommend that you at least read through this User Manual (so you get an idea of what needs to be done), then – if you don’t want to enter your delivery charges in their entirety just yet – skip to the last chapter and follow the instructions there.
Bear in mind that if you would like to use Cybertill to build a website, you’ll need to set up delivery charges at some point in order for it to work.
Types of Delivery Charges
You’ll need to choose between the two basic systems outlined below:
1. By order value
With this system, it’s the value of a Customer’s order (i.e. how much they’re spending) which dictates what their delivery charge will be.
You’ll be able to set up as many tariff bands (aka ‘price bands’ or ‘price brackets’) as you like. So, for example, you could have just two bands (‘£0 to £49.99’ and ‘£50 to £10000’), or several (‘£0 to £20’, ‘£20 to £49’, ‘£50 to £100’ etc); you can have as many as you need. Depending on which of those tariff bands the Customer’s order falls in, they’ll be charged a different delivery fee accordingly.
A common example of this system: “All orders under £50 will cost £4.99 delivery; free delivery on all orders over £50”.
- PROS: This system requires the least amount of time to set up by a large margin. It’s also arguably the easiest for your Customers to understand.
- CONS: If the items you sell vary drastically in weight, it can be tricky to work out rates that don’t either lose you money or over-charge the Customer outrageously in some circumstances.
2. By order weight
In this system, the weight of a Customer’s order dictates their delivery charge.
For this system to work, you’ll need to tell the system the weights (in kilograms) of every Product you wish to offer delivery for.
As with the value system, you’ll be able to set up as many tariff bands as you like – but with this system, you’ll be specifying weight bands (rather than value). So, for example, you can set up bands for ‘0kg to 1kg’, ‘1kg to 2kg’ etc. (Again, you can have as few or as many as you require.)
When a Customer places an order, the system will add up the weights of all the items that Customer is ordering and work out which of your tariff bands that order falls in, then apply the appropriate delivery fee.
- PROS: This system tends to result in the ‘fairest’ delivery charges.
-
CONS: If the items you sell vary considerably in weight, you may need to enter a weight value into the system for every Product you offer delivery for, which can be very time-consuming. And, it can be difficult for Customers placing an order to keep track of how much the delivery will cost.
Is it possible to combine the above systems at all?
No. It isn’t possible to combine them and come up with something like “Delivery on all orders under £50 varies depending on weight; free delivery on all orders over £50”. You must decide which one of the two to use.
Note: You can change your mind later but bear in mind that if you switch from “value” to “weight” later, it might require a fair amount of effort to apply.
Can I specify which Countries I deliver to, and have different Delivery Charges to different Countries?
Yes. You’ll see how to do each of these things in the next chapter of this manual.
Just to clarify, you’ll only be able to use just one of the two systems described above (weight or value) at any one time, but you’ll be able to set it so that different countries are eligible for different charges.
Example: if you’re using the ‘value’ system, you could set up your delivery charges like this:
- All orders under £50 to the UK cost £4.99 to deliver
- All orders over £50 to the UK are delivered free
- All orders under £50 to other EU nations cost £9.99 to deliver ➢ All orders over £50 to other EU nations cost £6.99 to deliver
See the next chapter for more detail.
How do I choose which system I want to use?
To choose a system,
- Click the General option at the top left of the screen.
- Scroll down this screen about half way, until you find the option called Tariff Type.
- set this option to Value.
If you want to use the ‘by order weight’ system,
- set this option to Weight.
While you’re in this page, we ought to check one more option out too. Near the top of the page, there is a field labelled Base Currency.
Make sure this is set to Sterling (or whatever your main currency is). This has nothing to do with your Courier setup, but as the small print says, once you start trading with this currency, it cannot be changed, so we’d better ensure we set it correctly before we save this page!
After choosing,
- scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save to save your choice.
Once you’ve settled on a system, the next thing you should do is enter your Carriage zones.
Carriage Zones
Our next step is to specify which Countries you deliver to, as well as group them into different ‘zones’.
You can have as many or as few ‘zones’ as you need, and towards the end of this User Manual, you’ll see how you can have different delivery charges to each of your zones.
Many retailers have three carriage zones:
- UK
- Europe
- Rest of world
Retailers who do not deliver overseas tend to just have one zone, simply named UK.
To get started,
- click into the Admin menu.
From within the Couriers / Carriage section,
You’ll be taken to a page that will list all the Carriage Zones created in your system to date.
Below is an example of what a typical Carriage Zones screen looks like:
- enter a name for your first carriage zone.
Example: ‘UK Mainland’, ‘Europe’ etc.
In the Description field,
- enter a description for your Carriage Zone.
Note: this field is optional so can be left blank.
In the Associated Countries/Regions* field, in the Unassociated box,
- highlight all the countries you want this zone to contain.
To select more than one Country at a time,
- hold down the CTRL button in the corner of your keyboard, then click each Country in turn.
- Select the Associated arrow to more the over to the Associated section.
The Country should then appear in the Associated field.
- Leave the List Order and Associated Service boxes blank for now.
- Click the Save button at the bottom to record this service.
You should see a success message at the top:
Once you’ve saved it,
- click the Back to list link at the bottom left to go back to the previous page.
You should see that your Carriage Zone has been added to the list.
-
Repeat that process until you’ve added all the Carriage Zones you need.
What if I want different Delivery Charges to different UK regions?
You’ve no doubt noticed by now that you can easily assign the Country named United Kingdom (ex. Channel Islands) into a Carriage Zone. But, what if you want to divide the UK itself up into different zones? (For example, what if you want to charge one rate to most UK addresses, but another rate to UK highlands?)
The only way you’ll be able to handle this is to set up two different Carriage Zones (for example, one called “UK main” and one named “UK highlands”) and assign the United Kingdom (ex. Channel Islands) Country to them both. Then, you’ll be able to specify different charges for each zone. Note, though, that the system will not be able to tell automatically which of those carriage zones a UK-based Customer falls into.
Under these circumstances, were a Customer to come into the shop and request a delivery, then the till operator would be prompted to choose the appropriate carriage zone. (And, were a Customer to place an order on your website, the Customer themselves would be prompted to select which carriage zone applies to them. Consequently, you should give them very clear names so that it is immediately obvious which zone a Customer falls into e.g. “UK – Islands and Scottish Highlands”)
After you’ve set up your Carriage Zones, the next step is to enter a list of the Couriers you use.
Couriers
- Click into the Admin menu.
From within the Couriers/ Carriage section,
You’ll be taken to your Courier List, that will display all the Couriers you have set up within Cybertill. If you are yet to add any Couriers, then the list will appear blank.
On this screen, you could record the details of all the different couriers that you use. However, consider the following: Do you want to give your Customers (and/or your till staff) a choice of different couriers (e.g. Royal Mail, Parcel Force, CityLink etc) when they are arranging a delivery? If not, you would be better off creating just one generic courier here, named “Courier” or something similarly generic.
To add a new Courier,
- click the New option at the bottom of the screen.
- Enter your Courier’s name in the Courier field.
If you have purchased a Web module from Cybertill, you’ll have the option of choosing whether this Courier’s services will be available to your online Customers in the Website panel.
- Highlight the appropriate websites in which you want this Courier’s services to be available.
If you hold down CTRL on your keyboard, you can highlight more than one website at a time.
- Click Save, and you should see a ‘success’ message at the top of the screen:
- Click the Back to list option at the bottom of the screen to take you back to the previous page.
You’ll see your Courier listed.
- Repeat the process for any other Couriers you wish to add.
Once all your couriers are listed here, it’s time to tell Cybertill what carriage services these Couriers offer.
Carriage Services
- Click back into your Admin menu.
From within the Couriers / Carriages section,
The Carriage Services List typically looks something like this:
Here, you could enter the names all the carriage services your couriers do. Again, though, consider whether you want to offer your Customers (and your till staff) a choice of different carriage services or not. For example, do you want them to choose between Standard, Recorded, Next Day, First Class, Second Class etc? Or, do you not wish to present them with such a choice?
If you do, you’ll need to create each carriage service in turn.
If you don’t, you should just create a single delivery service here, named something generic like ‘Delivery’.
To add a Carriage Service,
- click the New link at the bottom of the page.
You’ll be taken to this screen:
- select the correct Courier.
In the Service Name* field,
- enter a service name. Example: ‘Internal’, ‘Next Day’.
In the Description field,
- enter a Description your Carriage Service if required.
Note: this field is not mandatory and can be left blank. (Bear in mind that this description may be visible to your staff and to your web Customers later.)
- Leave the Service Type dropdown field set to “Goods Out – retail sales”.
In the VAT Rate box,
- choose the appropriate VAT rate that the courier charges for this service.
In the Zone dropdown,
- highlight the Carriage Zones in which this service operates.
(To highlight more than one at a time, hold the CTRL button on your keyboard as you click them.)
- Click the Save button at the bottom to record your service.
You should receive a ‘success’ message at the top of the page:
- Click the Back to list link at the bottom of the screen to go back a page.
You’ll see your Carriage service now appears.
- Repeat the process for every Carriage Service you wish to offer.
Once you’ve entered all your Couriers and their Carriage Services into the system, you’ll next need to consider your Carriage Bands.
Carriage Bands
▪ Click into the Admin menu and locate to the Couriers / Carriages section.
You’ll find two options pertaining to carriage bands:
Are you using the ‘by value’ method of calculating delivery charges? If so, you’ll need to go into the Carriage Bands – Value screen; keep reading.
If you’re using the ‘by weight’ method, you’ll need to go into Carriage Bands – Weight instead.
Note: It’s worth mentioning at this point that the bands or item types you enter here will apply to every single Courier and delivery service on your system. So, if you want to offer different bands for different Courier services, you’ll need to think things through very carefully (see later in this manual for more advice).
First of all, let’s look at the ‘by value’ method…
Carriage Bands - Value
In this page, you’ll need to enter details of your value bands (aka price brackets).
For example, if you want to charge for carriage on all orders under £50, but do free delivery on all orders over £50, you’ll need to set up two ‘value’ tariff bands here – one for £0 to £49.99, and one for £50 and above. You’d want this screen to end up looking something like this:
- Start by clicking New.
You’ll be taken to this page:
- Enter a suitable name for your first value band in the Value Band Ref/Name field.
Example: ‘0 to 49.99’.
- Enter the Min value* and Max value* of this band in the appropriate boxes.
Example: ‘0’ and ‘49.99’. Don’t enter a £ symbol.
- Click Save at the bottom.
- Click Back to list at the bottom, and it’ll take you back to the Carriage Value Band List.
You’ll see your value band appearing now.
- Repeat the process for all the other value bands you want to add.
Note that you do have to specify a maximum limit for every value band; the system won’t let you save without entering one. So, for your ‘highest’ band, we’d suggest you enter an extremely high ‘max’ number, like the one shown in this example:
Also note the 1p difference between the “Max value” of the first band, and the “Min value” of the second band.
It’s important that there is no overlap between your tariff bands.
Consider what would happen if the first band was “£0 to £50” and the second band was “£50 to £99999”, and then a Customer was to place an order for exactly £50. In those circumstances, Cybertill wouldn’t know which of those two tariff bands it should be using. This would prevent the ordering process from working properly.
Next, let’s have a look at the ‘by weight’ method…
Carriage Bands – Weight
(Don’t forget that you only need to follow these instructions if you’re using the ‘by weight’ system.)
You’ll be expected to enter details of your weight bands (or weight brackets) in here.
For example, if you used a Courier who charged one price for deliveries up to 5kg, and another price for deliveries over 5kg, you’d want to get this screen looking like this:
- Enter a name for your first weight band in the Weight Band Ref/Name box at the top.
- Enter the Min kgs and Max kgs of this weight band in the next two boxes down.
You can enter a number to four decimal places (i.e. down to one-tenth of a gram), if you’re so inclined. (Do not enter “kg” at the end; the numbers alone will suffice.)
- In the Avg kgs box, you should enter an average weight figure, i.e. an estimate of what the average weight is of all the Products that would fall under this weight band.
(Please refer to the next section of the User Manual for more information.)
Lastly, the Description box is optional; it’s entirely up to you whether you put anything in it or not.
- Click Save at the bottom.
You should get a success message at the top of the screen.
- Click Back to list at the bottom, and it’ll take you back to the previous page.
You’ll see your weight band appearing.
- Repeat the process for all the other weight bands you want to use, until you’ve got them all saved.
What is the ‘Avg kgs’ field for?
If you want to charge different delivery rates depending on how heavy a Customer’s Order is, then naturally, you’ve got to tell Cybertill how heavy all your Products are.
There’s two ways you can do this:
- You could enter the exact weight in kg for every single Product you sell.
This would mean your system is incredibly precise when calculating delivery charges, but it means you’d have to weigh each Product, then type those weights into Cybertill, one Product at a time. That could be enormously time-consuming.
- You could (for example) declare that “All the Products in department X belong to Weight Band A” – in which case Cybertill will treat all Products in that department as if they weighed that band’s average weight.
A more detailed example to illustrate this:
Imagine that you have a shop that sells CDs, DVDs and books, and that you want to work out your delivery costs using the “weight” method.
Now, after you’ve weighed 4 or 5 different CDs, you’d probably realize that most of your CDs all weigh roughly the same thing. (Let’s say 0.25kg, just for the sake of having a number to work with.)
You’d no doubt find something similar for the majority of your DVDs too. (Let’s say 0.75kg.)
Books might vary a bit more, depending on their size and whether they’re paperback or hardback… but still, it’s not inconceivable that after weighing about 30 or 40 of them, you notice that the majority of your books weigh about 2kg each.
Consequently, it would save you a lot of time to set your carriage bands up to look something like this:
Notice the Avg kgs column on the right:
Note that we’ve put in the appropriate “Avg kgs” for each of the CDs, DVDs and books weight brackets.
When you start entering all of your Products’ details into Cybertill (i.e. their Names, Prices etc) in the near future, you’ll find that for each Product, you get the option to either type in every Product’s exact weight in kg, or to simply choose which weight band it belongs to. If you do the latter, then Cybertill will simply assume that each Product weighs the average weight.
So, for example: When adding a new CD Product to your Cybertill system’s database, instead of having to type in the exact weight of that CD, you can simply choose the “CDs” weight band – and Cybertill will then assume this CD weighs your specified “average CD” weight of 0.25kg.
That could save you a lot of weighing and typing.
What if my different Couriers use different Weight or Value Bands?
Or: “I use Royal Mail and Parcel Force, and both use different weight bands to work out their charges! How can I handle this in Cybertill?”
If you have a question like that in mind, you’ll have to be a bit clever with how you enter your bands into the system. You’ll need to divide your bands up, so they will work for all your couriers.
Here’s a more detailed example of the kind of problem that sometimes occurs:
Courier A charges different rates for deliveries weighing between:
- 0kg to 2kg (costs £3)
- 2kg to 4kg (costs £5)
- 4kg to 6kg (costs £8)
Courier B charges different rates for deliveries weighing between:
- 0kg to 3kg (costs £4)
- 3kg to 6kg (costs £7)
To handle this in Cybertill, you’d need to set up the following tariff bands…
0kg to 2kg
2kg to 3kg
3kg to 4kg
4kg to 6kg
Those bands would give you the flexibility you need. The following table illustrates how those bands allow you to accommodate each courier’s pricing structure:
| Courier A | Courier B | |
| 0kg to 2kg | £3 | £4 |
| 2kg to 3kg | £5 | £4 |
| 3kg to 4kg | £5 | £7 |
| 4kg to 6kg | £8 | £7 |
See how these bands are compatible with each courier?
Should this kind of problem arise for you, try to work out how to break your tariff bands down in such a way that you can accommodate all your couriers like this.
How to record the Weight of each Product
In the screen where you enter your Products’ basic details (Name, Description, Brand etc), there will be a box in which you must either record the “Item Weight” or the “Weight band” …
You’ll need to ensure you either enter the relevant weight (in kg) into the “Item weight” box or choose the appropriate “Weight band” instead (in which case this Product will be considered to be the average weight for that band). Were you to do neither, Cybertill has no idea how much this item weighs and any Customers ordering that Product from you may be charged the wrong amount as a result!
So, with all the preceding stages complete, the foundations of your delivery charges are in place.
By this point, you’re probably wondering “so when do I actually get to enter my actual delivery charges?”
If you’re completely new to Cybertill, the answer’s a bit of an anti-climax: Not until a little later! You’ll have to come back to these “delivery” sections to do it another time!
More detail: You won’t be able to specify what your delivery charges are until you’ve learned to create Products.
This is because you’ll need to create a “Product” to represent each of your different charges.
Creating Delivery Charge Products
You might have noticed that whenever you go to add a new Product to Cybertill, one of the very first fields that appears is Product Type:
If you want to create a Product to represent one of your delivery charges, you’ll need to change this box from its Default Option of ‘Stock Item’ to ‘Carriage Tariff’.
Alternatively, to create a ‘carriage tariff’ Product,
- fill in all the other fields you normally would for a standard Product.
You should create a separate ‘carriage tariff’ Product for every different price you charge for delivery.
Even if you offer free delivery on everything, you should still create one ‘carriage tariff’ Product with a price of £0!
Once you have created enough ‘carriage tariff’ Products to cover all your different delivery charges,
- return to the Admin menu’s Couriers / Carriage section to put all these pieces together.
You might have already noticed by now that in your Admin menu, there are two separate Carriage Tariffs options, one for Value and one for Weight.
You’ll need to go into whichever of these options corresponds with your chosen delivery method.
Let’s start with value.
Carriage Bands - Value
When you first click into this screen, it’ll probably be totally empty.
- Click the New option at the bottom of the screen to get the ball rolling.
You’ll now see a panel that looks something like this:
In the Carriage service* box, you should find a list of all the services you’ve set up previously.
- Start by choosing the very first one on the list.
In the Carriage value band* box, you’ll see a list of all the value bands (i.e. price brackets) you set up.
- Again, start by choosing the first of them.
The Carriage zone* box lists all your zones.
- Choose the first zone that this carriage service operates in.
Lastly, in the Product option* box, you’ll see a list of all of those ‘carriage tariff’ Products (i.e. delivery charges) you created earlier.
- Choose which delivery charge you want to apply to this service, this band and this zone.
- Click the Save button at the bottom left once all the above is filled in.
You should see a “success” message appear:
- Click Back to list at the bottom left to return to the previous page.
You should see a summary of your chosen options appearing on screen there, looking something like this:
- Click the New option a second time to bring that form up again:
Once more,
- choose your first Carriage service* and Carriage value band*.
This time around, though, have a look in the Carriage zone* box and see if there are any more zones in there that you’d like this delivery service to be available to. If so,
- choose the second of them.
- Choose the appropriate charge in the Product option* box.
- Click Save to record that.
Once again,
- click New at the bottom… and keep on going in this manner, until you’ve saved the appropriate charge for every combination of delivery service, delivery zone and value band.
(To make this go a little quicker for you, try clicking Save and Add instead of Save after every new combination you enter. That will save what you’ve entered, then automatically clear the form out ready for you to add another new entry.)
Once you’ve set a price for every combination of service, zone and band, you’re finished here; your delivery charges are in place.
Carriage Bands – Weight
The Carriage Bands – Weight screen works in almost the same way as the Value screen. The only difference is that instead of having to set the charge for each combination of service, zone and value band, you must do it for each combination of service, zone and weight band instead.
Don’t forget that using the Save and add button will save your work, then clear the form for you to quickly add another combination with the minimum clicks.
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