[ic] questions about shipping

[JT Justman]

SAMCOM LLC Interchange wrote:
> Hello everyone, 
> 
> I am wondering if there is something in interchange that will let you
> specify the length, width and height of a product so they can be used in
> shipping.
> The reason I am asking is because if you are shipping something with ups
> that is 40lbs without putting in the dimensions would cost $30 as an example
> but if you put in the dimensions and it is really big box, then the shipping
> will be a lot more.
> 
> Any ideas

Hi!

You are reffering to "Dimensional Weight" and we have a lot of bulky
items that end up using it.

My solution was to create a custom field on products called dim_weight,
and populate it for the item with the dimensional weight based on the
formula:

Dimensional Weight = (length x width x height)/194

Then in shipping.asc I use something like

criteria        <<EOF
[perl]
	my $total = 0;
	foreach my $item (@$Items) {
		$total += $item->{quantity} * $item->{dim_weight} > $item->{weight} ?
$item->{dim_weight} : $item->{weight};
	}
	return $total;
[/perl]
EOF

What I actually use is more complicated, so I this is off the cuff and
probably won't work. The idea is to return the total of the bigger
weight column.

HTH,

JT