Creating A Shipping Rate Calculator

[nightdesigns]

With the changing USPS shipping rates at the end of this month, I'm forced to create a shipping rate calculator for purchases. In the past it wasn't as much of a problem because orders were flat feed based on weight. Now weight and location compute together to create the shipping total. I want to create a DB with all this info in it so i can easily change future values for rate changes and shipping costs. The DB will be turned into web pages and posted on the web site (i don't need the help with that part).

Here are the variables:

Zip Code Relates to a Zone (I.E. Zip Code Prefix 902 in my case ='s Zone 1, while Prefix 100 ='s zone 8). I have a listing from USPS.

Compute that together with a Weight and you get a cost.

What would be the best way to approach this. From the web page, the weight variable will be passed (value of 1-10). So the starting point will be weight. From that i want the user to select the zip code, and that's all done.

Thanks!

[falkaholic]

I've done something similar in a invoicing system, not really what you doing but should help.

I got the shipping rates as a excel table. Which country/service ass columns and the weight as rows.

I put it into a FM database with the weight being the primary key and the rates for the areas as other fields. In my invoice, the weight of the order is calculated (all inventory items had a weight) and then I made a relation to the shipping rates database and the total weight field in my invoice. From there I choose the country the invoice is for and i have a shipping price.

It works great and it is really easy to update.

[LiveOak]

One thing I think would be key is how you receive rates from UPS. If your storage format is too different from how the rates are provided, you may have a manual entry problem with each UPS rate change. I would look a how you can import the rates and work from there.

-bd

[falkaholic]

True,

But with mine system it for custom shipping costs. Not UPS. So once in a while someone with want to change a couple values. So its well suited to that, though I could just reimport the table again to change all of them.