Using FedEx shipping
From Spiffy Stores Knowledge Base
Spiffy Stores links in with FedEx to calculate the cost of shipping an item to your customer based on the weight of items in their cart. To add a FedEx shipping rate, go to the "Preferences >> Shipping & handling" section of your Store Toolbox, and follow the instructions below.
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Getting a Meter Number from FedEx to use in your Spiffy Store
To be able to use the FedEx shipping calculator, you'll need to have an account with FedEx, and will need a FedEx Account Number and Meter number. A Meter Number is used by FedEx to calculate your rates and track your rate requests. The front-line of FedEx support is not familiar with this system, so calling FedEx support might be frustrating as they'll probably say something to the effect of "FedEx does not support Meter Numbers".
FedEx actually does still support Meter Numbers and generates them automatically. Once you have an account number, you'll need to log in to the Developer Solutions section of the Developer Resource Center to get a Meter Number.
- Go to http://fedex.com/us/developer/solutions.html
- Scroll down and click the "Access FedEx Web Services for Shipping Technical Resources" link. If you already have an online account with FedEx, you'll need to log in. If you don't have an online account with FedEx, you'll need to create one.
- In the menu on the left, click the "Move to Production" link
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the "Obtain Production Key" icon
- A new page will display, asking you to select a few answers. Choose:
- Do you intend to resell your software: No
- FedEx web services you intend to use: Check FedEx Web Services for Shipping
- Are you a corporate developer or a consultant: Choose Consultant.
- Click the "Continue" button
- Now you will need to fill out your billing information. Please note that you cannot have any special characters within the address fields. Watch out for ".", "#", or other non-number or non-letter characters as it will cause an error.
- Check the box on the next screen, and click the Continue button.
- You will then see your Meter Number. It is CRITICAL that you write down OR print this page as this is where you get the Meter Number required to be able to use FedEx as a shipping agent.
Enabling FedEx as a shipping agent
If you haven't already enabled FedEx as a shipping provider, go to the "Preferences >> Shipping & handling" section of your Store Toolbox, and follow the instructions below.
- Click on the "Add a shipping agent" button in the top right of the "Shipping & handling" page
- From the list of available shipping agents, click the Activate button in the FedEx section
- Enter your FedEx Account Number and Meter Number
- Select the services from FedEx that you want to offer to your customers, then click the Activate button. The range of services available to you from FedEx depends upon the location that you're shipping from.
Creating a weight-based shipping rate using FedEx
- Click on the "Add a weight-based rate" link under the country that you want to add a new shipping rate for.
- Name your shipping rate. This name appears in your checkout when a customer places an order, so generally you would write the carrier that it's being shipped by, for instance "FedEx".
- Add the weight range that this postage rate applies to. The first box is the starting (lowest) weight that applies for this weight range. The second box is the ending (highest) weight that applies for this weight range. Note that the FedEx maximum rate is 68kg.
Note: In order for the weight range to apply to the current contents of the shopping cart, the weight of the cart must be greater than the lowest value in the range, but less than or equal to the highest value in the weight range. - Select the shipping agent that applies to this shipping rate by clicking the link "Switch to a Shipping Agent rate calculator", then choose "FedEx" as your shipping agent.
- Choose whether you want to add any "handling days". In the checkout, the customer is currently shown a delivery date estimate, for example, Delivery Estimate: 10th Sep, 2010. If you want to give yourself an extra day or two before you ship the item, adjust the handling days. If you add two handling days, the delivery date estimate in the example above would then be adjusted to read Delivery Estimate: 12th Sep, 2010.
- Choose whether you want to add a handling fee. If you want to charge a customer for packing up the item etc. you can now add a handling fee. This amount is just added to the shipping cost in the checkout. It's not displayed as a separate handling fee.
- Adjust your shipping rate by a percentage amount. If you want to charge a little extra (or a little less) for your shipping to cover costs, you can adjust the calculated shipping fee by a percentage amount. This also allows you to compensate for any errors in rates that a shipping carrier might return.
- Set your fall-back option. If for any reason the shipping carrier fails, you can set a default rate or set it to ignore that carrier.
- Click the "Save Rate" button.