Weight-based Shipping with Australia Post
From Spiffy Stores Knowledge Base
This article is for stores that do not have the Australia Post carrier shipping enabled, so will need to manually set up shipping rates. It contains suggestions on an effective way to set up your shipping and should suit most stores.
If you are on a plan that includes the Australia Post Shipping Calculator, please use these instructions -> Using Australia Post Shipping
With Australia Post's new flat rate shipping, the way you set up your shipping may need to change. This tutorial is designed to assist new and existing stores to work out a shipping strategy that will work with weight-based rates in your store. This will also involve altering the weights of your products to weights that may not quite make sense until you read the entire tutorial.
Contents
Using Your Own Packaging
Australia Post still has weight-based rates if you use your own packaging. Costs are below. You will want to add your own packaging costs to these prices.
Note: These prices have been updated to reflect Australia Post pricing – effective 5 September 2022
Costs & Weights
| Weight | Standard | Express Post |
| Up to 500g | $9.70 | $12.70 |
| 500g to 1kg | $13.25 | $16.75 |
| 1kg to 3kg | $16.65 | $20.65 |
| 3kg to 5kg | $20.05 | $27.05 |
Setting weights on your products
The best way to work out what weight to set on a product is to firstly weight it (duh!), but if the product is light but large, you should work out the cubic weight of the product. You will need a ruler or tape measure, and a calculator to do so. The formula that Australia Post uses for cubic weight is below.
Height (in metres) × length (in metres) × width (in metres) × 250
For example: 50cm × 30cm × 40cm
0.5m × 0.3m × 0.4m
= 0.06m × 250
= 15kg cubic weight
Using Prepaid Satchels
If you intend on using pre-paid satchels, then you will likely need to ensure that your calculations are correct. Your best bet to do this is to buy one of each of them, so you can visually see the sizes and gauge what will fit in them. The weights you set on your products may not be anything like the actual or cubic weight.
Costs & Sizes
| Size | Parcel Post | Express Post |
| Small | $9.70 | $12.70 |
| Medium | $13.25 | $16.75 |
| Large | $16.65 | $20.65 |
| Extra Large | $20.05 | $27.05 |
Prices are based on Australia Post prices and are quoted including packaging and flat rate prices. If you find that these prices are incorrect, please email us and let us know so we can update this article.
Setting Your Postage Weights
We suggest using the standard weights that Auspost uses only to simplify the process.
| Weights | Standard Post | Express Post |
| Zero to 500g | $9.70 | $12.70 |
| 500g to 1kg | $13.25 | $16.75 |
| 1kg to 3kg | $16.65 | $20.65 |
| 3kg to 5kg | $20.05 | $27.05 |
Setting weights on your products
The best way to work out what weight to set on a product is to see how many will fit into a satchel. This is mostly guesswork, and is not guaranteed to suit everyone, but it is a guide to help you get going. You will need to tweak your weights/prices as you continue to sell and learn.
- If you have stock of the product, put as many in the small satchel (or whatever satchel you have) as you can fit. If you don't have stock of the product, guess how many you can fit.
- If you can fit 10 items in a satchel, then divide the maximum weight of the satchel weight by 10. You now have your weight.
Example
4 small widgets will fit nicely in a small satchel.
The small satchel's maximum weight is set to 500 grams.
500 divided by 4 = 125
The product's weight should be set to 125 grams (or 0.125kg).
Example 2
8 purple widgets will fit nicely in a small satchel.
The small satchel's maximum weight is set to 500 grams.
500 divided by 8 = 62.5
The product's weight should be set to 62.5 grams (or 0.0625kg).
If some of your products are very small and can fit in an envelope
You can alter the suggested rates to include an envelope postage cost.
| Weights | Standard Post | Express Post |
| Zero to 250g | $3.50 | $7.15 |
| 250g to 500g | $9.70 | $12.70 |
| 500g to 1kg | $13.25 | $16.75 |
| 1kg to 3kg | $16.65 | $20.65 |
| 3kg to 5kg | $20.05 | $27.05 |
You will then need to work out your costs based on how many items will fit in an envelope rather that a small parcel as described above. Our envelope costs above come from the Auspost site. They are flat rates for Priority Large letter (250g), and Express Post DL.