Shipping Rules: Tips, Tricks and Best Practices

With so many different items and so many different ways of shipping them, no wonder there is the need to expound shipping rules to accommodate the way we charge for shipping. How do we go about doing this in NetSuite?

Shipping items can be applied to sales orders and made available for customers to choose from on web store orders. This allows for a variety rates and shipping methods to be available. Below is a brief summary and suggestions for setting up shipping items.

Shipping and Handling Rates

NetSuite has 6 different ways of calculating shipping rates and 6 ways of calculating handling.

Shipping Rate Options

· FedEx/UPS Real-Time Rate - Select a real-time rate option from FedEx or UPS for shipping within the US or internationally. You must register your FedEx and/or UPS accounts at Setup > Set Up Shipping to use this option. (This option is great to bill exactly what the carrier charges)

· Flat Rate – Charge a flat rate for shipping on all orders.

· By weight – Enter information to charge by item weight.

· By Item – Charge shipping based on the shipping cost on the item's record. Enter a default amount for items that don't have a shipping cost.

· Percent of Total – Charge shipping as a percent of the total.

· Shipping Table – Charge shipping based on a range of order totals or order weights. When you select this option, you can enter a starting value (can be as low as 0). The charge of the first line applies up to the value of the second line, and so on.

Handling Rate Options

· No Handling Charge - Select this option if you do not charge for handling. (default value)

· Flat Rate - Enter the amount to charge for every item you ship.

· By weight - Enter the amount to charge based on item weight.

· Per item - Charge handling based on the handling charge on the item's record. Enter a default amount for items that do not have a handling charge.

· Percent of total - Charge handling as a percent of the total.

· Handling Table - Charge handling based on a table of charges you create.

Free Item Shipping

A list of items that incur free shipping is also available, but please note that any order that contains at least one of these items will result in the full order be free of shipping charges. If it is important not to zero out the shipping costs of other items, other options should be used such as charging by item which allows you to set a pre-defined charge for each item. In this method, we can set all of our free items to 0 cost, and have specific costs associated to all other items.

Shipping and Handling Rules

This tab section is where we can elaborate on the shipping costs as well as define when this shipping item is available for our web store customers. This is also where we determine the tax applicable to the shipping charges.

Various limit values can also be set in this tab to indicate minimum and maximum shipping costs, as well as having free shipping over a certain order amount. These are particularly useful for weights and percent of total to prevent extremely low charges like those under 1$ for example, or over 100$.

Four separate rules are defined to determine availability of this shipping item.

• Ship To: To determine either the countries that are eligible or not eligible for shipping, based on shipping address. This is the only rule available outside of web store orders.
• Web Site: To determine which of your web sites allow or disallow this shipping item.
• By Total: To determine availability based on order total.
• By Weight: To determine availability based on order weight

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Combining Shipping Items

All of the preceding options for rules and rates can be further fine tuned by setting up separate shipping items with complementary rules to allow more complex shipping costs.

For example, one could set up two shipping items, one used for US customers, another for international customers. US customers could use the first item with a flat rate, and the international shipping item could be rated based on shipping weight.

Another example would be 2 shipping items within the same country, one based on total percentage, the other based on weight. The following table shows the customer options when both are available.

Order Cost	Order Weight	shipping item (5$/lb)	5% of total
100$	4 lbs	20$ shipping	5$ shipping
500$	4 lbs	20$ shipping	25$ shipping
100$	8 lbs	40$ shipping	5$ shipping
600$	1 lb	5$ shipping	30$ shipping

This next table shows the costs when applying complementary rules for order amounts, calculated by weight for orders under 300$, and calculated by percent of total when over 300$.

Order Cost	Order Weight	Less than 300$, shipping item (3$/lb)	300$ or more, 5% of total
100$	4 lbs	20$ shipping	N/A
500$	4 lbs	N/A	25$ shipping
100$	8 lbs	40$ shipping	N/A
600$	1 lb	N/A	30$ shipping

November: Tips and Tricks

1 - Grouping Inventory Items

With online retailing, some item types group items together into a single product. Some products may be sold sometimes in a group (ie, a collection of albums), some may come in a kit (ie, magic kit), and others are assemblies.

✓ Item Group: When you add a group to a purchase or sales transaction, individual lines are added for each member of the group, with a subtotal line showing the entire group’s value.
The price of a group is always equal to the sum of the prices of its members. When you fulfill an order for a group, each member item appears as a separate line item and you fulfill them as if they were sold separately. Groups can’t be sold in a NetSuite Web store.

✓ Kit/Package: The greatest difference between groups and kits is that you may assign a price and revenue account to a kit, independent of the prices of its members.
When you fulfill an order for a kit, it appears as a single line item — in other words, you can’t fulfill different components of a kit at different times.
Both kits and groups may contain inventory items, but don’t have their own on-hand stock count. Kits can’t be purchased, but they may be sold in a NetSuite Web store.

✓ Assembly/Bill of Materials: You build assemblies out of other items, then use them like regular inventory items — tracking how many are in stock, committing them to orders, and fulfilling them as a single line item.

Assemblies may contain inventory, non-inventory, other charge, service items, or even other assemblies. You may stock assemblies by purchasing them as well as building them, and they may be sold in a NetSuite Web store.

2 - File Download with online form

NetSuite has the functionality to download a file after completing an online form. Before someone can download the file, they will be required to complete a form.

In order to do so, you need to have the desired document uploaded into the Filing Cabinet, and create the online form (Setup > Other Setup > Online Customer Forms) with the desired fields.

Once you have your file uploaded and the form created you can publish your file download with online form. Go to Website > Publishing > Publish Forms >New and select form type "Download file with online form".

There are 3 main fields to set up:

• Select the online form (the one you created) that will have to be filled out prior to downloading the form
• Select the downloadable file from the File Cabinet
• Select the category on the website to publish the form

Once you have saved, any links to that document with the form ID will be rerouted to the form before the document may be downloaded.

3 - Using NetSuite's List Shortcuts

It is possible to find records quickly in NetSuite via list shortcuts. There are lists provided in NetSuite for all the major record types including customers, transactions, opportunities and events.

• To sort a list by a particular column, click the column header; an arrow in the header will show whether the sort order is ascending or descending. Clicking the header again will reverse the sort order.
• Lists always display a footer section at the very bottom of the page, and the section will contain filters that allow you to adjust list results
• The footer section contains a View drop-down list. Views allow you to change the columns of data in the list, or to filter the results.