UK Post Plugin

Hi Jerome, a few weeks ago we spoke via email - I asked if it were possible to have a shipping plugin for the UK and to allow customers who purchase anything from vendors, to be able to track their product.

My suggestion would be that the vendor would be able to enter the logistics company tracking details and it will update directly into hikashop or to at-least provide a link with the tracking number included, which would take the customer to the logistic company webside and they can see tracking information on here.

From this plugin, the vendor would also be able to put in their shipping price and how long it will be before the product is despatched, which would in turn add the price to the shopping cart at the end of the customer shopping session,

Thanks in advance for any help
Stef

Hi Jerome.

Thanks for your reply. By UK post plugin, I mean Parcelforce or Post Office plugins, so that the vendor could choose from a list of prices to charge for their shipping. For the moment though I am not worried about this.

The main thing that I need is for my Vendors to be able to charge their own shipping costs and be able to enter a price per product or if a customer orders more than one item from them - in this instance, they would need to be able to charge a flat rate or even offer free shipping if it is more than a certain amount. However, I am still very confused with the shipping setup in hikamarket. I have added a general shipping method and added a price to it, but I see nowhere on the vendor panel in the front end for the vendor to choose a shipping method.

This runs me in to difficulty because I do not know how much a specific vendor will need to charge for shipping, I can not just add a default price and expect them to accept this amount, especially if the shipping costs more.

I have looked over your documentation on setting it up, but there are no specific guidelines how to do it, only a description of what each thing does.

Regarding the tracking - I understand that the custom fields are an alternate way to allow customers to see where their order is. However, I am not a programmer - and again there are no specific tutorials on how to do this from what I can find on here.

Please could you help or at least maybe let me know exactly how to do this - I am now a little desperate because vendors have already started to add products and are emailing me regarding the shipping.

I really appreciate any help you may be able to offer in this matter.

Thanks,
Stef

Hi Jerome - thanks for your quick reply.

I think I am being a little stupid here, because I can't work out where to activate this for vendors in the front end.

If I go to hikamarket - configuration - hikamarket - access.
in the "Vendor access", I see lots of options but no option for shipping. if I go to Vendor options, the page is blank (I am not sure if it should be blank?)

I am still a little confused where I would activate the manual plugin for vendors in the front end. Sorry to keep asking questions, I know that this is probably an easy task for others, but for me its a little confusing.

Thanks in advance for your help

Hi again Jerome,

I have now got the shipping showing up in the vendor "Add a Product" area. However, I am a little confused to the "Price" & "Fee".

When we put in a price and a fee, add a product to the cart, nothing shows up for shipping costs.

Also we are getting a message at the end of the checkout process saying "Account Account not found. Unilateral receiver not allowed in chained payments is restricted!

Thanks for any help in advance

Hi Jerome,
I have included a screenshot for the shipping settings.

After working out how to set up the shipping for vendors, there is also a new problem now that the shipping cost will not add to the cart.

My hikashop version is 2.3.5 and hikamarket is 1.5.1

Thanks in advance.

Hi again Jerome,

Thanks for your time on this problem too - it would seem that setting the store as the secondary seller causes many problems, since I turned it off - the postage seems to be acting correctly again.

Regards
Stef

Hi,

I wanted to check if any progress had been made with other shipping plugins. In Redshop it is simple to create a table of prices without having to program a whole new plugin. (Using it is a little like using characteristics)

It is much quicker to create your own shipping prices this way. You can also apply particular prices to particular products and exclude others.

Is this a feature Hikashop is thinking of adopting?

Does anyone have Royal Mail or Parcelforce plugins they have already created?

Many thanks


Richard

Hi,

I want to say first, that there is much I really like about Hikashop,

Even so, I think that your shipping options can be improved as the your method takes a long time to input when there is no plugin available. Although we have the capability to make a plugin for UK post rates, this seems like a complicated way and maybe too complicated for a lot of your clients who do not have the programming skills

With Redshop you can create a single shipping instance and then create a table of prices (and weights/measurements).

Shipping weights from this table can then be applied to products (or you can select the whole range of shipping rates) according to requirements:

Example
product (a) I apply items 1,2 and 3 from the pricing table
product (b) I apply items 2, 3, 4 and 5 from the same table (maybe, for example because it is a bulky product)
product (c) I apply all shipping rates

category (a) I apply all shipping rates
category (b) I only apply rates 1, 2 and 3
and so on to product(n) or category (n)

The important features that make it quicker are:

1. No need to have a specialised plugin - you can create your own shipping rate and table of prices
2. You can select the prices and shipping rates you want in a very flexible way
3. You can update pricing by downloading and uploading your price tables in simple CSV files

I hope this explains and helps


Richard

Hi,

Thank you for the link, which is useful but still only an improvement on the manual shipping rate builder.

Best wishes


Richard