Suggestion: Interface for multiple manual shipping

Suggestion for a future release: I think a good interface for adding multiple manual shipping entries (multiple shipping zones, sub-zones and Shipping Methods) would reduce the amount of time to build many HikaShop shops by half or more! I would give it a very high priority for development.

I think the most efficient and familiar format for most people would be either a spreadsheet (based on a template you provide) that can be worked on in Open Office or Excel and uploaded, or an interface that works basically like a spreadsheet.

I just finished reading a thread from someone who had potentially 1600 shipping options to enter, and I have potentially 3600 entries I need to make for a fairly simple site with no shipping options whatsoever -- all options are pre-determined by weight and post code! However, there are 40 weight bands x 90 separate ranges of post codes. That's 3600. At 1 minute for each shipping method that would be 60 hours or 1.5 standard workweeks of non-stop mindless, repetitive work. All to input the information I already have on a fairly simple two-page spreadsheet.

If there is a faster way to do multiple entries, I'd love to hear about it. Otherwise, I definitely would suggest this be made a top development priority! As it is, it's a HUGE waste of time.

Thanks for your consideration, and for an otherwise awesome product!

Hi Nicolas, I'm not a programmer, though sometimes I have to try... I use HikaShop precisely because it's where I have to do the least amount of programming.

I can't believe that my situation is uncommon: My client is working with a small specialist delivery company (refrigerated delivery). It operates only in Spain. I will contact them about the possibility of a web interface, but my sense is that this company is fairly low-tech.

If they are able to offer a web interface, then I would need to hire a programmer to do the job, not a cost I was planning on! The budget for this project is very tight. But perhaps it's the only real solution.

Do you have tech specs for the job that I could use to get a quote? And if you could PM me a referral of a name or two of someone who has programmed one of the existing shipping plug-ins for HikaShop, it would be appreciated.

I was pretty surprised there is no way to do this easily. So far it's my biggest complaint about Hikashop. I'm facing having to build thousands as well, but maybe there is a way to edit the shipping table and then import it.

Yes, I think I can easily see how to do this. If only the manual shipping plugin allowed multiple zip code ranges. That one change would allow me to only require about 600 shipping rules instead of 40,000.