The UPS Shipping Module for Zen Cart is one of the most popular shipping modules. A big reason is the obvious popularity of UPS as a shipping company. UPS offers several different shipping methods and offers discounts to most companies.
The UPS Shipping module works by polling the UPS website with the order details from the shopping cart to get the actual shipping cost. The rate returned is the published rate based upon the order weight, shipping zip code and other configuration settings. The module settings, see attached image to the right, allow you to set most of the UPS shipping options based upon the way you ship in order to get accurate rates. These include Pickup Method, Packaging and whether addresses are Residential or Commercial.
One of the most important fields is the Handling Fee. This field, which can be positive or negative, will adjust the rate returned from UPS up or down. This allows you to tweak the shipping rates to suit your needs. Some businesses like to offer discounted shipping to improve conversion rates or pass along any UPS discounts to their clients. Other prefer to have the customer pay the actual shipping cost in order to just break even on shipping.
The advantage of real-time shipping modules like the UPS Shipping Module is that any order and any shipping address will return a shipping cost that is in line with what it will cost you to ship. You will avoid those situations where what the customer pays is significantly higher or lower than your actual shipping cost affecting your bottom line.
For accurate rates, this does require that your products do have accurate shipping weights. The final piece is the Shipping/Packaging settings in the Zen Admin. These affect all shipping modules but are important to have set appropriately.
If you need help installing or configuring the UPS Shipping Module in your Zen Cart, please contact us. We can help.
I am having serious issues with shipping rates ups mod. for zencart. The estimate is always ridiculously high. I almost have to rely on the ups mod because I have items from .12 oz. to over 5 pounds. I know this is causing customers to leave. I do not fulfill my own orders so when I order the item there is ussualy a large discrepancy? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
The UPS Shipping Module pulls the list rates from UPS and these can be quite high. You can use the ‘Handling Fee’ field to adjust these rates down by entering a negative number. Another options is the UPS XML which will pull your discounted rates from UPS. However, this module has not been updated in a very long time.
There are other shipping modules that are weight based, so you are not tied to using UPS if that is the only reason.
Where can I use the UPS account number and Access key in the zencart site? I have installed UPS module and the UPS prices listed in the available shipping methods. But I did not integrate my UPS account details in my zencart site
This UPS Shipping module does not use your account rates. It uses the UPS published rates.
Thanks Jim
How the UPS module calculate what warehouse the product is shipping from and calculate actual freight from that warehouse to the customer. How to setup multiple from addresses in UPS module
This module does now allow for any of those options. Please contact us for a custom solution, http://www.wheatonwebsiteservices.com/index.php?main_page=contact_us
I am using Zen Cart version 1.3.9h and the UPS module is giving me rates that are 30% lower than UPS rates I calculated at UPS.com. I have reviewed all of the settings for the UPS module and for Shipping in the Admin section, and they appear to be correct, but I still get these low rates from the Zen Cart UPS module.
Please contact us at http://www.wheatonwebsiteservices.com/index.php?main_page=contact_us for assistance. We are not able to provide support here.
I believe the discounted UPS rates I receive from the Zen Cart shipping module are related to the PayPal payments module that I also use in Zen Cart. I say this because the Zen Cart shipping module UPS rates for residential ground service delivery are exactly the same rates I get when I have eBay calculate UPS shipping for the same products. I use PayPal on eBay, as well. It appears that the Zen Cart shipping module is accessing PayPal rates. At least, that is the best explanation I can come up with based on my experiments.
This UPS shipping module does not use your UPS negotiated rates. It uses the UPS published rates.
Does the updated UPS Module for ZenCart version 1.5.5 still use the UPS published rates to calculate shipping costs? I am currently using v 1.3.9.
Yes, this is still the function of the UPS Shipping module. If you need something different, please contact us.