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. UPS Shipping Options 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.