This document describes how shipping works in the Shipping Edition of MultiMerch.
OpenCart shipping methods and/or any third-party shipping modules are not needed for product shipping via MultiMerch. In fact, they are unlikely to work with the Shipping Edition because of the multi-seller nature of the extension. For that reason shipping in the extension is simplified and integrated with seller accounts.
Basic workflow of the shipping in MultiMerch SE:
*Administrator/Marketplace owner defines which shipping methods will be available for sellers in the Admin -> MultiMerch -> Shipping Methods. These shipping methods will be provided to sellers to choose from. Any shipping method names can be defined here, for example – “FedEx”, “UPS”, “Royal Mail”, “DHL”, if you want to be specific. Or for example – “Local Shipping Provider”, “Overnight Express Delivery”, “Courier Service”, if you would like to provide only generic names to have a global marketplace. In that case sellers will specify shipping providers in the comments. Name and description fields are multi-language fields.
*Administrator/Marketplace owner defines the Geo Zones, to which sellers will be able to ship their products to: Admin -> System -> Localisation -> Geo Zones. Basically, you can define whatever locations you would like to use here, like: Worldwide, European Union, North America, United Kingdom, Chile, Canada and even particular counties/regions. This list will be provided to sellers to choose from.
*Sellers select whether they will be providing shipping costs for every product separately or provide weight-dependent combined shipping for all of their products. This is done on the “Shipping Settings” page of the seller account area in the frontend.
*In case of fixed product shipping, sellers define shipping methods and costs for every product when creating or editing it. In case of combined shipping costs, they have to be defined just once for all the shipping methods sellers want to use and all the destination Geo Zones they want to ship products to. After that, only product weights have to be defined for all the products for shipping to work properly. This is done in the Shipping tab of the product form.
*Customers can estimate shipping costs on the product page. They are also seen during the step 4 of the checkout – shipping method selection.
*When an order is processed, shipping cost is added to the seller balance. Seller in turn receives customer shipping address in the order confirmation e-mail. Customer address can also be seen in the orders list page of the seller account area. On the same page seller can mark product(s) as shipped and add a tracking number, which will be sent to customer via e-mail.
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