Creating smart shipping rules

Shipping rules can help you process your orders faster. If you haven't set any shipping rules, ChannelDock (when processing your orders in bulk) chooses the cheapest possible shipping option for each order. Perhaps you have a different preference and an order should not be assigned the cheapest possible shipping option, but rather a more expensive option (for an express shipment, for example). This article tells you how to set up shipping rules to process your orders faster.

Creating a new dispatch rule

1. From the menu bar, go to 'Settings > Shipping rules'.
2. In the top left corner, click the green '+ New shipping rule' button.
3. A popup opens to set a new shipping rule.

Setting a shipping rule

• Shipping rule name: here you enter the name of your shipping rule so that it can be easily recognised later. In our example, we create a shipping rule for orders to Belgium.
• Shipping rule priority: dit is de prioriteit van je verzendregels. Je kan meerdere verzendregels aanmaken in ChannelDock en de prioriteit bepaalt of de ene verzendregel belangrijker is dan de andere.

• Requirements: these are the conditions the orders must meet to be covered by this shipping rule. You can base these conditions on different order properties:

  - Channel: the sales channel the order must come from.

  - EAN: the EAN of the product the order must contain.

  - Number of line items: the product quantity within an order.

  - To country: the destination country of an order.

  - Weight (kg): the total weight of an order.

  - Reference: the product reference of a product within the order

  - SKU: the SKU of a product within the order
  Met de knop '+ Add extra requirement' kan je meerdere voorwaarden instellen die van toepassing zijn op deze verzendregel. Zo kan je bijvoorbeeld instellen dat als een order van je Belgische bol.com account afkomt en meer dan 2 producten bevat, de verzendmethode MyParcel pakket moet worden gekozen.

• Actions: here you specify which shipping method the order should receive if it meets the 'Requirements' you have set. Tip: via 'Connections > Carriers' you can also create a custom shipping method. These custom shipping methods can be set as an 'Action' for your shipping rule. This can be useful if you want to group certain orders to be able to quickly export from ChannelDock, for example.

Activating a dispatch rule

After creating a shipping rule, you need to activate it by flicking the switch as shown in the image above. From then on, the dispatch rule is applied to orders being loaded. Orders that have already been loaded by ChannelDock need to be opened (by clicking the order rule). At that point, the correct shipping method will be recalculated.