The shopping cart page can display a Shipping & Tax Estimator, giving customers an idea what their final order total will be. The estimator will show the price with the cheapest shipping method, though customers can still choose a different method during checkout if desired. This will work with fixed rates or realtime rates.
For anonymous customers, the user would have to need to select Country and or City, State, and Postal Code. The lowest cost shipping rates will be presented as the estimated shipping rates. Postal Code field is required if Real-time shipping is the Shipping Method configured on the site.
Scope
Shipping and Tax Estimator supports the following:
- All Product types including Gift Card Products, Free Shipping Products and No Shipping Required Products
- Coupon and Gift Card Discounts
- Customer Level Discounts and settings
- Order Options
- VAT Exclusive and VAT Inclusive
- All Shipping Calculation Types including Real-time shipping and all appconfig parameters involve to shipping
Limitations
Shipping and Tax Estimator does not support the following:
- Multishipping Checkout estimates
- Google Checkout estimates
- TaxCalcMode appconfig
- Phone Order Entry
Setup
To enable the feature:
1 - Set up your shipping rates.
2 - Set up your tax rates.
3 - Set the ShowShippingAndTaxEstimate AppConfig to true.
Display
Customers who are already registered and logged in will see the estimates as soon as they load the shopping cart page:
Unregistered customers or customers who just haven't signed in yet will see the text below:
If they click the 'Get Estimates' button, the form below will show and they can fill in the fields to request an estimate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How does Shipping and Tax Estimator works?, Does Shipping and Tax Estimator support both for Anonymous and Registered Users?
A:To enable the Shipping and tax estimator control set appconfig ShowShippingAndTaxEstimate true. This feature allows your customers to be presented with an estimate of their shipping and tax costs from the cart and before going through checkout. They need to select the country and / or state/ or zip /or city where they are purchasing from and they will be presented with the cheapest shipping method available depending on the information you have set up for shipping choices in the admin. Yes it support register and not register user.
Q:Will the inclusive and exclusive in VAT.Enabled work the same?
A:Yes it will work the same, if you use inclusive it will automatically include the tax in shipping method otherwise in exclusive. But for a user that is not registered, the tax is always excluded.
Q:Can I just select the country and leave the other address blank?
A:Yes if you’re not using the Calculate Shipping By Weight & Zone and Calculate Shipping By Total & Zone shipping Method, otherwise it will require you to enter a zip code. The shipping and Tax estimator will be more accurate if all the address information is complete.
NOTE: There is a bug in older versions of the cart (9.3.0.0 and older) where using the tool anonymously creates partial address records on the customer account if they create an account during that session. If they also continue adding products to the cart before creating an account, an error with Multi-Ship can occur if the store does not allow multi-ship or the Gift Registry (enables multi-ship).