How to Configure Table Rate Shipping Method in Magento 2

Shipping in E-commerce influences the purchase decision of a consumer. Your shipping strategy must be in place if you do not want to lose a conversion because of miscalculations in shipping rates.

A convenient shipping experience is essential amidst the rising customer expectations and competition in online stores.

According to research by Baymard, 49% of US shoppers abandoned their cart due to too high extra costs such as shipping.

Now, if your shipping rates calculation goes wrong, you may lose sales. However, if you are a Magento 2 store owner, you need not worry as the default Magento offers table rates shipping method.

You may configure table rate shipping method in Magento 2 and display the shipping rates in the frontend.

The table rate shipping method in Magento 2 refers to a table of data to calculate shipping rates based on a combination of conditions like:

• Weight v. Destination
• Price v. Destination
• Number of Items v. Destination

Using this method, you can optimize the shipping system such that it costs the minimum to deliver an item from the warehouse to its destination. The store owner can transparently pass on these savings to the customers with the help of Magento 2 table rates.

Steps to Configure Shipping Table Rates in Magento 2:

Step 1: Complete the default settings

1. Login to admin panel
2. Navigate to Stores > Configuration
3. Select Shipping Methods under Sales
4. Expand the “Table Rates” section
   1. Enabled – Enable or disable the table rate shipping method from the checkout page
   2. Title – Set custom title for the shipping method
   3. Method Name – Set custom method name to be displayed next to the calculated rate in the cart
   4. Set Condition to one of the following calculation methods:
      1. Weight vs. Destination
      2. Price vs. Destination
      3. # of Items vs. Destination
   5. Include Virtual Products in Price Calculation – Set this option to “Yes” if you want to  be able to include the virtual product(s) in the calculation for orders that include virtual products.
   6. If charging a handling fee, set Calculate Handling Fee to one of the following
      1. Fixed
      2. Percent
   7. Enter the Handling Fee rate according to the method used to calculate the fee
   8. Displayed Error Message – Enter the message that appears when a method is not available
   9. Ship to Applicable Countries – Select the countries allowed to use this method
   10. Show Method if not Applicable – Enable or Disable this option if you want to show or not the method when not applicable.
   11. Sort Order – Enter the sort order
5. Save the configuration
6. Flush cache and refresh

Step 2: Prepare the Table Rate Data

1. Navigate to Stores > Configuration
2. Select Shipping Methods under Sales
3. Set Store View to Main Website, or to any other website where the configuration applies on the top-left of the page. Click “ok” when prompted to confirm.
4. Set the required “Condition”.
5. Click Export CSV and save the tablerates.csv file on your computer.
6. Open the file and complete the table with appropriate parameters for the shipping calculation condition
   
   1. Use of asterisk (*) as a wildcard to represent all possible values in any category
   2. Make sure that the country column contains a valid three-character code for every row.
   3. Sort the data by Region/State so the particular locations are at the top of the list, and the wildcard locations at the bottom. This will process the rules with the absolute values first, and the wildcard values later.
   4. Save the tablerates.csv file

Step 3: Import the Table Rate Data

1. Navigate to Stores > Configuration
2. Select Shipping Methods under Sales
3. Set Store View to Main Website, or to any other website where the configuration applies on the top-left of the page. Click “ok” when prompted to confirm
4. As shown in the above image, click Choose File and select your completed table-rates.csv file for import in the Import field.
5. Save the configuration
6. Flush and refresh the cache.

That’s it. Now. if the customer places an order from the frontend, they can see the shipping table rates applied as set using the CSV.

However, with default Magento 2 table rates, you cannot define shipping table rates based on multiple factors and it is limited to as shown in the above default CSV.

However, with complex modern Magento 2 stores and various shipping strategies in place, you may need an advanced Magento table rates system.

Meetanshi offers the Magento 2 Shipping Table Rates extension that allows calculating accurate shipping rates based on shipping destination, product weight, price, Percentage per Product Price, Fixed Rate Per Product Price, Fixed Rate Per Unit of Weight, and quantity prior to defining shipping rates through the CSV file.

The admin can also display the estimated delivery days by adding it in CSV.

The Magento Shipping Table Rates extension offers key features like:

• Unlimited number of custom shipping methods
• Create table rates in bulk using CSV
• Show the calculated shipping table rate on the frontend in cart page, checkout page, “My Accounts” section, and order view backend
• Assign min/max rates to apply shipping charge to the whole order having multiple products
• Restrict shipping methods based on store views and customer groups

and many more.

You may check the entire range of features here.

Any doubts about the Magento 2 multiple table rates?

If so, please mention them in the Comments section below. I’d be happy to help you with Magento 2 shipping methods table rates.

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Thanks.