CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysql
Kneel-Before-ZOD
Kneel-Before-ZOD

Reputation: 4221

Logic for Shipping Rates and Taxes for an e-commerce site

I'm taxed with developing a custom e-commerce application for my company (using PHP/MySQL). The problem I'm facing is that I can't seem to understand how most sites out there calculate their shipping rates.
I've checked out OsCommerce cart, Opencart, etc. I even purchased an item on Amazon to see if I could understand the logic behind the shipping rates, but I couldn't on all those 3 applications.
What's the actual problem I face? Do I calculate the shipping
1) By flat rate or by weight? Since our company plans to license the framework to other companies who have shown interests in it, the products each site sell will be different; thus, different weights and sizes. Think of it as a minuscule version of Amazon.
2) By destination location? Obviously, a customer purchasing an item 50 miles away wouldn't pay the same rate as someone 500 miles away.
3) By any other ways I might have missed?
If it'll help, we plan to use only shipping companies with tracking numbers, so our choice of shipping companies are narrowed down.
If there's an article out to simplify my problem, I'll be happy to read it.
We are developing it from scratch, so we aren't using any pre-existing framework

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1644

Answers (1)

Barry Chapman
Barry Chapman

Reputation: 6780

Like I stated earlier, if you use a major gateway for processing payments (Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, PayPal) they will supply ways to calculate the postage associated with an item.

Read this link as an example: http://code.google.com/apis/checkout/developer/Google_Checkout_XML_API_Carrier_Calculated_Shipping.html

Upvotes: 2

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