REC & REC+

Set Delivery Services To Ship To Anywhere In The World

You can set up an unlimited number of delivery services to ship to as many countries, or regions within countries, as you need. Courier companies typically charge by geographic areas which may be smaller than a whole country or include several countries. The system handles this using Regions and Zones. You can also set up which countries are within your tax jurisdiction to ensure you charge tax correctly. 

The system will only show delivery services which ship to the customer's region and country plus you can restrict which payment types are displayed in the same way. For example, if you trade from the UK and ship to Russia, then it will only show shipping methods that go to Russia plus you may decide to only show a BACS payment method rather than credit card to ensure you get the cash. 

The system uses the region and country fields entered during registration to work out where a person is from for delivery, taxation and payment processing purposes. 

Countries & Regions Explained

It is necessary to differentiate between Countries and Regions in the system. A country is the UK for example, a region defines an area within a country, such as counties (or States in the US), islands or remote areas. For example, in the UK couriers often charge the same rate for most counties across the UK but exclude the Scottish Highlands which has it's own rate, plus another for Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, or even Cornwall or London. The system therefore lets you set up regions down to the county level if needed, otherwise you will use the "DEFAULT" country setting such as UK, France, Germany and so on. 

To save you time, we have added in all recognised countries (although new countries may be formed over time of course!) plus the counties or states for the UK, US and some other European countries. You will see we use the term Country in tables, with the word DEFAULT in the Region. This shows there is only one courier charge for that country which applies to all it's regions.

Setting Up Your Own Country / Missing DEFAULT Regions

If you are setting up your own country with regions below it, then also remember to add a DEFAULT region as well. You can see any missing regions in Despatch & Delivery Manager > View Delivery Regions. 

Delivery Zones - A collection Of Countries / Regions With The Same Delivery Charge

A zone is a group of regions which have the same delivery charge set by the courier. So for example you might have a zone called UK Mainland which covers all of the counties (i.e. regions) of England, Wales and Scotland, except for the Scottish Highlands region or any of the UK islands such as the Isle of Man, Scilly Isles and so on. These regions outside of the UK Mainland zone might then be grouped into their own zone called Highlands & Islands if they have the same courier rate.

Similarly, you may have a group of countries e.g. France, Germany, Luxembourg etc which have the same courier rate and so these might form a zone called Western Europe for example. You may then have another zone for countries in Central Europe, another for countries in Eastern Europe, ditto for North America, South America etc. Everything outside of that might be classed in a zone called "Rest Of World" if it is the same courier rate.

Tax / VAT Zones

You can determine which countries fall inside your country's tax jurisdiction and are therefore liable to have tax or VAT charged on them. For example, in the EU you will normally have to charge tax if selling to other EU countries. You therefore flag these as being in your Tax Zone. All other countries would be flagged to be outside of your tax zone and no tax would be charged.

A Note About Tax Exemptions (including EU Businesses)

In some circumstances customers might be exempt from paying tax even if they're within your tax jurisdiction. For example, businesses in one EU country are exempt from paying tax when buying from another EU country. In that case you can either set them up in a Tax Exempt customer group after they have registered, at which pint no tax will be charged. Alternatively you could set up a new country suffixed as being for business users and exclude that from your tax jurisdiction. For example, you could have "Denmark" set up as a country within your tax zone with a DEFAULT region, then another called "Denmark" with a region called "Registered Business" which is exempt from tax. Businesses can then use the latter and be tax exempt. remember though, you need to check they have a valid VAT number otherwise you will be liable for the VAT!

A Note About Economic Nexus Rules (United States)

Economic Nexus legislation introduced from 1st January 2019 determines whether tax has to be collected for out-of-state sales based on individual criteria set by each state. For example, if you are based in Florida and sell to customers in Florida you collect the Florida tax due. If you sold to someone in another state before the new legislation you would not have collected any tax at all. With the new rules, if you sell to people outside of your state then you will need to collect the tax for that state if you have reached their economic nexus tests which vary from state to state. The tax percentage is set by each state which you can enter in the delivery region. Because of changing legislation and different rules being adopted by different states, for full compliance please contact us about Taxjar integration.  External Articles: Sales Tax Support,  The Balance, Taxjar Guide To State Nexus Rules.

Delivery Services

You can set different delivery services based on the weight, value or quantity of the products in the basket, with delivery charges calculated based on "Service Bands". For example, you may have a service called "Royal Mail First Class" and the first band might be up to 10kg at £4.95, the second band is up to 20kg at £7.95 and so on. The combined weight of the products in the basket would determine which band they fall into and it's corresponding delivery charge.

Delivery Surcharges & Free Delivery

You can set up delivery surcharges on delivery services you specify. For example, you could set up a delivery service called "Super Express Delivery" where you add a 10% uplift to the overall order value. You can also set an uplift value on a specific category. For example if you had a category selling frozen products which has a higher charge because it uses a refrigerated van for delivery, then you can enter say £4.95 as an extra delivery charge added to the overall delivery total.

In addition, via Products Manager you can enter a delivery surcharge to individual products as well as being able to mark the product as being free delivery, with the ability to select a specific zone to which free delivery would apply. You can also change your Site Settings to allow free delivery across all products based on order value, user group or delivery zone.

Giving Free Delivery  Using Coupons

You can grant free delivery to user groups or individual users by setting up a coupon and ticking the field "do you want this coupon to trigger Free Delivery?" and auto-applying it on checkout (enable auto-appy in SIte Settings > Delivery). You can also set specific delivery zones. 

Setting up Click & Collect (Free delivery, customer collects)

Set up a new service called Click & Collect which is value-based. Set the value of the first band to 999999 with a cost of zero. Having such a high value means the delivery charge will always be zero.

Alternative Delivery Calculation - Courier Calculated Charges

Instead of the in-built delivery charge system, you can use prices calculated directly by couriers. Currently this includes UPS, and shipping integrators such as ShippyPro. Read here on setting up UPS integration. 

Exporting Order Data In Courier-specific Formats
Some courier services require order information to be uploaded to their service in particular formats, typically CSV format with certain fields and populated in a specific way. In Order Manager you can select either a default CSV or courier specific formats on a per order basis or batched together and created inside a zip file that you can unpack to get to each CSV.

Setting It Up

1. Via Delivery Zone Manager, set up the zones you wish to ship to where the same courier charges apply.
2. Via Despatch & Delivery Manager, Add or View/Edit Delivery Regions. Select which Delivery Zone the region fits in and tick whether it is taxable or not.
3. Via Add A New Delivery Service set up your specific delivery services (including % or value uplifts, shipping days, Default order export format for couriers) and then edit it via View Delivery Service to set up your Service Bands.
   
   Note: For courier order exports the weight measurement used is taken from Site Definitions > WEIGHT_MEASUREMENT and this is converted as needed into the measurement needed by the courier (e.g. if you enter weights in 'g' (grams) and the courier needs 'kg' then the weight will be converted into the CSV file as kg's).
   
   Testing a delivery service
   You can set Mode selection to 'test' allowing admins to view / test it before setting it to 'live'.
   
   
4. In "Service Bands" the "Band" field records he cumulative weight/value/quantity for the band, the "Zone" relates to the delivery zone it is for and the Cost is the delivery charge
   IMPORTANT: The delivery charge always includes the tax amount; the system will strip this out where necessary based on current tax rules.
5. Keep adding as many service bands as you need to cover your different delivery zones and weights/quantities/sales values
6. Continue to set up as many services as you need to cover your geographic market. For example you might have Recorded Delivery, First Class Post, Air Mail etc. Only the relevant ones will appear during the checkout process where the customer's address (i.e. region) fits within that delivery zone.
7. Edit your Site Settings > Delivery options to allow free delivery overrides by order value (e.g. free delivery on orders over £200), user group (e.g. free delivery to "trade" group customers) or delivery zone (e.g. free delivery to UK customers)
8. Via Products Manager, set free delivery / surcharge options as required
9. Via Payment Processor Manager select which zones this payment method will be shown to e.g. Sagepay might only show to UK, Paypal for everyone.
10. Thoroughly test your rates work for your different basket sizes, geographic markets and in accordance with your site settings and individual product overrides.

Selecting Courier Export Formats For Orders (Licence upgrade required)

In Order Manager, on an individual order select the courier export method required.Alternatively you can batch print a number of ticked orders into a zip file using the Batch Print facility at the bottom of the list of Orders in Order Manager. 

Changing Delivery Region Data Via Export / Import

To save time, you can export, change as required and then re-import your delivery region data via Export Manager and Import System. Note they are TXT files and need to be saved in the same way. You can always export/change then re-import a single line for just one region (a lesser used one is best) to make sure it's ok before doing the full list.

Collecting Customer Order Tax Reference For Customs

Some regions may require collection of a Customer Order Tax Reference or ID number for delivery (e.g. a "CPF Number" in Brazil). Using this new setting you can collect this info against each order from the buyer during checkout. To change go to Admin > Delivery Manager > View Delivery Regions > Edit Delivery Region -> "Require Customer Order Tax Reference at Checkout?" & "Display Customer Order Tax Reference as:"

(If needed, you can change the Customer Order Tax Reference default text via Site Definitions: VAT_NUMBER & VAT_NUMBER_INFO_LINE)

UK County Mapping With Paypal

We hold a list of automatic mapping for UK counties (regions) held in Paypal as they can differ to what is in REC+:

Setting Up Economic Nexus Rules

1. Economic Nexus region rules can be enabled in: Site Settings > Prices & VAT > VAT Rates "Use region based VAT rates?" 
2. Go to Delivery Manager > View Delivery Region > find the region to change > Edit 
3. Tick " Is this region within your VAT-able zone?" 
4. Set the tax rate for the region in "Override VAT Rates?" > VAT Rate field NB This currently calculates whether to use Billing or Delivery address based on the setting in "Calculate VAT based on Delivery Address rather than Billing Address". 
5. If you wish to apply a mix of Nexus rules using delivery AND billing addresses, please contact us as this will require integration into Taxjar.

Setting Up Regions For EU IOSS VAT Calculations

On 1st July 2021 the EU introduced rules for UK sellers to optionally collect VAT from an EU consumer using the VAT rates prevalent in their member state.  Read more and how to set this up here.

Delivery Issues / Conflict Report

There are a set of 7 tools which you can run to check your delivery is set up without any issues. Read more here.

Checkout Buying Rules (Advanced Buying Rules)

You can set up custom buying rules which are applied at Checkout to prevent customers from proceeding if they match the buying rule and which display different types of messages set by you. These can impact your delivery services.

Example 1, if you sell flammable products which can only be shipped by ground (i.e. only to countries or regions accessible by lorry), you can set up a rule to apply this restriction based on delivery regions and when the buyer is at checkout they are prevented from competing the transaction.  

Example 2, you can limit the minimum and maximum quantities of a product that can be sold at checkout. This may be helpful if there is excessive courier pricing on products over a certain weight or size and you want to offer a lower price based on lower quantities.

Example 3, you can limit which regions a product can be shipped to due to legal requirements or trade restrictions which affect certain countries and not others.

Read this in detail here

Showing Delivery Information On The Checkout Page

You can set delivery content to appear in different places on the checkout page. 

For more information open this article and scroll halfway down to the checkout layout images.