Question How to - variable freight charges

[samgold]

Hello,

For our wholesale customers, we allow them to select the product they want, and then quote them the freight based on number of pallets, destination zip, carrier discounts etc. This part is manual since prices vary substantially from carrier to carrrier.

So far we do all this manually.

I was trying to do this in Miva - so that
a) Customer chooses items and puts them in a wish list
b) We look at the wish list and add a product Freight - which has a variable price
c) Customer proceeds with order with saved wish list.

May be my approach and idea are not the best.

If I wanted to add a product or service with a variable price to a customers basket - how would I do it?

I purchased module external product purchase to try and see if that would work - but it behaves differently.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks
Sam

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Question How to - variable freight charges

How to they pay? If they are not remitting payment through the web site, just have them complete the order with the selected items. Calculate the shipping cost and then use the Order Processing features in the admin to add the shipping cost. Afterwards, re-send the Order Confirmation email with the actual shipping costs.

If you want to be fancy, you could flag the order with a custom order field (lets say you put a checkbox after shipping that says something like "Calculate Actual Shipping for Me". If that option is checked, by pass the initial order confirmation and also use that flag to possible re-word the 'Order Confirmation' wording on the invoice page.

[samgold]

Re: Question How to - variable freight charges

Good points Bruce. I am trying to figure out a workflow.

This is what I am trying
a) Customer logs in (to get their prices)
b) Customer puts the stuff they want into their Basket
c) They SAVE THE BASKET - which is basically they save it to a WISHLIST
d) Question - How do we access the WISHLIST?
e) We can call them up and say Freight will be X
f) If they agree - CAN we access a wishlist inside admin and convert it into an order?
g) If we can access the wishlist and convert it into an order, we can add the freight charges, CC charges etc. manually

Also - if they pay with a purchase order, they normally fax this to us. Is it possible to create a custom field or something where we can upload the PO into their order record through admin?

I am afraid of allowing external people to upload stuff, because that would be a vulnerability that I have to worry about.

Thanks
Sam

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Question How to - variable freight charges

What I was proposing was that they basically place an order first. (I don't think there is an easy way to interact with the wish list--at least not as easy as an order.)

Here's the flow I was thinking of (and a change in how to do it from previous post) :

Customer Logs in
Customer chooses products
On the Shipping page, they choose a flat rate shipping module option called "Calculate Shipping" (This option would only be available to that Price Group).
For payment, you might need to use either a modified Check payment module or just the COD module renamed
Once the order is placed, you calculate shipping charge and send them an email to confirm.