Hello @robersw
Thank you for the suggestion – this is absolutely being considered as we look at redesigning how the Custom Packages work in Shipping Zones. Unfortunately, we do not have a timeframe for when this update will be available quiet yet.
We’ll keep this thread open and once this update is live, or if we have opted not to do this, we will reply back here and let you know of it’s availability.
Hello @robersw
We wanted to let you know that we have published an update to the plugin which adds Custom Package Presets for USPS, UPS, and FedEx to choose from. We’ll keep this thread open a bit longer in case you run into any issues or have any questions!
Thank you for the update! We tested the new plugin today and can see the custom package presets – that’s a great addition. However, they currently require item dimensions for the system to select a package, which isn’t quite what we need.
Our goal was to have the various USPS Flat Rate options available as selectable shipping services (e.g., Small Flat Rate Box, Medium Flat Rate Box, Large Flat Rate Box, Flat Rate Envelope, etc.). We would then assign our own pricing to these – for example, setting our “USPS Priority Mail” service to use the Small Flat Rate Box rate plus our handling adjustment.
From the customer’s perspective, they would simply see our custom service name (e.g., “USPS Priority Mail”) with our adjusted price, while behind the scenes the plugin uses the appropriate USPS Flat Rate option to calculate the base rate.
Does that make sense? Essentially, we’re looking to offer Flat Rate shipping methods under our own branded service names, rather than having the package selection tied to item dimensions.
Let me know if you need any clarification!
Hello @robersw
Per your description, it sounds like you’re not looking to use ShipStation for shipping estimates and want to define your own flat rate pricing. This plugin is meant to work exclusively with ShipStation to retrieve shipping estimates based on their provided services. You can rename services, add upcharges to services, and add upcharges to the boxes as well. There are also options to ship specifically based on weight to skip dimensions.
WooCommerce does have hooks to manage the package rates before they are displayed to the user if you are development savvy. You may be able to use the woocommerce_package_rates filter hook to modify the returned rates. We also have included in this update hooks to manage the API package requests before they are sent to ShipStation via iqlrss/shipping/packages . This passes both the packed items from plugin and the cart packages to loop through and repackage for custom usecases (such as this sounds to be).
As an alternative, could you create various Flat Rate shipping options for your Shipping Zones? The base ShipStation for WooCommerce plugin would continue to export your Orders to ShipStation (if you still need ShipStation integration).
Correction — we are using USPS Priority Mail rates and manually select the most suitable USPS-provided packaging for each order based on its contents.
