Using the Australia Post Plug for Accurate Shipping Quotes
If you are selling through a WooCommerce online store your customers will expect to see accurate shipping costs before they pay at the checkout.
If you are an Australian business, the Australia Post shipping calculator is a great way to offer your customers real time shipping quotes. It benefits you (the store owner) because the shipping costs calculated during checkout should closely match what Australia Post will charge you when you actually ship via Australia Post.
This means that you don’t have to average out or estimate shipping costs, because they are calculated automatically during checkout.
Setting Up The Plugin
For the plugin to work correctly, you need to enter the weight and dimensions of all of your products.
The shipping cost calculated automatically from Australia Post lookup based on height/width/length and weight of products in your customer’s cart and shipping origin/destination.
This plugin requires that your store uses Australian Dollars (AUD) as its operating currency and that your store’s base country is Australia.
Configuring Box Packing
By default, the plugin will assume one parcel per product, however you can configure the Box-Packing feature so that multiple products are ‘packed’ into boxes before shipping costs are calculated.
To use Box-Packing you need to set up your standard box sizes, configuring the internal and external dimensions of the boxes you will be using. The Australia Post plugin will compare the dimensions of your products against the internal-dimensions of your standard boxes and try to fit them efficiently. You may sometimes notice the plugin can’t do the box packing as accurately as a human – don’t hold your breath waiting for this to improve, it is a very complex problem for software to solve, and doing what the human brain does is a long way off.
The Australia Post shipping calculator works best when it is your only shipping plugin. Things get complicated if you combine it with other shipping plugins. Even if you don’t ship all your products using Australia Post, you may find the plugin does a good job of quoting prices for you in real time.
Using Australia Post Satchels
The plugin knows about Australia Post satchel rates, which are a tick the box option during configuration.
The Australia Post satchels work well with simple products. Some of our clients have reported unexpected results, particularly with larger/lighter products. The plugin only uses width and height for satchels.
Getting More Information
If you think that the Australia Post plugin sounds like it might meet your requirements you can read an overview at Australia Post Shipping Method.
If you are technically inclined you can review the plugin documentation at WooCommerce Australia Post Documentation. As you’ll see from this page, the installation is pretty straight forward.