How to set up and use Zone Skipping [Guide]

When shipping, you might want to skip zones to optimize logistics and increase profit.

When Zone Skipping, you can either skip zones within your country's borders, or zone skip across the border to another country. 

While logistically speaking this means you will handle shipping from the Induction Point A to the Induction Point B by yourself to then handle the shipment to a Carrier from the latter, there are several ways to approach the setup and requirements for each one of them, depending on your strategy.

NOTE: This article details how to Zone Skip without using Techdinamics Airskip. 
If you are using Airskip to Zone Skip, refer to this article instead: How to use and set up AirSkip with techShip [Step-by-Step Guide].

This article describes the 3 most used approaches for Zone Skipping setup:

If you wish to set up zone skipping for local orders, all you need to do is change the ship from address of the Billing Accounts of your Client. The new address should be the one where the carrier will pick up the shipments, instead of your original induction point.

To change the address of the billing accounts, follow the instructions of this article: Change the Ship From address with "Override sender address" [Step-by-Step guide]

If you wish to set up zone skipping for international orders, you will need to change the ship from address of the Billing Accounts of your Client just as in local, but take into account that doing the paperwork to get the shipment across the border must be done by you manually. 

The new address should be the one where the carrier will pick up the shipments, instead of your original induction point.

To change the address of the billing accounts, follow the instructions of this article: Change the Ship From address with "Override sender address" [Step-by-Step guide]

This approach is the most technical of them. 

It would first require you to change the ship from address as described above for local or international zone skipping (preparing the paperwork for international manually as well) depending on the case, and secondly, define which services should be taken into account for different zones when Rate Shopping.

For example, if you are Zone Skipping from Florida to California or from Toronto to Calgary, you can choose which services should be taken (or not) into account for different groups of States or Postal Codes, and if you are Zone Skipping internationally, that extends also for different countries.

Summarizing, you will have to:

1. Change the address of the billing accounts, follow the instructions of this article: Change the Ship From address with "Override sender address" [Step-by-Step guide]

2. Define the rules to have techShip consider the services you're interested to include or exclude depending on your needs following the instructions of this article: How to use advanced Service Codes Rate Shopping restrictions [Guide]

Once done, you can begin shipping handling the orders on your warehouse and shipping them to the new induction point for pickup.