Advanced Restrictions: Rate Shopping Groups [Step-by-Step Guide]

Modified on Thu, 11 Jul at 1:58 PM

When setting up advanced restrictions, you might need to set up restrictions based on Rate Shopping Groups assigned to the order.

Rate Shopping Groups serve the purpose of classifying orders under specific sub-groups, under which several service levels could be included.

If your order is assigned from your customer as "Free Shipping" or "Expedited", it is possible that under those sub-groups, Free Shipping can consider several cheap services, while Expedited can consider several others of better performance at a higher cost.

Rate Shopping Group logic can be combined with any other advanced restriction, for example, Rate Shopping Ground or 2 Day when "Free Shipping" is received, but Ground when the order weight is over a threshold, but 2 Day when it's below it.

The level of complexity includes:

Order with different custom Rate Shopping Groups
Combination with any other criteria

If you are going to use just one value as part of the condition, use the Equals or Not Equals operator.

If you are going to use more than one value, use the In or Not In operator, separating options with commas.

WARNING: If there are services you want to include/exclude regardless of the conditions, you will need to add them to the list with the condition set to Always.
- If the Mode is "Allow orders" these services will be used (Build a list of inclusions)
- If the Mode is "Deny orders" these services will NOT be used (Build a list of exclusions)

WARNING: If the service selected is ALL (which considers every service available altogether), the condition logic applies BEFORE the carrier is reached; otherwise the logic applies AFTER the carrier has been reached and rates received.

These are a few possible scenarios:

#1 - Rate shop different services under the categories "Free Shipping", "Express", and "Premium":

#2 - Rate shop different services under the categories "Free Shipping", "Express", and "Premium", but Free Shipping should go Express when a specific SKU is part of the order, while Ground for all other: