Checkout Options
Shipping Checkout Options
Overview
The Shipping Checkout Options feature in UltraCart provides granular control over the behavior and presentation of shipping-related elements during the customer checkout process. By fine-tuning these settings, you can enhance the customer experience by offering flexibility, managing address validation, and clearly communicating shipping costs and delivery expectations.
Purpose
This configuration area allows you to:
Offer Customer-Selected Delivery: Enable customers to choose their preferred delivery date.
Manage Address Types: Control which address fields are required and how different address types (e.g., residential vs. commercial) are handled.
Control Estimate Display: Determine when and how shipping cost estimates are shown to the customer.
By optimizing these options, you ensure a smoother checkout flow that meets both your logistical needs and customer expectations.
Navigation
To access the Shipping Checkout Options:
Navigate
Main Menu > Configuration > Checkout > Shipping > Checkout Options
Configuration Options
Below are the six categories that make up the Shipping Checkout Options:
Category | Description | Primary Function |
Customer Delivery Preferences | Manages options that empower the customer to control delivery timing and instructions. | Enables features like customer-selected delivery dates and special delivery notes. |
Shipping Address Behavior | Controls the validation, display, and required nature of shipping address fields. | Defines accepted address formats (e.g., residential vs. commercial) and validation rules. |
Shipping Estimates & Method Visibility | Determines when shipping cost estimates appear and which shipping methods are visible to the customer. | Controls the display of estimated shipping costs and logic for hiding or showing specific carriers/methods. |
Fulfillment Behavior | Governs how the shipping process interacts with your fulfillment system and warehouse logic. | Manages order split rules and fulfillment-related data passed to third-party logistics. |
Cost & Risk Behavior | Deals with the financial aspects of shipping, including insurance, handling, and risk assessment. | Configures automatic shipping insurance and surcharge rules based on cost or value. |
Automatic Geo Location | Manages the system's ability to automatically determine a customer's location for immediate tax and shipping estimates. | Enables IP-based location detection to provide early, accurate tax and shipping calculations. |
Customer Delivery Preferences
Allow customer to select ship date | Enable this feature to allow customers to specify a desired ship date during checkout. |
Allow customer to select delivery date | Enable this feature to allow customers to specify a desired delivery date during checkout. UltraCart will check if the chosen shipping method can meet this date and notify the customer if it cannot. |
Shipping Address Behavior
Default Shipping to Residential Address | If you provide customers with the option to specify if their shipping address is residential or business, enabling this feature will set the default selection to Residential Address. Customers can still change it to Business if applicable. |
Force Shipping to Residential Address | Enable this feature to remove the option for customers to select "Business Address" during checkout. This is useful for merchants who prefer not to ship to business addresses due to potential additional costs. |
Use this carrier: FedEx to determine residential address flag | UltraCart will check with the specified carrier to determine if the address is residential instead of trusting what the customer selects during the checkout. |
Loose P.O. Box restriction check (default is strict) | By default, UltraCart's strict PO Box check looks for "P" at the beginning and "box" within the address. Checking this option changes the strictness: the system will consider the address not a PO Box if it contains "box" and also has an entry in Address Line 2. This helps prevent issues with carriers like UPS and FedEx, which typically don't deliver to true PO Boxes. |
Disable U.S.P.S. Address Standardization | If left unchecked, UltraCart performs a address standardization for city, state and zip combination (but not the address) |
Hide Special Instructions | The "Special Instructions" is, by default, shown to the customer during checkout. This allows them to enter special instructions for the delivery (carrier). An example would be "leave package on back porch". Selecting this check box will hide the "special instructions" text box. |
Maximum Special Instructions Length | Unless you've checked the "Hide Special Instructions" box for the checkout, the customer can leave lengthy instructions for the carrier (delivery). Too lengthy in fact that might distort your shipping label. Here you can restrict the size by entering the maximum characters allowed. |
Address Line Character Limit | The default address length is 32 characters. |
Shipping Estimates & Method Visibility
Hide Estimates on View Cart | By default, UltraCart displays shipping estimates in the shopping cart. Enable this feature to prevent these shipping estimations from appearing during checkout. |
Display Estimates by Carrier and then Cost | Check this box to group shipping estimates first by carrier name (e.g., "UPS", "FedEx") and then by the associated cost for each carrier. |
Send no shipping methods email | Enable this feature to send an email notification to the merchant if UltraCart cannot find any available shipping methods for a customer's order. The email includes the Item ID(s), quantity, and shipping address, which helps with troubleshooting your shipping configuration. |
Fulfillment Behavior
Hold Split Shipments in Accounts Receivable | If an order incorrectly indicates a split shipment (meaning items are not configured to ship from multiple distribution centers), enabling this feature will place the order on hold in Accounts Receivable. This provides an opportunity to adjust distribution centers and shipping costs before payment processing. |
Prevent attempt to single source order from one distribution center | By default, UltraCart tries to source all items from a single distribution center, even if some items are physically closer to the customer in another DC. This often results in lower shipping costs. Enabling this setting will discourage UltraCart from attempting to ship everything from a single DC. Understand the potential implications on your shipping costs before enabling this. |
Cost & Risk Configuration
Insurance Percentage if COGS not specified | In the Item Editor, if the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) field is left blank, the percentage entered here will be applied for insurance calculation purposes. |
Automatic Geo Location
Use Geo-Location | This optional feature leverages a third-party database to estimate shipping costs more accurately by mapping the customer's IP address to a physical location. Consider enabling this to reduce customer "sticker shock" from shipping estimates and potentially increase conversion rates. There is no additional charge for this feature. |
Default initial country on shopping cart | When selected, the country in the shopping cart will automatically default to the country identified by the customer's geo-located IP address. Enable this if you want the checkout process to pre-fill the country based on geo-location. |