About

During a shopping cart checkout, checkout details are used in determining the specific qualifications to the shipping estimate calculation. One of the potential qualifications that may occur is the requirement of a signature for the package delivery. Often the requirement is predicated upon the ship cost reaching a certain threshold, such as the subtotal of the order being over x amount.

UltraCart provides a configuration setting within the “Other” tab of the shipping method editor, labelled “Signature Required if Subtotal: ___”

Calculation Details

How does UltraCart calculate the subtotal in this shipping calculation?

It’s important to note that the threshold will be determined by the COGS (“Cost of Goods Sold”) rather than the configured “cost” of an item. the COGS configuration can be at the item level or if left unconfigured at the item level, will be determined by the the global configuration of a “percentage of retail value” (configured within the Checkout Options tab of the Shipping Configuration area, if COGS is not specified on an item.)

Example scenario

Open

So let’s say you want to configure the FEDEX: Home Delivery method with a requirement for a delivery signature, for orders with a subtotal over $290.

Open

Let’s assume the customer checkouts with a qty of 7 of an item that has a configure cost per unit of $46.99 and a configured COGS of $36.99:

In the checkout, the calculated subtotal of the customers checkout will be $328.93.
However, since the item is configured with a COGS, the calculated “Package Insurance Value” of the checkout based on the cost of goods sold is only $258.93.
So, in this situation the signature threshold has not been met and would require a qty of 8 of the checkout item to reach the signature requirement threshold.