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Shipping Process

Similar to the payment process, iAPPS Commerce communicates with remote systems to provide details of the transaction.

Approved vendors include UPS, FedEx, and the US Postal Service (USPS). iAPPS Commerce maintains management interfaces for each shipper, allowing for connectivity, authentication, and encryption.

As a Commerce licensee you can select which of the available shipping methods to promote on your website. You can input and manage authentication components between your server and the shipping company. Commerce maintains contractual constants for you; for example, discounts and rates charged by shipping companies.  Depending the implementation your company sets up, shipping rates can either be table-based or based on real-time information of destination, size and weight to both domestic and foreign addresses.

From the customer service side, Commerce allows Customer Service Representatives to:

• Track packages

• Print invoices

• Combine orders – If multiple orders have not shipped, you can allow combining to save shipping costs

• Cancel or change orders – If an order did not ship, allow quantity changes, item deletions, or cancel an entire order

New shipping methods can be added or shipping details can be edited through the Administration menu. See "Shipping Methods" for more information.

Selecting or Changing Shipping Methods

During the checkout process customers select a shipping method to best meet their needs. Commerce presents them shipping methods and related costs from the Shipping and Handling menu on the Checkout page.

The customer can change the shipping method themselves at any time before final checkout. After completing the checkout process, however, then they must contact a customer service representative to change the method (as long as the order has not shipped yet). Shipped orders can no longer be changed. Instead CSRs should process a return.

Depending on the setup of your site, the shipping methods will either reflect shipping costs drawn from a table, or real-time shipping costs drawn from UPS, FedEx and the USPS on the fly. Front-end users also may also be able to see a shipping rates popup from the Shopping Cart prior to entering the checkout process.