Page summary
Products - parcels
Navigate to admin>products.
The Parcel family of products, allows you to create product lines that are used to sell parcels. Parcels can be any type of item that users want to ship from one place to another.
There are different ways to price those shipments as well.
Create a parcel product
Click the Add new button.
First you will have to select the Parcel product family from the drop down list and click the next button.
before continuing verify at the top right corner that you selected the right product family. In this case it should read "parcel".
Display properties and terms and conditions
In this section enter the name, descriptions and icon that will be used to display the product in the product selection page during the sales process, as well as the order in which the product will be displayed in the page.
You will need to enter the name and the description in each of the languages you support. (In the screen below the account supports 5 languages).
The name will also be used in combo boxes across the application (for example: report filters).
You can enter special terms and conditions for a given product in this text areas. Enter the terms in the different languages your account support.
This terms and conditions will be printed in the ticket
You can disable this product by checking the Inactive checkbox.
If you disable the product it means it will not be available in any of the sales pages, but the name will still show up in some combo boxes across the application to allow you to access historical data.
Pricing schemas
Betterez offers three possible pricing schemas for products of the parcel family, Distance by postal code, Distance by google maps and Zone pricing.
You can also disable printing of all prices and payment types by unchecking Print prices in waybill
Distance by postal code
The distance by postal code schema works using the lat and long of the postal code for the origin and destination stations and using a standard distance calculation between to points in the planet Earth. This is a "birds fly" calculation and it doesn't account for terrain or routing.
Once the distance is found if will use the parcels zones information to find a proper price. You can read more on how parcel zones pricing works here
Distance by google maps
The distance by google maps schema works using the lat and long of the postal code for the origin and destination stations and utilizes the routing API for Google maps to find the most "efficient" route given two points. It depends on Google maps being able to route a vehicle between those two points. In some cases the postal code Latitude and Longitude needs to be updated to satisfy routing inconsistencies by Google maps.
Once the distance is found if will use the parcels zones information to find a proper price. You can read more on how parcel zones pricing works here
Zone pricing
When selecting zone pricing the system will use the zones for the Origin and destination stations and it will use zone pricing information to find a proper price. You can read more on how zone pricing works here
If you select Zone pricing you enable the options to use Volumetric Pricing also known as Dimentional weight
You need to enter the factor you want to use to calculate the volume.
When this configuration is enabled the system will calculate the volumetric weight (i.e. width multiplied by height, multiplied by lenght in centimeters, divided by the volumetric factor) and compare it with the declared weight of the parcel, then it will use the greater of those weights to find a proper price according the zone pricing configuration
Zone pricing also allows you to change the way that prices are calculated. By default packages of the same fare types are grouped and the volume is calculated as a single package and the price is prorated into each package according to it's dimentions.
You can disable the grouping of packages by checking the Don't group packages by fare checkbox. If this is selected packages prices and volumens will be calculated individually.
Another feature enable for Zone pricing is the ability to display a quoting widget in the first screen of the purchase flow. This will allow you to get to the prices of the packages early in the flow.
To enable the quopting widget just select the Add the quote widget in the first screen checkbox.
Channels
Products can be configured to be available as backoffice (all backoffice channels) or websales (all websales channels).
You can still configure what product is available to each agency when creating an agency.
Taxes configuration
If you don't use taxes in your account you can skip this and leave the default Any in this configuration.
You have three strategies while deciding how taxes are applied to this product.
Any
All taxes defined in your account will be applied to the product. It wont check for province or country, it will apply all valid ones.
Origin
Only taxes that match the province of the origin station will be applied.
Destination
Only taxes that match the province of the destination station will be applied. This is the exact inverse as the logic for the Origin strategy
Shift location
Only taxes that match the province of the shift location will be applied.
Exempt
No taxes will be applied
Sales flow
We can configure a few options for the sales flow of this product in this area.
Dont show Stations When enabled the origin and destination stations will not be available in the sales flow, and the origin and destination zones will be calculated from the addresses postal codes.
The zone Pricing pricing schema needs to be used in order for this configuration to be available
The station list in the search page are by default displayed using combo boxes, if you want to use an autocomplete control instead, check the Autocomplete station names.
This options is disabled if Dont show Stations is enabled.
Service types You can check this to show a service types combo box to select a service type to associate to a parcel.
Select the service type(s) that you want to add to this parcel product from the drop down menu clicking the “+” for each service type added.
If selected you can also select a "default" service type that will be preselected when started a new shipment during the purchase flow. You can select any of the service types in the account.
Service types is required if using zone price or if you integrate with Ship Track
I you require insurance and want it to make it mandatory, you can check the Mandatory insurance checkbox and users will need to declare a value upon witch insurance will be calculated based on the insurance rules
Comments When enabled, a free form text area will be shown in the first page of the sale flow for this product. The comment will be displayed in the waybill and the parcel report.
Default country You can select a country that will be pre-selected in both the shipper and receiver during the sale flow, unless the station selected has a full address; in that case the station address will pre-populate the shiopper and receiver addresses. Also if a company is selected during the sale flow, the company address will overwrite both the pre default country and the station address.
Limit packages per shipment If selected you should also enter the maximum number of packages to be able to purchase together in a shipment.
Station configuration
For parcels, the stations must meet some necessary characteristics when being configured. You can check it out in the Stations article.
- Postal Code: Entering the postal code for each station is required.
Third party integrations
You can enable different third party integrations for parcels.
Ship track
You can integrate with Ship Track by enabling this setting.
If you enter your Ship Track company Id you will add a link in the parcels display page that will link to the Ship Track tracking page.
Checking the Add tracking link in email will add a link in the confirmation email that will point to the Ship track tracking page with the shipment Id. For this link to work the Ship Track company Id needs to filled as well.
Transaction PDF tracking instructions You can enter text here that will be printed in the PDF of the transaction, this text uses the variable {{TRACKING_NUMBER}}. This variable will be replaced with the appropriate tracking number to be used in Ship track.
You can also select what types of sender notifications and/or receiver notifications will be available in the UI.
The notifications are emitted by ShipTrack, Betterez only captures the desired behaviour and send it to Shiptrack to actually send the notifications.
Editing a parcel product
You can edit all the properties described above in creating a parcel product by opening the parcel product in the products list page