[ic] Fixed price shipping?

[interchange-users@icdevgroup.org (Mike Heins)]

Quoting Robert Wall (bob@web-walrus.com):
> I have a question for you guys...
> 
> I've got a customer that sells electronic items (different prices,
> different sizes), and currently does fixed-price shipping on a per-item
> basis.  We're looking at moving him to Interchange, and here's the problem
> we're having:
> 
> A customer orders a TV ($150 product, $15 fixed shipping)
> and a satellite receiver ($300 product, $8 fixed shipping)
> 
> There doesn't seem to be a way in Interchange to accomodate the fixed
> shipping per item option.  The market that he's in is competitive enough
> that we can't just do a $15 add-on to the $150 price ($165 in total), so
> we need to find a way to dynamically calculate the shipping from some
> other field.
> 
> I played around with using the weight field to do this, but then there's
> the problem of the "Display Cart" option showing the shipping weight
> incorrectly (since we're using it for something else).
> 
> Does anybody have any ideas as to how to work around this, or how to
> implement a good fixed price per item shipping method?
> 

This question comes up at times, and I guess the answer is obvious
to me but not many others.

1. Add a column "shipping_cost" to products table or wherever
   appropriate.

2. Add a line to shipping.asc.

per_item	Shipping charge	shipping_cost	0	9999999	f @@TOTAL@@

3. Change your shipmode to per_item, usually in country table.

4. Reconfig -- you are done.

-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.513.523.7621      <mike@perusion.com>

When the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems tend to look
like nails.  -- Abraham Maslow