How to Add a Shipping Surcharge on Your Ecommerce Orders

As an e-commerce merchant it can be difficult to maintain profit margins with the rising costs of shipping. Many carriers add shipping surcharges for both domestic and international orders.

With the variety of shipping surcharges that are being added by carriers, it can be challenging to keep track of what you’re being charged for.

You can improve your profit margins by understanding the different types of shipping surcharges and setting your own pricing accordingly.

When you as the merchant receive an invoice with a shipping surcharge, it can appear as a “service fee”, “handling”, or a variety of other labels.

In essence, a shipping surcharge is an extra fee that is added to the base cost of shipping good.

In order to stay profitable, you must keep track of the shipping surcharges imposed by the different carriers.

If that were not complicated enough already, you also need to mark up your products accordingly and reconcile your QuickBooks account.

Keeping track of different shipping surcharges between various carriers, can quickly add up to many hours of manual data entry as well as human errors.

How Can You Mark Up Shipping and Stay Profitable ?

If you are being invoiced for shipping surcharges, you need to mark up the cost of your own shipping in order to stay profitable. In this section we will discuss how you can mark up shipping using Connex.

Introduction

You can instruct Connex to mark up shipping by an amount. You can compare the shipping method field or another field of your choosing.

How does this work?

Here are the steps:

1.Sync an order from QuickBooks to your shipping solution.
2. Ship the order.
3. Update the QuickBooks sale with the shipping cost.
4. Connex will mark up the cost, which you will invoice to your customer.

If I want to add a dollar amount, how do I add the rule?

In this example, we will add $1.50 to shipping for orders shipping USPS:

1.Login to Connex.
2.On the right, click rules engine.
3. Add this rule.

You could use matches, if you want to say the method matches USPS. You could compare the shipping address region field, if you want to compare where the order ships.

If I want to add percent, how do I add the rule?

In this example, we will add 10% to shipping for orders shipping USPS:

1.Login to Connex.
2.On the right, click rules engine.
Add this rule.
If you want to say any order shipping from QuickBooks should add 25%, then use this rule.

To preview, login to Connex. Click manage. Click order previewer on the left. Enter the order number. Here is a before and after of the rule:

Before rule
After rule
You could use matches, if you want to say the method matches USPS. You could compare the shipping address region field, if you want to compare where the order ships.

Can I add an item called handling to the sale?

You could configure our merchant fees feature to add an amount to each sale. The feature is built to add a negative number, but with proper settings a positive is added. Here are the steps:

1.Login to Connex.
2.Click manage.
3.Expand merchant fees.
4.In the name field, enter handling.
5.Click save.
6. On the top right, click rules engine.
Add this rule.

We know that choosing the right tools for your accouting is essential for the growth of your business.

Is Connex the Right Tool For You to Add Shipping Surcharges?

Most of our customers sell on multiple ecommerce channels, such as Woocommerce, Shopify, Magento, and Amazon, just to name a few.

They want to grow their business, and they also value the peace of mind from knowing their books are always up to date and they can serve their customers.

The reason our customers love Connex is that their sales and inventory from multiple ecommerce sites are automatically synced with QuickBooks

So, how can you decide whether Connex can help your business?

The easiest way to tell whether Connex is right for your business is to get started with our free trial:

-Full functionality for 14 days

-Sync up to 500 sales to QuickBooks Desktop or Online

-Integrate with major ecommerce platforms such as Woocommerce, Shopify, Magento, and Amazon

-Integrate with major ecommerce shipping solutions such as Shipworks, Ordoro and Shipping Easy

-Click here for a full list of our ecommerce, shipping, and payment integrations

-Complimentary email support during your free trial

Are you still unsure whether Connex is right for your business?

Click here to schedule a 30 minute call with a member of our sales team.