16 replies to this topic

[pennydeb]

I have sucessfully installed the Australia Post shipping module AustPOST3.011

As the postage prices showing are out of date, I now realize I have to link to Auspost DRC (Delivery Rate Calculator).
I have been to the site drc.edeliver.com.au but I don't have a clue how to do this.

Is there a tutorial or thread re how to do this?. I have been searching high and low for the past few days trying to find some help with this.

I am just about there with the set up of my site now so really need to get this sorted.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

with thanks Deb

[CGhoST]

I would also like to have a fix to this as this contribution seems outdated because it can't get the rates from the site anymore.

i get this error:

ERROR: We apologise, we are unable to obtain a valid quote from the Australia Post Server.
If you would like to use this option as your shipping method, please contact us.

Any fix or update to this contribution would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[pennydeb]

Ok to try an help you out. I did get to work and it is working fine.

Make sure you are using the AustPOST3.011

I was getting the wrong rates being calculated.. and thought that I had "connect" to the Australia Post DRC to get the updates.
Being a novice at this that really threw me as I had no idea how to implement the instructions given on the DRC.

But as it turns when I looked into the contribution does conect to the DRC (as long as you hosting allows it to connect via html.. which is should do)

The prices that were being calculated were wrong be cause they were not showing the GST. Make sure in your tax rates you have the 10% GST. Initially I did not have a tax rate for Australia as I am not registered for GST and do not have to charge this tax. But because the postage calculated include GST within Australia.. it need to be in the tax rates to the postage will calculate correctly.

Make sure that in Locations/Taxes>countries set up in admin ~ that Australia is acutally in the list. Australia ISO codes AU AUS

I also had to add the Australian Zones to Locations/Taxes>Zones as these were not in the zone list and are required for the contribution to work correctly.

Australia Australian Capital Territory ACT
Australia New South Wales NSW
Australia Northern Territory NT
Australia Queensland QLD
Australia South Australia SA Australia Tasmania TAS Australia Victoria VIC Australia Western Australia WA

[pennydeb]

SORRY... PLEASE IGNORE MY PREVIOUS POST.. IT UPLOADED BEFORE I FINISHED AND THE THE EDIT TIME EXPIRED.

Ok, I'll try TO help you out here, but please know I am just a novice at this. But hey.. I did get to work after spending many hours seaching for help with no luck then settled myself to checking everthing step by step. The code seemed to be ok..so it had to be something else.
Anyway it is working fine now .. so quite chuffed with myself.

I was getting the wrong rates being calculated.. and thought that I had "connect" to the Australia Post DRC to get the updates.
Being a novice at this, that really threw me as I had no idea how to implement the instructions given on the DRC.

But as it turns out, when I looked further into the contribution I could see that it was set up to conect to the DRC already.(as long as your hosting allows it to connect via html.. which is should do)

The prices that were being calculated were wrong because of the Zones and also they were not adding the GST.
Make sure in your tax rates you have the 10% GST.
Initially I did not have a tax rate for Australia as I am not registered for GST and do not have to charge this tax.
But because the postage calculated includes GST within Australia.. it needs to be in the tax rates so the postage will calculate correctly.

Make sure that in Locations/Taxes>Countries set up in admin ~ that Australia is acutally in the list. Australia ISO codes AU AUS

I also had to add the Australian Zones to Locations/Taxes>Zones as these were not in the zone list and are required for the contribution to work correctly.

Australia Australian Capital Territory ACT
Australia New South Wales NSW
Australia Northern Territory NT
Australia Queensland QLD
Australia South Australia SA
Australia Tasmania TAS
Australia Victoria VIC
Australia Western Australia WA

In Locations/Taxes>Tax Zones.. make sure you a folder for both the Australian Zones and World Zone

In Locations/Taxes>Tax Classes....remove all tax classes. Create and new tax class called GST with the description Goods & Services Tax

In Location/Taxes>Tax Rates....remove all other tax rates showing.
Create a new tax rate

Tax Class Title~ GST
Zone ~ Australian Zones
Tax Rate ~ 10.0000
Description ~GST
Priority ~ 0

Finally make sure in the Shipping Module you have

AusPOST Parcel Post ~ below is my set up. Please note I am not offering insurance.

Enable auspost
True

Dispatch Postcode
2250

Enable Insurance
False

Insurance Base Cost
4.35

Insurance Addition Cost
1.15

Insurance Unit Size
100

Maximum Weight (kg)
20

Handling Fee
0

Parcel Height (mm)
100

Parcel Width (mm)
100

Parcel Depth (mm)
100

Shipping Zone
Australian Zones

Tax Class
GST

Sort order of display.
1


Also I have
AusPOST International - AIR

Enable auspostair
True

Dispatch Postcode
2250

Enable Insurance
False

Insurance Base Cost
7.50

Insurance Addition Cost
2.00

Insurance Unit Size
100

Maximum Weight (kg)
20

Handling Fee
0

Parcel Height (mm)
100

Parcel Width (mm)
100

Parcel Depth (mm)
100

Shipping Zone
World Zones

Tax Class
--none--

Sort order of display
2


It took me a long time to work this all out..really hope this helps. Let me know if it does.
Of course back up everthing before you try making these changes.. like I said I am just a novice at this.
Cheers
Deb

[CGhoST]

Hi pennydeb

Thank for the reply. Really appreciate the time you spent and writing it all up for me.

If i understand this correct the rate it gets from the drc is Excluding GST. Am i right?

I have a tax class for GST but wasn't sure if the calculation included GST or not. From your example looks like GST needs to be added.

[CGhoST]

Another Question. This is the layout i get in my checkout:

Sub-Total (Ex GST): $75.45
AusPOST Parcel Post (Delivery to 2113 - 1 days Estimated Delivery Time* 1 boxes 7kg(s)): $7.70
GST 10%: $8.24
Total (Inc GST): $90.69

My understanding is that the frieght should be ex gst and the flow of addition makes inc gst. Should look like this:

Sub-Total (Ex GST): $75.45
AusPOST Parcel Post (Delivery to 2113 - 1 days Estimated Delivery Time* 1 boxes 7kg(s)): $7.00
GST 10%: $8.24
Total (Inc GST): $90.69

How do i go about doing this please?

[pennydeb]

You can check and understand this better maybe If you go toAustralia Post site and put the the postcodes wight and dimensions the postage your store has calculated is correct. I used pc 2119 to 2113 weight 7kg and dimensions say 30cm X 40cm X 30cm.

I didn't feel it was necessary for the customer to see all the delivery times and weight of parcel...if it takes you a day or two to process the order they will be thinking their parcel is LATE and worrying unnecessarily. So commented that part of the code out so it wouldn't show.

So at the checkout when the get to Delivery Information the customer only sees
Shipping method
AusPOST Parcel Post
Delivery to $7.70

I would have liked the "Delivery to 2113" to show.. but can't seem to get that happening??

Hope this help.. sorry I'm still learning as I go but it seems you got the set up correct.

I just need someone to help me attach the fckeditor to the newsletter... being trying to find answer for this for weeks now.

Edited by pennydeb, 05 July 2010, 23:48.

[CGhoST]

Sorry if you misunderstood what i have said. I am not doubting the freight calculation is wrong or not. Also i like your point about removing the delivery time which i will also remove. About what i was saying. If you go with the flow of the way the invoice looks from Sub-Total (Ex GST):

Sub-Total (Ex GST): $75.45 + AusPOST Parcel Post: $7.70 + GST 10%: $8.24 = Total (Inc GST): $91.39

My understanding is that the frieght should be ex gst and the flow of addition makes inc gst. Should look like this:

Sub-Total (Ex GST): $75.45 + AusPOST Parcel Post: $7.00 + GST 10%: $8.24 = Total (Inc GST): $90.69

My example makes it more clear and easier for the customer to understand how the including GST figure comes up rather than thinking if freight GST is included in the GST or not. Do you see what i mean now?

[pennydeb]

Yep you are right with this as you are charging GST on your products so they can see the total GST amount and then the total inc the GST.

I do not have to charge GST for my new little endeavour at this stage so my set up was a little different. I think I mentioned when I was outlining my set up. (I am not new to the admin side of oscommerce just the installation process..it's driving me nuts! LOL Just about there now. )


So it looks like you have it all sorted.. well done!

[CGhoST]

pennydeb, on 05 July 2010, 23:40, said:

I would have liked the "Delivery to 2113" to show.. but can't seem to get that happening??

Seems like everything is sorted but it would have been nice to figure out how to show freight ex GST.

For your above problem here is what you need to do:

This is an example for AusPOST Parcel Post .. You need to edit all the modules if you want all the modules changed:

In catalog/includes/languages/english/modules/shipping/auspost.php

Remove:

define('MODULE_SHIPPING_AUSPOST_TEXT_SHIPPINGDAYS', 'days Estimated Delivery Time*');

In catalog/includes/modules/shipping/auspost.php

Find:

                               $shipping_auspost_method = MODULE_SHIPPING_AUSPOST_TEXT_WAY. " <b>"  . $topcode . "</b> - " . $days . " " . MODULE_SHIPPING_AUSPOST_TEXT_SHIPPINGDAYS . "<br>" .$shipping_num_boxes . "&nbsp;" .MODULE_SHIPPING_AUSPOST_TEXT_BOXES  . " " . $total_weight . MODULE_SHIPPING_AUSPOST_TEXT_UNITS . $auspost_addons; 

Replace with:

				$shipping_auspost_method = MODULE_SHIPPING_AUSPOST_TEXT_WAY. " <b>"  . $topcode . "</b> - " . "<br>" .$shipping_num_boxes . "&nbsp;" .MODULE_SHIPPING_AUSPOST_TEXT_BOXES  . " " . $total_weight . MODULE_SHIPPING_AUSPOST_TEXT_UNITS . $auspost_addons; 

Basically in all the modules you are deleting:

$days . " " . MODULE_SHIPPING_AUSPOST_TEXT_SHIPPINGDAYS .

[synergie7]

This may be somewhat off topic, but I noticed that various links on the DCR page e.g the terms and conditions link are broken, and that the DCR and the whole eDeliver system is not listed at all if you search on the AusPost's main site.

So I contacted Australia Post on Monday 12th July, and was told that the Delivery Rate Calculator page was "not supported" by Australia Post.

I'd guess this needs further investigation, i.e. perhaps someone else should contact AusPost to confirm whats happening with the DCR page.

FYI.
I've had various reports that the DCR does not give accurate costs.

It also does not validate the postcode. e.g. 8000 is not a valid postcode, however if you use that postcode with the DRC it still gives returns a cost, i.e. It doesn't seem to validate the actual code, it just seems to validate whether it looks like a code, e.g it had 4 digits.

I've written some code, which I've published on my blog that uses the AusPost's auto completion "app" to validate a post code (see http://www.synergie7.com.au/rcblog/?p=341 ), and I've also posted how to take the downloadable postcode CSV files from AusPosts site and use them with MySQL & PHP to validate postcode / Locality / State (See http://www.synergie7.com.au/rcblog/?p=367)

I've also written (but not published it yet) some PHP code to inteface with the Postage Assessment Calculator page on Australia Posts main site, but I'm not sure this is a robust solution, as his page doesn't have a published API and the output is a HTML page which needs to be "scraped" to extract the data.
But the PAC does however have some benefits over the DCR as it can calculate the cost for registered post, and additional insurance etc, and may or may not give more accurate costs than the DCR.

[pennydeb]

I'm not sure about all this, getting a bit technical for me.. sorry.
All I can tell you that I have been been using the DRC on my old oscommerce site since 2003 till a few weeks ago (I did not set this up orginally) and it has worked wondefully and each time Australia Post updated it's prices they were reflected straight away when the shipping costs were calculated in my checkout. I have been send parcels all over Australia and internationally with not problems. The the few times the postage was out of wack was due to error on our part having the wrong weight for the item say 1.0 instead of 0.1 kg. It seems to be calculating the correct prices on my new site also at this early stage.

I will be keeping an eye on this thread with interest.

thanks for your the above info.

[synergie7]

From the tests I did, the DCR seemed to calculate the same costs as the "Postage Assessment Calculator", but I've not done extensive testing yet.

Someone posted to by blog saying that the DCR was giving costs higher than that AusPost were actually charging him, but he was using the DCR from within VirtueMart rather than the OSCommerce shipping module, so I suppose this could be a bug in the VirtueMart shipping module implementation.

I'm more concerned about AusPost telling me they don't support the DCR :-(

So it would be really good if someone else could independantly get the status of the DCR page confirmed.

Cheers

Roger

[surfer4218]

An easy way to get around Australia Post not including GST is to just add 10% to price. That way the correct postage charge is brought across including GST and you don't need to add any new zones, taxes etc to your site.


includes/modules/shipping/auspostair

Find: $shipping_auspostair_cost = (($charge/1.1)* $shipping_num_boxes);

Replace With: $shipping_auspostair_cost = ((($charge/1.1)* $shipping_num_boxes) + ((($charge/1.1)/100)*10));


The above calculation works nicely although I'm sure you can write it cleaner.

[altermate]

I also use the Auspost module but I don't get the same price for postage as the online auspost calculator..... My website seems to charge alot more..
Any ideas why?

[toyicebear]

Check the settings in your admin under configuration>>shipping/packaging

The settings there affects the calculations

[arivee]

Hi Guys old post but will this work with 2.31 oscommerce also I just want to have to Express postage shipping bag sizes 7.70 and 12.85 for large gear is it possible.

Thanks
Ari