Simple Commerce and Postage & Packaging
Development and Programming
Hi everyone - I’m a newbie to the Simple Commerce Module, and was wondering how people handle postage and packaging costs? After a quick scan of the docs, it looks like all you can add to an item is a price/sale price. My client delivers all over Europe and will need to add different P&P;costs.
That is beyond the scope of the SCM as installed out-of-the-box. The SCM is great for assigning a price (really two, one additional special offer price) and info on the availablity to a physical product and generates the code for the PayPal links/buttons based on that information. There are discussions on how to add different options to some products, but they are only passed as parameters and don’t change the price. Adding a variable P&P;part, verification of the amount paid via PayPal will not be very reliable, as the amount changes for the same product depending on the destination.
It might be possible to calculate different total prices through a JavaScript form depending on the destination, but then the PayPal links have to be modified as well - and you would need some mechanism to tell if the buyer has tempered with the PayPal links manually. It mostly depends on your setup and the number of products available if it is worth the effort to perhaps change the working of the SCM or bypass it completely.
The other way to go: PayPal links can be generated manually as well (and EE can help you a lot if you set up your custom fields for the produkcts clever). So, you might bypass SCM completly and don’t have to worry about another part of the SCM: that the buyer first has to register and login on the site before he can purchase and the SCM can record the sales. There are tools available (like Linklok IPN) that can be used as an IPN handler outside of EE to inform the customer about his sales.
.Markus
Thanks guys. Looks like the Wiki example might be worth a shot.