If you tried to do an order and no shipping price appeared at the final stage of checkout, you may have gotten a message similar to "There are no shipping methods available for your cart or destination" or "We don't offer shipping to ...". The message you get will depend on your theme and checkout options. An example of this message is shown below.
There are a number of reasons that this might have happened. Following is a list of possible causes. We will go through each of them.
- No shipping services installed in your Shopify Admin
- Carrier calculated shipping feature is not installed in your store
- How to use Test Mode
- Zip/Post code restrictions on your store
- No shipping rates in Better Shipping
No shipping services installed in your Shopify Admin
The first thing to check is to see if you have the Better Shipping app service installed for the shipping zone you are using. Navigate to your ShopifyAdmin->Settings->Shipping and delivery->General->Manage, scroll down just a bit and you will see the "Shipping Zones" box. Hopefully you have already created your Shipping Zones the way you wanted as described in the Creating a Shipping Rate help page. If you haven't you should do so now. If you need more information on how the Shipping Zones are created and managed, please see the Shopify Shipping Zones help page.
For those that just need a quick refresher of the steps, here is what we are going to do. If you need help with any of these steps, below is a walk through guide with screenshots for each of the steps.
- Navigate to ShopifyAdmin->Settings->Shipping and delivery->General->Manage
- Under “Shipping Zones” next to each of the countries, click the “Edit” link.
- Choose the "Use carrier or app to calculate rates” radio button
- Click the dropdown box and choose “Better Shipping App”
- Make sure the "Automatically show new shipping services to customers when they become available checkbox is selected (on)
- Leave the handling fee at $0 and 0% (this can be added inside the app if you wish)
- Press the "Done" button
- Press the "Save" button
- Repeat for all the countries you want to use Better Shipping
In the dropdown, if the Better Shipping App is not one of the options, then it is likely the Better Shipping Carrier is not installed. This is usually because your store doesn't have Shopify's carrier calculated shipping feature installed. Please see the next heading for instructions to fix that issue.
Or if there is another issue, please don't hesitate to email us at better.shipping@atomyard.com.
Carrier calculated shipping feature is not installed in your store
Shopify requires that all stores wanting to use third party shipping apps have the carrier calculated shipping feature installed on your store.
If the app is showing a red banner as in the screenshot below, this means the app has detected your Shopify plan doesn't have Shopify's carrier calculated shipping feature installed.
Carrier Calculated Shipping (CCS) is a Shopify feature that is required by Shopify for all shipping apps to work.
This feature is included on the Advanced Plan and Shopify Plus Plan.
The CCS feature can be added the Shopify Plan for $20 per month, or if you switch to annual Shopify billing, it is included for no extra charge (plus there is a 25 % discount for annual billing). Please contact Shopify support to have this feature added. Shopify email/chat support link (scroll down to see the contact links)
Once you have the carrier calculated shipping feature installed, you can go back to the app and refresh the page (or click on the Shipping Rates link in the left hand menu) and the red warning banner should disappear. The Better Shipping app should now be activated.
If you had problems or questions about these requirements, please don't hesitate to email us at better.shipping@atomyard.com. We are always happy to help.
Test Mode not working
Another reason you might not be getting a shipping rate at checkout is the app may be in test mode, but the wrong first name and last name are being used at checkout.
Please see the Test Mode help page for an example.
Zip/Post code restrictions on your store
If you are using zip/post codes to restrict your shipping to specific areas, or to exclude specific areas, you must make sure that when you do a test order you are using the correct zip/post code on the customer address page.
You must also make sure that you have setup the correct include or exclude zip/post codes in your shipping rate. More information about this can be found on the Creating a shipping rate help page.
You zip codes are always worth double checking if you are using the zip/post code restriction feature. However, if you are sure it should be working, and it isn't, email us, and we can look into it for you.
No shipping rates in Better Shipping
Better Shipping requires at least one shipping rate to be created for the app to work. The shipping rates are created on the main shipping rate, and a walk through guide to creating a shipping rate can be found in these help pages, starting with the Creating a shipping rate.
You also must make sure that the customer address that you are shipping to, is in the same Shipping Zone that you setup in your shipping rate. For example, if you created a shipping rate for you "Domestic" shipping zone. And your Domestic shipping zone contains the whole of the USA. Then you must make sure that your customer address is also within the USA, or no rate will be generated.
You can see the above screenshot the country is the United States. And below, the shipping rate we created in Better Shipping is using the "Domestic" shipping zone, which includes the United States. So this shipping rate will work for the current customer address.
