Online shop shipping cost: who pays, how much, and Post or Tipax

The shipping cost is the last line on the invoice and the last thing anyone plans. Photos first, then prices, then the page, and only when a DM asks how much delivery is do you have to name a number.

Tarmeh's first month: one flat number on every order. When she added up the courier receipts, a third of the orders had cost her more to ship than she charged, and two customers had walked away from the rest.

Who pays for shipping in an online shop?

The worst case is a customer who paid for the coat and then learns there is another number. So: whoever knows before paying.

Whichever you pick, one rule holds: shipping is its own line on the invoice, never folded into the item price, and the customer sees the total before tapping the payment link, not after.

Flat rate or live quote: which suits a small shop

A flat rate is an average: a little gained on light, nearby parcels, a lot lost on heavy, distant ones, and a hope that it evens out by month end. The losses are big and the gains are small.

A live quote sends the parcel weight, box size and destination city to the carrier when the cart closes, and the carrier's answer is what the customer sees. Its one condition is a recorded weight and size on every product: with one weight missing, the parcel cannot be measured and the shop's flat rate applies instead.

• Flat rate: light, similar products, most orders in one or two cities.
• Live quote: weights range from a blouse to a coat, or you ship nationwide.
• Both: the live quote by default, the flat rate as its backstop, so a missing weight never stalls an order.

Post or Tipax, for a 300 g parcel from Tehran to Mashhad

Say a 300 g blouse has to go from Tehran to Mashhad. Neither carrier wins every time.

Now say Post quotes 45 thousand and Tipax 70 thousand. A 25 thousand gap on a 400 thousand blouse at 30 percent margin is a fifth of the whole profit. Which carrier is a financial decision, not a preference, and no panel should pick a default for you.

Free shipping above a minimum basket is a discount with a different name

Free shipping is never free; the cost moved from the customer's pocket to yours, so it is weighed against margin like any other discount.

Say the average basket is 600 thousand at 30 percent gross margin, so each order leaves 180 thousand. Make a 50 thousand shipping free and roughly 28 percent of that profit went to the carrier.

Set free shipping above 900 thousand instead. The same customer adds a 300 thousand item to reach it; that item carries 90 thousand of margin, shipping costs 50, and you kept 40 thousand more. The only difference is where the line sits.

The sum only works with your real margin. If the purchase price of each product is recorded nowhere, read online shop profit first.

1. 1Pull last month's average order value from the sales report.
2. 2Work out gross margin: selling price minus purchase price, divided by selling price.
3. 3Take the average shipping spend from real courier receipts, not memory.
4. 4Set the threshold at least one and a half times the average basket, so reaching it takes one more item.

The order with no parcel at all

Tarmeh now sells an online pattern-making class beside the coats. The first time someone bought only the class, the order asked for no address, shipping was zero and no carrier was involved.

A coat and the class together is still a parcel, so the address, the shipping line and the carrier all stay; the class is simply left out when the parcel is weighed. And the free-shipping threshold counts the whole order, class included, while the value declared to the carrier is only what is actually in the box.

After handoff: the tracking code and the SMS

Collecting the delivery charge is half the deal; the other half is the customer knowing where the parcel is. Most where-is-my-order messages come from a tracking code that arrived late or never.

The tracking code belongs on the order and should be texted the same day. The full path from the first DM to that SMS is in online shop order management.

Shipping costs that appear on no invoice

• Packaging: boxes, envelopes, tape, a thank-you card. Small per order, serious across a hundred.
• Trips to the post office: twice a day is time spent on shipping; go once, in a batch.
• Returns: a parcel that comes back has been paid for twice, and neither leg is on the customer's invoice.
• Damaged or lost parcels: rare, but each one takes a whole order out of the month's profit.

Log them somewhere separate and set them beside profit once a month. The rest is in the online shop management guide under shipping, returns and tracking.

ProMall turns these four decisions into one settings page and one weight per product: a flat rate, a free-shipping threshold, and Post and Tipax connections that quote the real rate at checkout and put the tracking code on the order.

Start tomorrow morning with your last twenty orders: beside each, write what the customer paid for shipping and what you paid the carrier, then compare the totals. The gap is this whole article in your own numbers.