Defining Shipping Zones

The use of shipping zones makes it possible to define varied shipping charges for multiple destinations. First you need to group countries and regional areas into shipping zones by putting together those countries and regional areas which are subject to the same shipping rules and charges.

To access the list of shipping zones, choose the 'Shipping settings' section in the 'Settings' menu of the Administrator Zone and click on the 'Zones' tab (Figure 3-22). Two lists at the top indicate the default country (left column) and regional area (right column) zones. Until you define your own zones, all countries and regions belong to default zones.

Note: Each country and regional area (state, county, region or province) can only be assigned to one particular zone.

Figure 3-22: 'Shipping Zones' page

To create a new country zone:

•	select a country or a list of countries (hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard to select several countries at once),

•	make sure that the 'Move selected countries to' option is set to 'New zone', and

•	click on the 'Apply' button on the left.

Figure 3-23: Newly defined Zone 1 containing several countries

This creates a new country zone 'Zone 1' (Figure 3-23). Next time you perform such operation on the default zone list of countries, the 'Move selected countries to' drop-down list will contain 'New zone', 'Default zone' and the newly defined 'Zone 1'. Selecting the 'New zone' will create a new zone 'Zone N', where N is the next integer value to the biggest integer used in zone names and move the selected countries there. Selecting the 'Default zone' option moves the country back to the default zone.

To move a country from one zone to another:

•	locate the zone in which the country is listed,

•	select the country,

•	in the 'Move selected countries to' field underneath the zone definition specify the zone where you would like the country to be moved to, and

•	click on the 'Apply' button underneath the zone definition.

To remove a zone, you must empty the country list of this zone by moving all countries to another zone. When the zone becomes empty, it is deleted automatically.

The same rules apply to regional area (state) zones. Please note that you cannot combine regions and countries in one zone. Each zone contains either a list of countries or a list of regional areas.

Note: In the list of zones, regional area (state) zones are listed first, followed by country zones.

After you have created the desired shipping zones you can configure shipping charges for the shipping zones defined (see the section "Managing Shipping Settings" of this manual for further details).