Configuring zone components for a carrier service

A zone or a shipping zone is a collection of geographical areas that are defined by origin and destination postal codes. These areas share similar transit durations and transit rates. Carriers use shipping zones to determine the transit duration and rate that is applied to all shipments within those areas. You can configure zone components by using APIs.

Uploading zone components for a carrier service

A zone contains a collection of zone components. You can create a new zone to introduce an origin postal code for a new store that is being opened. Also, you might want to ship to new destination postal codes.

To configure transit duration and rate, the following configuration options are available:

Transit duration for the entire zone or for the individual zone components.
Transit delay for the entire zone or for the individual zone components.
Transit rate for the entire zone only.

To upload the individual zone components for a carrier service, you can use the Upload shipping zone components API. To specify transit duration and delay for individual zone components, you can include extra columns in the API input .csv file.

To configure transit duration and delay for the entire zone, you can use the Upload transit duration (and optionally transit delay) by shipping zones API. As a result, everything that you define for the entire zone is applied to all the zone components automatically.

To configure transit rates for the entire zone, you can use the Upload transit rates by shipping zones API.

You can upload the following zone component definitions:

Origin / destination country / postal codes and a zone ID
Origin / destination country / postal codes and a zone ID / transit duration
Origin / destination country / postal codes and a zone ID / transit duration / transit delay

Zone component scenarios

You can configure the zone components for the following scenarios:

To handle in-country or international shipments.
To specify transit duration and delay for shipping zones, or for individual zone components.
To specify transit rate for shipping zones.
To specify surcharges for carrier services, or individual zone components.

For more information, see Scenario: Carrier zones.

Deleting zone components

In the following scenarios, you can use the Delete shipping zone components API to delete individual zone components:

To create new zones or to rearrange postal codes for a specific store.
To shut down a store or to prevent a store from shipping to a specific location.
To undo the upload of a batch of zone components that was done in error.

Note: You can provide the same .csv input for creating or deleting zone components.

Alternatively, you can use the Delete shipping zone components by a destination country API to delete all zone components for a specific destination country.

Ensure that you delete the existing zone components before you create new components.

Creating surcharges

If you need to configure zone component-level surcharges, include a list of surcharges in an extra .csv column. For more information, see Configuring zone component surcharges by using APIs.