Shipping groups

A shipping group is a shipping option that is available to shoppers, and is a logical grouping of carrier services that meet a certain fulfillment criteria or a delivery promise.

You can associate a maximum number of transit days to a shipping group to give guidelines about which carrier services can be included. You must configure the shipping group and associate at least one carrier service before the shipping group can be considered for Promising Calculations by the Calculate item delivery date and Calculate shipment assignments APIs.

Tip: To minimize, mitigate pick up delays from a single carrier service, you can group carrier services of similar transit durations.

Shipping groups: example

You can display the following shipping groups on your e-commerce site:
  • STANDARD: Free shipping with delivery within 5 to 7 days
  • EXPRESS: Paid shipping with delivery with 2 to 3 days
  • PREMIUM: Paid shipping with delivery within 1 day
  • GOLD: Free shipping for customers of loyalty program within 1 day
Consider a scenario where you have two carriers, each with their own carrier-specific services:
  • Carrier A provides the following carrier services:
    • Ground, which offers a transit duration of 5 - 7 days.
    • 2DayAir, which offers a transit duration of 2 - 3 days.
    • Expedited, which offers a transit duration of 4 hours to 1 day.
  • Carrier B provides the following carrier services:
    • Standard, which offers a transit duration of 5 - 7 days.
    • NextDayAir, which offers a transit duration of 1 - 2 days.
    • Prime, which offers a transit duration of 1-2 day.
You can configure your shipping groups in the following way:
  • STANDARD: Fulfilled by Carrier A - Ground and Carrier B - Standard
  • EXPRESS: Fulfilled by Carrier A - 2DayAir and Carrier B - NextDayAir
  • PREMIUM: Fulfilled by Carrier A - Expedited and Carrier B - Prime
  • GOLD: Fulfilled only by Carrier B - Prime

When STANDARD is passed in the API input for Promising Calculations, the Carrier A - Ground and Carrier B - Standard are considered for evaluation. When GOLD is passed in the API input for Promising Calculations, only Carrier B - Prime is considered for evaluation.

What to do next

You can create, edit, and delete shipping groups. For more information, see Configuring shipping groups.