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If you qualify under these conditions, proceed to the following sections for instructions to create and enable or disable rating rules and shipping policies.
Time of Action
The timing of when rules are applied to a rating rule impacts the results the user receives. The differences in timing of rule application can also cause conflicts between rules. The following section provides detailed explanations on the time of action for ShipHawk rules and strategies for avoiding rule conflict.
Rule Type
ShipHawk rules fall into the following categories, based on the time of their application:
Pre-rating rules
Around-rating rules
Post-rating rules
Line-item creation rules
Order creation rules
The timing of rule application impacts the carrier rates that ShipHawk retrieves. The following sections describe each rule type in detail and provide examples to help users understand rule behavior and configuration.
Pre-rating
Pre-rating rules are applied prior to executing a rate request to carriers. This category of rules pertains to rules such as using a table rate for all orders. If an order is already provided a standardized set of shipping rates, then there is no need to make a rate request at all.
Around-rating
Around-rating rules are applied by ShipHawk during the execution of a rate request to carriers. This category of rules works by filtering out certain results based on the rates received. An example of this type of rule is if your organization wants to exclude certain carriers or services from your rate request. For example, for certain SKUs, you wish to exclude Ground services in any rate requests.
Post-rating
Post-rating rules are applied after executing a rate request to carriers. This category of rules pertains to rules such as shipping markups. In order to mark up a carrier rate by a specified percentage, ShipHawk must first retrieve the carrier rates before applying the rule.
Line item creation
Line-item rules apply at the time of line item generation. These rules append information to line items in an order. An example of line item rules are when organizations want certain line-items to be fulfilled at one warehouse and other line-items in the order to be fulfilled at another warehouse.
Order creation
Order creation rules apply at the time of order creation. These rules are used for instances when you wish to filter out certain kinds of orders to prevent proposed shipments from being created for them. An example of this is drop-shipping. Because a drop-shipped order is fulfilled by another organization, they should be excluded from ShipHawk.