Understand shipping charge and tax calculation when assigning costs to items sold as a package

When assigning costs to items sold as a package, you assign processes for calculating shipping charges and taxes that differ slightly from normal customer calculation processes.

Understand the shipping charge calculation process when assigning costs to items sold as a package

The processes for calculating shipping charges and taxes when assigning costs to items sold as a package differ slightly from normal customer calculation processes. To determine the correct amount of shipping charges payable on an item configured as a package, the following key parameters are passed to the shipping calculator:

• shippingMethod - the shipping method selected for the item
• quantity - the quantity of the item being shipped
• amount - the amount paid by the shopper for the item

For items sold as a single item (root item) configured as a package, the following occurs:

• The amount passed to the shipping calculator is always the total price for the configured item.
• The shippingMethod passed to the shipping calculator will always be the shipping method assigned to the root item.
• The quantity passed to the shipping calculator is always be the quantity of the root item.

Shipping charges will be calculated accurately, given that you have decided that the configured item must be shipped as a unit. Any shipping surcharges assigned to a sub-item in the configuration hierarchy will not be included in the total shipping charges.

Understand the tax calculation process when assigning costs to items sold as a package

In summary, the way that tax calculation occurs with a shipping group sold as a package is that the price of the fully configured package is sent to the taxation system as all the items in the product configuration have to be delivered to a single place.

To determine the correct amount of taxes payable on an item configured as a package, the following key parameters are passed to the tax calculator:

• amount - the amount paid by the shopper
• quantity - the quantity of the item being purchased
• shipping charge - the shipping charge that has been calculated for the package item
• taxCode - the tax code assigned to the product.

For configured items sold as a package (i.e., where the soldAsPackage value for the root item = TRUE), taxes are calculated based on the root item only. For configured items sold as a package, the following occurs:

• The amount passed to the tax calculator is always the total price for the configured item.
• The taxCode passed to the tax calculator is always the tax code for the root item. This means that although taxes are calculated for the configured item, the amount is based only on the tax code of the root item.