The Power of 'Skip Shipping Rules': Ensuring Accurate Costs for Special Items

Setting up sophisticated shipping rules in Shopify often involves balancing general promotions (like free shipping over $100) with the specific needs of certain products. What happens when you need to ensure a particular item always incurs its designated shipping cost, no matter what other rules might apply to the rest of the cart?

This is where a seemingly small but incredibly powerful feature in Better Shipping comes into play: the "Skip shipping rules" checkbox.

Located on the "Product Rates" page (where you set per-product and per-variant costs), this simple toggle allows you to isolate specific items from the calculations performed by your main shipping rules (Step 3 rules based on price, weight, or general cart contents).

Why Would You Need to Skip Shipping Rules?

There are several key scenarios where this feature is crucial for protecting your margins and ensuring accurate shipping charges:

1. Excluding Heavy/Oversized Items from Free Shipping:

• Problem: You offer "Free Shipping on orders over $100," but shipping your 50lb furniture piece costs $75 alone. Letting that heavy item qualify for free shipping based on the total cart value is financially unsustainable.
• Solution: Assign the appropriate per-product shipping cost to the furniture item (e.g., $75) on the "Product Rates" page and check the "Skip shipping rules" box for it. Now, when a customer's cart total goes over $100, the other items might qualify for free shipping based on your rule, but the $75 for the furniture piece will always be added to the final shipping total. The price/weight of the furniture item won't be considered when evaluating the "Free Shipping over $100" rule for the rest of the cart.

2. Implementing True "Free + Shipping" Offers:

• Problem: You want to offer a product for "free" but charge a fixed amount for shipping to cover the product cost and postage (e.g., offer a sample for $0 + $6.95 Shipping). However, if the customer adds other items and qualifies for a general free shipping rule (like spending over $50), that $6.95 shipping fee for the "free" item might get wiped out.
• Solution: Set the per-product rate for your "free" item to $6.95 and check "Skip shipping rules". This guarantees that the $6.95 is charged for that specific item, regardless of any other free shipping rules triggered by the rest of the cart.

3. Fixed Shipping Rates for Specific Products:

• Problem: Certain items always need to ship for a fixed amount, perhaps due to special handling, specific packaging, or a flat freight agreement (e.g., live fish always ship overnight for $40, hazardous materials always incur a $15 surcharge included in their rate).
• Solution: Set the fixed per-product rate (e.g., $40) and check "Skip shipping rules". This ensures that specific amount is charged for the item, immune to modification by general cart value or weight rules.

How Does it Work Technically?

When Better Shipping calculates rates:

1. It first determines the base cost from per-product/per-variant/tiered-group settings (Step 2).
2. It identifies any items marked to "Skip shipping rules" and sets their calculated cost aside.
3. It then evaluates the main Shipping Rules (Step 3) based on the price and weight of the remaining items in the cart (those not skipping rules).
4. Finally, it adds the costs of the "skipped" items back to the result calculated from the Step 3 rules.

This effectively isolates the designated cost of skipped items, ensuring they aren't affected by rules designed for the general cart.

Multi-Location Considerations

The "Skip shipping rules" feature works reliably even in multi-location scenarios, including when using the Unified Cart Calculation beta feature. The per-product cost for the skipped item is calculated based on its own settings and added to the final rate, regardless of whether other rules are being applied to the unified total cart value/weight.

Gaining Granular Financial Control

The "Skip shipping rules" feature provides essential control for merchants needing to safeguard margins on specific products or implement unique offer structures.

By strategically excluding certain items from general rule calculations, you can confidently offer attractive promotions like free shipping thresholds without risking losses on high-cost or specially priced items.

Need to ensure certain products always carry their specific shipping cost? Install Better Shipping and utilize the "Skip shipping rules" feature for precise financial control.