Documentation Welcome Area and Product exclusions

Restricting products from shipping

Not all shipping services are available to all zones and many carriers have strict guidelines about what is acceptable to ship with their service.

This page will first show you how to restrict an entire product from a shipping zone, then show you how to build a rate that controls both what products apply to it and what areas it is shown in.

Let’s lock these rates down.

Basic setup

First, we need to go through some basic setup.

1. Go ahead and install Parcelify if you haven’t already
2. Open our app. You can find it in your Shopify admin dashboard, under Apps, listed as Shipping Rates by Parcelify
3. Add a Location. This is where your products ship from
4. Select your newly added Location and click [Add Shipping Zone]
5. Give this zone a recognizable name, then click [Add Countries] to tell us where you ship to.
6. Click [Save] in the top-right

Restricting items on your shipping zone

Let’s say you were preparing to add shipping rates to a zone representing California, USA. Even before you decide what shipping services are available, you know you want to restrict any orders containing products tagged lead from showing shipping rates at all.

This is easy with Parcelify.

1. Inside your zone page, click Add product restrictions
2. Select Product Tag is from the dropdown
3. Type lead into the adjacent textbox
4. Click [Save] in the top-right of your zone

That’s it!

Building the rate

Let’s suppose instead that you could ship lead products anywhere in California except Inglewood. You still want to provide shipping services to this area, but not when lead products are present in the cart. How would you build a shipping rate with this kind of dual restriction?

With Parcelify of course:

1. After setup you should be on your shipping Zones page. Go ahead and click [Add shipping rates]
2. At the top of the page you will see the current Location and Zone this shipping rate will be created in
3. Give the shipping rate a helpful name and description. This is what your customers will actually see at checkout, along with the shipping price
4. Since we want to restrict this rate to only show when a specific product (or set of products) are not in the cart, click Add product restriction next to Shipment Product Restrictions
5. Two new text fields will appear. This tells us how to identify your restricted products. Select Product tag is not from the dropdown, then type lead in the adjacent text field
6. Since no products in the order are allowed to have lead in them, click the (x) All items can’t have radio button
7. Prices let you design how the shipping cost for a rate should be calculated, as well as where each price applies. Under prices, next to Shipping To, click Add Restriction
8. Select City is in the dropdown, then type Inglewood in the adjacent text field
9. Click [Save] at the top of the rate. You’re all set!

Testing at checkout

After adding or editing a rate we recommend always performing a quick test checkout to make sure everything is working to your satisfaction. You’ll get peace of mind knowing your rate is showing as expected, and you’ll catch any issues (like a misspelling or misplaced decimal) well before it can affect your customers.

Exactly what kind of test you do should be based on how you’ve built your shipping rate. In this example you would perform two tests:

Test one: order with no restricted products

1. Head to your shop and add any non-restricted product to the cart
2. Checkout this cart with an address that matches the zone and area you set up earlier
3. See that the shipping rate shows when the restricted product is absent

Test two: attempt to order a restricted product

1. Go back to the cart or catalogue page and proceed to add at least one restricted product to the cart
2. Checkout this cart with an address that matches the zone and area you set up earlier
3. See that no Parcelify shipping rates are displayed at checkout. Awesome!

That’s all there is to it. From here you can continue customizing this rate, check out our tutorials, head back to our home page, or continue reading for an overview of how to navigate our documentation: