Shipping costs for ecommerce in Australia, order by order
Example: free shipping on a two-carton bed base from Brisbane to regional WA costs you $148.60 ex GST on that order. Twelve of those a month is $1,783.20 ex GST, and it sits in one freight line in the accounts.
Bulky goods are where a shipping promise gets expensive. Cubic charges and remote zones land on some orders and not others, and an average hides which.
Bulky goods
A SKU can ship as several cartons, each with its own length, width, height and weight. Forensik rates per carton where the rate card requires it, and works out cubic and rated weight for you. A SKU with no cartons is flagged as cannot price, never guessed.
Checkout pricing
On Growth and above, your Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento checkout shows the price Forensik sets: carrier cost from your approved rate card and fuel levy, plus your markup. Each service Forensik can price appears as its own option, and a fallback rate covers a cart it cannot price in time.
Free freight overrides
Free freight is a setting you switch on for everything, a category or a SKU. It never happens by accident: a 0% markup still charges the carrier cost.
The SKU's own setting wins, then its category, then global. So a category on free freight can still charge for one bulky SKU with its own markup. SKU-level settings are on Growth and above. The carrier cost you give away is recorded as absorbed.
Worked example, with example numbers
Example numbers: a Brisbane furniture brand ships a two-carton bed base to regional WA with a carrier cost of $148.60 ex GST. The Bedroom category is on free freight.
With no SKU rule, the customer pays $0.00 and $148.60 ex GST is recorded as absorbed.
With a 20% SKU markup on the bed base, the SKU rule wins, and the customer pays $178.32 ex GST. Everything else in the category stays free.
Questions
- Can I set a free shipping threshold on order value?
- No. Free freight is set for the business, a category or a SKU, not by cart value.
- Do the rates come from carrier APIs?
- No. Forensik prices from your own rate cards and fuel levies, so the price at checkout matches what it later checks the invoice against.
- What does a mixed cart do?
- The consignment cost is shared across the lines by rated weight. Only the free freight lines are $0, and the others take their own markup.
See where your freight margin goes
Forensik prices every shipment from your own rate cards and checks every carrier invoice line against them.