Overview
Shipping Costs refers to the sum of all shipping costs paid by the seller. These fees can significantly impact your net profit. To track these expenses, start by navigating to Settings > Cost Settings. Add the shipping costs you incur for fulfilling orders to your customers, including costs from various shipping carriers. It's important to regularly save and review this data to ensure accuracy, as shipping costs can vary over time due to changes in carrier rates or shipping volumes.
Shipping Cost Tracking Options
Triple Whale allows you to track your shipping expenses in four different methods. We will outline the usage of each method below.
Option 1: Use Shopify Shipping Charges as Your Shipping Costs
Enable this setting if your shipping costs are equal to what your customers are charged for shipping.
Option 2: Use Shipping Integration for Shipping Costs
If you use one of the shipping services listed below, you can connect that platform and we will use the data to calculate your shipping costs per order.
Assign shipping cost estimates
If you use one of the above services but also want to assign shipping cost estimates on your Summary dashboard, consider adding product-specific, weight-based, or country-specific costs to create estimations. See below for more information about those options.
Option 3: Upload CSV of Order IDs Matched to Shipping Fees
If you use ShipStation or ShipBob as a fulfillment service, you can also manually upload a CSV file based on specific Order IDs to match shipping costs from Shopify data.
On the Cost Settings page under Shipping, click Import Costs. Download the template CSV. Note that there will only be two columns in this CSV: order_id and shipping_cost. Do not add or edit the number of columns or their titles. Upload the CSV once complete.
In the order_id column, you may include either the Shopify Order Number or the Shopify Order ID.
Shopify Order Numberis the number you will find prominently displayed at the header of any order page.Shopify Order IDis the number you will find in the URL of any order page.
See the screenshot below for an illustration of each type of number.
Option 4: Create Shipping Profiles
Shipping profiles represent your brand’s shipping rates. Use this option if you want the shipping value in Triple Whale to display how much you pay to ship orders to your customers. You can create shipping profiles based on country/region, weight and shipping method.
On the Cost Settings page under Shipping, click Create a Shipping Profile. Title the shipping profile and select whether this profile will relate to orders Worldwide or be limited to a specific country or region. Click Next.
Next, select the type of shipping rate that this shipping profile should use:
Fixed Rate: Using this type of shipping rate will assign a single rate for every order fulfilled to the selected region.
Please note that you can add different rates per time period. So if your shipping rate to USA was $5 in January, and $6 in February, you can add both of those prices by clicking on the clock icon within the field to change the historical data.
Weight-based tiered rates: This option allows you to assign a specific rate for various weight ranges per order fulfilled to your selected region.
You can also input any additional rates that apply to the selected region. Click Fulfillment Methods to see a dropdown of additional cost options.
When complete, click Save.
Editing Shipping Profiles
As times change, your shipping costs will likely change. You can edit any existing Shipping Profile to reflect these changes. This allows you to gain a better read on your profitability by updating your shipping costs to reflect your true profit margin.
Locate the Shipping Profile you'd like to edit on the Cost Settings page, and click the Edit button. Click the Calendar icon in the Shipping Rate text field.
Now you can Add a Cost and identify the date from when this change took effect. Click Continue, then click Save.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. If I have more than one of the above shipping options set up, will Triple Whale assign double shipping costs to my orders?
Here's a quick summary of how Triple Whale makes a final determination on shipping costs when one or more settings are applied:
Priority 1: Shipping costs imported from Shopify Shipping, ShipStation, or ShipBob
Priority 2: Shipping costs set as equal to Shipping Charged (option 1 above)
Priority 3: Shipping costs imported from CSV files
Priority 4: Shipping profiles
2. What happens if an order comes in, and the weight does not fit into one of the weights defined in one of my shipping profiles?
That order will not be assigned a shipping rate. We recommend adding a weight range that includes a very high maximum weight to ensure this edge case is covered.
3. I created a shipping profile, but I don’t see that data reflected in the Summary Dashboard. Is it broken?
Once a shipping profile is created, it can take a few hours for your costs and profit margins to be recalculated. Try checking back later in the day to see an updated report.
4. What happens if I upload two CSVs containing costs for the same order/s?
We recommend avoiding this method. If you upload additional orders with shipping costs associated, these new costs get added to any previous uploads. Previous CSV data does not get overwritten when you upload more data.