Shipping rules

A shipping rule is a saved shipping setup: which connected carrier and product to use, which sender address to print on the label, which destination countries it covers, and which conditions set the checkout price. Use rules when the same combination repeats. A shopper in Denmark should get GLS home delivery at 39 DKK; a shopper in Sweden should get PostNord. Without a rule, you pick carrier and product on every shipment.

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What a rule does

A rule is used in three places:

1. Checkout rates — Shopify and WooCommerce offer matching rules as shipping options. The shopper’s destination country, cart weight, order value, and item count decide which rules appear and what they cost. See Checkout.
2. Orders — When the shopper (or a shipping-method mapping) picks a rule, the order stores it. Creating a shipment from that order fills carrier, product, services, and sender from the rule.
3. Shipments — You can apply a rule to a draft or pending shipment, or leave the shipment on manual carrier settings.

When you send a shipment that has a rule, the rule also drives optional document generation, auto-print, and return behaviour.

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Where to find them

Shipping Rules is a top-level item in the sidebar, between Carriers and Shipments. The older Settings → Shipping Rules path redirects here. The list shows each rule’s name, carrier, destination countries, and a short conditions summary. Click Add Shipping Rule to create one, or click a row to edit it. Filter the list by search, carrier, or brand from the header filter.

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Create a rule

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Conditions

Conditions answer: does this cart get a shipping price from this rule, and how much? They do not pick a carrier by SKU or by order channel. Those are not condition types. The five types the form offers: Every condition also has a Shipping Price and a Currency. That price is what the shopper pays at checkout when this condition is the best match. You can add several conditions on one rule. Click a condition card to edit it, or use the trash icon to remove it.

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How Zippendo picks a price

All conditions on the rule are evaluated. The matching condition with the lowest shipping price wins. A 2 kg cart that matches both “0–5 kg at 39 DKK” and “flat rate 49 DKK” pays 39 DKK.

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Hard limits

Above the conditions, Hard Limits (optional) skip the entire rule before conditions run:

• Total weight minimum / maximum (kg)
• Order value minimum / maximum (same currency as the order)

If the cart is outside any limit you set, the rule is hidden at checkout and its conditions are not evaluated.

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Examples that exist in the product

Build these with the fields above — not with SKU or channel conditions, which the form does not have. By destination country. Create one rule per region. Set Receiving Countries to DK for domestic GLS, and a second rule with SE and NO for PostNord. Country is the first filter at checkout. By weight. Add a Weight condition for 0–5 kg at 39 DKK and another for 5–20 kg at 59 DKK. Or set a hard-limit max of 20 kg so heavier carts never see this rule. By order value. Free shipping over 500: Order Value, operator at least, value 500, shipping price 0. A Value Range of 0–499 at 49 DKK covers the rest. By item quantity. Quantity, at least 3, shipping price 0 for “three items ship free”. Flat rate fallback. Add Flat Rate last so any cart that did not match a tighter condition still gets a price. Without a matching condition, checkout hides the rule. By order channel. This is not a condition on the rule. On the store’s Orders & checkout tab, tick which rules appear at checkout. If you select none, every org rule that matches the destination is offered. Shopify stores without carrier-calculated shipping map method names to rules instead — see shipping method mapping. By SKU. There is no SKU condition. Split those orders with a dedicated channel, a brand, or pick the rule on the order yourself.

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Carrier products and extra options

The Product list comes from the carrier catalog for the selected connection. Home-delivery and parcel-shop (service point) products are different products — a parcel-shop rule requires a pickup point when you apply it to a shipment that does not already have one. Additional Parameters appear when the product (and the services you ticked) define them. GLS PrivateDelivery often has none. Other products may ask for return options or similar carrier-specific fields. Required parameters must be filled before the rule saves. If you later make the carrier or sender address exclusive to another brand, saving this rule fails until you change the Brand field or those references.

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Documents, printing, and returns

These settings run when a shipment with this rule is sent.

• Generate Proforma Invoice / Generate Commercial Invoice — Zippendo builds customs documents for international shipments. Some carriers file those documents themselves; the form then tells you Zippendo will not generate copies.
• Generate Packing List — packing slip with package and item details.
• Auto-Print Labels / Auto-Print Documents — send the PDF to an approved label or document printer when the shipment is sent. Printers must be Active.
• Return Shipping Rule — pick an inbound rule to use for returns. Auto-create return on dispatch creates and sends that return when the outbound shipment is dispatched. See Returns.

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Brands

If the organisation uses brands, a Brand field appears on the form. A brand-assigned rule only matches that brand’s orders and may only reference carriers and sender addresses that brand can use (its own, or organisation-wide). Unassigned rules stay organisation-wide.

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How rules are chosen (there is no priority field)

Rules do not have a priority number or first-match-wins order. At checkout

1. Load the channel’s linked rules, or all organisation rules if none are linked.
2. Keep rules whose Receiving Countries include the destination.
3. Drop rules that fail hard limits.
4. Drop rules whose conditions do not match (a rule with conditions and no match is hidden).
5. Offer every remaining rule as a rate. Home-delivery rules appear once; parcel-shop rules expand into nearby pickup points.

Several rules can appear at once. The shopper picks one. Within a single rule, the cheapest matching condition sets the price. On an order or shipment The rule is the one already stored on the order (from checkout or mapping), or the one you assign with Configure. Creating or sending a shipment does not re-run condition matching to pick a different rule.

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Edit, disable, and delete

Click a row (or Edit in the row menu) to open Edit Shipping Rule. Change fields and click Update Rule. There is no enable/disable toggle. A saved rule is always a candidate at checkout (if countries, limits, conditions, brand, and channel linking allow it). To stop using a rule:

• Delete it, or
• Remove destination countries / tighten hard limits so it no longer matches, or
• Unlink it from the order channel’s checkout rate list.

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Apply a rule when you ship

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From an order

Open the order. The Shipping rule card shows the assigned rule, or No rule on order. Orders without a rule and without shipments also show a Configure Shipping Rules prompt. Click Configure, pick a rule (or No shipping rule (manual)), and Apply. If the order already has draft or pending shipments, you can apply the same rule to those shipments in the same dialog. When you click Create Shipment on an order that already has a rule, the modal uses that rule by default — carrier, product, services, and sender are filled. Use Configure carrier manually instead if you need a one-off exception.

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From a shipment

Draft and pending shipments show a Shipping rule card on the overview. Manual setup means carrier settings are edited on the shipment itself. Configure opens the same kind of picker. Applying a rule replaces the shipment’s carrier settings and sender. If the product is a parcel shop and the shipment has no pickup point yet, you choose one before the apply succeeds. You can still change carrier or product on a pending shipment after a rule is applied.

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Automations

In the automation builder, the Apply Shipping Rule action sets a chosen rule on a shipment (for example after shipment.created). That is the same apply as the modal — it does not re-evaluate conditions. See Building an automation.

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Test and verify

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Condition Tester

On the create or edit page, click Test. Enter sample Weight (kg), Order Value, and Quantity. The tester uses the same matching rules as checkout:

• Hard limits skip the rule entirely.
• Every matching condition is listed; the lowest price is marked (best).
• A free (0) price and a large spread between matching prices get a warning.

The tester does not book a shipment and does not need the rule to be saved first.

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Confirm a live rule

1. Place a test checkout (or use checkout rates in a development store) to a country on the rule. The option name should be your rule name.
2. Open the synced order. The Shipping rule card should show that rule as Active.
3. Create and send the shipment. The carrier and product should match the rule. If you enabled auto-print or documents, check the shipment’s documents tab and the printer job list.

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Common pitfalls

• No rates at checkout. The destination country is missing from Receiving Countries, hard limits exclude the cart, or every condition failed to match. A rule with conditions and no match is hidden, not offered for free. A rule with no conditions (only possible via API or older data) is offered at price 0.
• You expected first-match priority. There is no priority. Checkout shows every matching rule. Narrow countries, hard limits, or channel linking if you see too many options.
• SKU or channel is not a condition. Link rules on the order channel, or assign a rule on the order. Do not look for a SKU picker on the condition modal.
• Total vs subtotal at Shopify checkout. Total conditions never match during Shopify checkout. Use Subtotal for live rates.
• Parcel-shop product, no pickup point. Applying the rule to a shipment without a service point opens the pickup-point picker. Checkout already stores the shopper’s choice when they picked a parcel shop rate.
• Brand mismatch. A brand-locked rule will not quote on another brand’s storefront, even if you linked it.
• Plan limit. Creating more rules than the plan allows opens an upgrade prompt. The reference page is Shipping rules.
• Create Rule stays disabled / validation errors. Name, carrier, product, address, at least one country, and at least one condition are required.
• No success toast on create. After Create Rule, the signal is the redirect back to the list with the new row.

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Related

• Reference: Shipping rules
• Create a shipment
• Checkout · Live rates in Shopify · Shipping method mapping
• Carriers · Orders · Returns · Labels and printing
• Auto-print labels · Brands · Building an automation
• Field-level: Shipping rule fields · Apply a shipping rule · Auto-print