Add shipping buffers

You can add positive or negative buffers to your account to cushion or subsidize shipping or landed cost. Buffers will adjust the totals seen and paid by your consumers at checkout.

Available buffers 

• Account buffer - Adds a buffer to all service levels, for all carriers. Increase or decrease the total shipping cost amount by a percentage of the order subtotal and initial shipping cost.
• Carrier buffer - Adds a buffer to all service levels, for a specific carrier. Increase or decrease the total shipping amount for all service levels under a carrier by a set amount or percentage.
• Service level buffer - Adds a buffer to a specific service level. Increase or decrease the total shipping amount for a service level by a set amount or percentage.
• Duty/tax buffer - Increase or decrease the duty and tax total by a set amount or percentage.

Positive shipping buffers

You may add a positive buffer if you want to collect extra funds to cover costs associated with:

• International shipping risks, e.g., Lost or stolen packages or HS code adjusted by a customs official
• Warehousing costs, e.g., handling and packaging
• Foreign exchange

For reasons like those above, you may add a positive percentage or flat rate buffer such as the ones shown in the following examples:

• $5 carrier or service level buffer that adds $5 to the carrier-calculated shipping cost in order to account for handling and packaging fees - This means that you will charge your customer $5 over what your carrier will charge you to ship the package.
• 5% carrier or service level buffer that adds 5% to the carrier-calculated shipping cost in order to account for theft and lost packages over time - This means that you will charge your customer 5% over what your carrier will charge you to ship the package.

Negative shipping buffers

You may add a negative buffer if you want to absorb some of the shipping costs yourself, lowering the cost to your customers. Here is an example:

• Subsidizing your negotiated shipping rates or duty and tax to be more competitive

For this or another reason, you may add a negative percentage or flat rate buffer such as the following:

• 50% carrier or service level buffer that subtracts 50% from the carrier-calculated shipping costs - This reduces the cost of shipping offered to your customers at checkout.

Add a buffer 

1. Log in to Dashboard and go to Settings -> Buffers in the sidebar.

2. Select Add buffer and select the type of buffer you'd like to add.

3. Select whether to increase or decrease totals with the buffer.

4. Set the percentage or fixed amount the buffer will increase or decrease the totals by.