Checkout methods

A checkout method is what the customer sees and picks: "GLS to your door", "BOX NOW locker", "UPS Ground". Each one has a connection, a service and a way of arriving at a price.

Carrier → Checkout methods → New method.

The method

Field
Name	What the customer sees at checkout
Handle	Commerce stores it on the order as `carrier-<handle>`
Enabled	A disabled method is never offered
Store	On a multi-store site: one store, or all of them
Connection	Which carrier account ships it
Service	The carrier's services, listed for the connection you chose. Services that deliver to a pickup point are marked
Delivers to a pickup point	The customer chooses a locker, parcel shop, post office or store, and cannot pay until they have. Only offered for carriers that have pickup points

Drag methods on the index to set the order they are listed in.

Price

Flat price

One price, whatever the cart.

Weight table

Rows of up to this weight → this price, in the store's weight unit. The first row whose weight is not exceeded sets the price. A cart heavier than the last row is not offered the method at all.

Up to (kg)	Price
2	3.50
5	4.90
10	6.50
31.5	9.90

This is how most European carriers are priced: their APIs do not quote, and your contract has a price list. GLS, DPD, BOX NOW and the national posts have no live rates.

Live rate from the carrier

Carrier asks the carrier for a price for this cart, to this address, for the method's service. If the method has no service set, the cheapest service the carrier offers is used.

Field
Markup (%)	Added to the carrier's figure first
Markup (amount)	Added after the percentage
Fallback price	Charged when the carrier cannot be reached, refuses, or does not offer the service to this address. Blank hides the method instead

A method set to a live rate on a carrier with no rates API will not save.

Live rates need a shipping address. Until the customer has entered one, the method shows its fallback price, or is hidden.

Live prices are cached for rateCacheMinutes (default 15) per cart, keyed on every line's quantity, weight and dimensions and on the destination — so an unchanged cart costs one API call, and a changed one is always re-priced. See Configuration.

Pricing never fails a checkout. A carrier that is down, slow or refusing costs you one method's live price — replaced by the fallback, or the method hidden — and nothing else. The reason is written to Craft's log.

For every pricing mode

Field
Free over	Item subtotal at which this method becomes free. Blank for never
Round up to	`0.5` always charges in halves, `1` in whole units. Rounds up, never down. Blank for no rounding

Free-over is checked after the method's conditions, so a method that does not ship to a country is not offered there free either.

When it is offered

Condition
Only to countries	Comma-separated codes: `HR, SI`. Blank for anywhere
Never to countries	Comma-separated codes
Min / max weight	In the store's weight unit, for the shippable contents of the cart
Min / max subtotal	On the item subtotal

A method that fails a condition is simply not offered. Non-shippable line items, and line items with free shipping, do not count towards the weight — the same rule Commerce's own shipping uses.

Packing

Carrier turns the order's line items into parcels before it rates or ships them. The plugin setting picks the default strategy; a method can choose its own.

Strategy	What it does
Pack into boxes	Biggest items first, each into the first open box it fits (by its sorted edges, remaining volume and the box's max weight), otherwise into the smallest empty box that takes it. An item no box can take ships on its own
Everything in one parcel	One parcel. The smallest of your boxes that holds the lot by volume gives the dimensions; without one, the largest item's edges are used
One parcel per item	Every unit ships alone, in its own dimensions

Boxes are set on the settings screen: name, length, width, height, empty weight and max weight, in the store's own units. With no boxes defined, Pack into boxes behaves like Everything in one parcel.

Carrier also respects the carrier's own parcel weight limit (31.5 kg, 150 lb, and so on): a parcel that would exceed it is split.

The packer is honest about its limits. It uses volume as a proxy for geometry, not a 3D solver, so it will occasionally decide two long items fit side by side when only one does. For orders of more than 500 units it packs by weight alone. You can always change the parcels on the order's shipment screen before you buy the label. See Labels.

Products with no weight send no weight, unless you set Weight for items with none in the settings. Most carriers bill by weight, so fill weights in.

Freight methods

For an LTL carrier (TForce, Old Dominion, Estes, XPO, R+L, SAIA) the method has two more fields:

Field
Freight class	The NMFC class for every handling unit, as a string: `70`, `92.5`. A connection can set its own default too
Handling unit	Pallet, crate, carton or drum

Each parcel the packer produces is one handling unit. Weight goes out in whole pounds and dimensions in whole inches, both rounded up. A handling unit with no class, on a method and a connection with no default class, is refused with the unit named — nothing is guessed. See LTL freight.

Extras (accessorials)

Always add lists the extras this carrier understands: liftgate at pickup or delivery, residential pickup or delivery, inside delivery, limited access, delivery appointment, notify before delivery, hazardous materials, signature, adult signature and Saturday delivery. Every shipment on the method is booked with the ones you tick.

Only what the carrier can do is listed, so a method cannot ask for a liftgate the carrier would silently ignore. For freight, each carrier lists only the extras it can both price and print on the bill of lading, because a liftgate that was quoted but left off the BOL is how surprise invoices happen.

You can add extras to a single shipment on the order's shipment screen.

How Commerce sees them

Carrier methods are registered with Commerce as shipping methods. They appear next to any shipping methods you set up in Commerce itself, in cart.availableShippingMethodOptions, with their price for the current cart. Nothing in your checkout templates needs to change to offer them.

{% for handle, option in cart.availableShippingMethodOptions %}
    <label>
        <input type="radio" name="shippingMethodHandle" value="{{ handle }}"
            {{- cart.shippingMethodHandle == handle ? ' checked' }}>
        {{ option.name }} — {{ option.priceAsCurrency }}
    </label>
{% endfor %}

A method that is unavailable for a cart — wrong country, too heavy, a live rate with no fallback and a carrier that did not answer — is not in the list.

The whole price is charged as one shipping adjustment on the order. Carrier works out the price itself, per cart, so Commerce's shipping zones and per-item rates are not involved.

If the method delivers to a pickup point, add the picker to the same step. See Pickup points.

Events

Methods::EVENT_BEFORE_SAVE_METHOD and EVENT_AFTER_SAVE_METHOD fire around saves, and Rates::EVENT_AFTER_QUOTE lets you adjust or withdraw a price. See Templating and events.