A live rate tells you what freight costs. A rule decides what the customer pays.
Fare Freight quotes the real price from your own carrier accounts. That rate is honest, but it is blunt — it knows nothing about your free-shipping promotion, your trade customers, or the lane that always costs more than the rest. Shipping Rules sit on top of the live rate and put those decisions back in your hands.
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Same order, same carrier, a different answer — because you wrote the policy down once instead of fixing it up afterwards.
NFMMachShipAllied ExpressDirect Freight
BigPostKISAustralia Post+ more on request
Why rules existWhy a raw carrier rate isn’t the whole answer.
The rate is the cost. The price is a decision, and it’s yours to make.
01 Free shipping is a promise with no price attached
Offer it across the board and you carry the freight on every order, including the long interstate ones. Most stores want the promotion — they just want a floor under it.
02 A flat rate is wrong in both directions
One number for every postcode overcharges the customer down the road and undercharges the one across the country. You lose the sale at one end and the margin at the other.
03 Not every customer should see the same price
Wholesale accounts, trade buyers and long-standing customers usually sit on different terms. Without rules, that lives in someone’s head and gets fixed up manually after the order lands.
How it worksAdd it, order it, and it applies at checkout.
01 Add a rule and pick its type
Choose from free shipping above a cart subtotal, a postcode margin, a product-type rule, a customer-specific rule, or a location-wise carrier rule. Fill in the threshold or the amount, and write a short description so you remember why the rule exists.
02 Put them in priority order
Rules are evaluated in the priority order you set, so the specific ones can sit above the general ones. A rule for one product type or one customer takes its place ahead of the blanket rule you use for everything else.
03 They apply on top of the live rate at checkout
The carrier quote is still calculated properly from your dimensions and packaging. The rule then decides what the customer sees — cleared by a free-shipping threshold, adjusted by a postcode margin, or routed to the carrier you nominated for that warehouse.
The ledgerThe five rule types.
| Rule type | What it does |
|---|---|
| 01 Free Shipping | Shipping goes free once the cart subtotal passes a threshold you set. |
| 02 Postcode Margin | Add or discount a percentage or a fixed amount by postcode — for the lanes that always run dearer, or the ones you want to win. |
| 03 Product Type Based | Keyed to your Shopify product types, autocompleted from your live catalogue as you type. No hand-keyed lists to keep in sync. |
| 04 Customer Specific | Different treatment for the customers who are on different terms — wholesale, trade, or accounts you’ve negotiated with. |
| 05 Location-wise Carrier | Choose which carrier serves which origin location, so each warehouse quotes through the account that suits it. |
All five are carrier-agnostic. They apply to whichever of your connected accounts produced the quote, so changing carriers doesn’t mean rebuilding your pricing policy.
In practiceThe details that keep it manageable.
Off is not the same as deleted
Every rule can be enabled or disabled on its own. A seasonal free-shipping promotion goes off at the end of the run and comes back next time, with its settings intact.
Each rule carries a description
Write down why it’s there when you create it. Months later, when the person editing your shipping isn’t the person who set it up, the reason is on the screen.
Product types come from your own catalogue
The product-type field autocompletes against the types already in your store, so a rule matches what you actually sell instead of a typo nobody notices until an order slips through.
Rules work with your other pricing controls
Alongside them you still have a store-wide fixed fee or percentage markup, and per-product free shipping, a discount off the live rate, a fixed price, or an extra charge per additional unit.
Who this is forFind your store in the left column.
| If this is your store | The rule that covers it |
|---|---|
| Running a free-shipping offer on heavy goodsYou want the offer, and you want it to stop applying below a sensible basket. A threshold rule states that once, instead of it being a note on a landing page and a manual refund later. | Free Shipping |
| Shipping nationally on uneven lanesSome postcodes cost you every single time. A postcode margin lets you carry that cost deliberately rather than discovering it order by order. | Postcode Margin |
| Retail and wholesale side by sideCustomer-specific rules mean your trade accounts get their terms at checkout, not after a phone call. | Customer Specific |
| Shipping from more than one locationOrders already quote from the right origin automatically. A location-wise carrier rule decides which carrier serves each of those origins. | Location-wise Carrier |
Before you askCommon questions.
If yours isn’t here, ask it on a call. Fifteen minutes, no prep needed.
Does a rule replace the live carrier rate?
No. The carrier is still quoted properly from your product dimensions, packaging and destination. The rule decides what happens to that quote before the customer sees it — cleared by a threshold, moved by a margin, or handed to a nominated carrier.
What happens if two rules could apply to the same order?
That’s what the priority order is for. Rules are evaluated in the order you set, so put the more specific rule above the broader one and you decide which takes precedence.
Can I set a rule up now and switch it on later?
Yes. Rules are enabled and disabled individually, so you can build the promotion before it starts, leave it off, and turn it on when you’re ready. Turning it off afterwards doesn’t lose the configuration.
Do rules have to be rebuilt if I change carrier?
No. Rules sit above the carrier layer and apply to whichever of your connected accounts produced the quote. You connect your own accounts, and new carrier connections get added on request.
Made in AustraliaTell us the shipping policy you run today.
Fifteen minutes. Describe the thresholds, the lanes and the customers you treat differently, and we’ll show you what each one looks like as a rule.
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