Just downloaded the trial version of SCCPro.
Is it possible to base shipping on size and weight. Many companies use a max size and weight to calculate shipping costs, just wondered if its possible to do this.
I was thinking along the lines of size as a volume and max weight in chosen units.

I have had this same issue, what we ended up doing was converting everything to a weight by calculating the cubic weight based on size. we have several items that are extremely light only, less than a gram, however even when packaged the actual weight still wasnt much at all, but the transport company would based it on the cubic volume of the package.
which quite often would make it over 500 grams for instance, even though the actual weight was maybe only 15 grams including the packaging.

So of course we would be charged for a parcel that was quite a lot more expensive than what you would normally expect.

we used a formula of weight = cubic volume (in metres) x 250

the weight figure was then entered in to the shopping cart creator pro as weight in grams. eg. so if the answer was 0.600 then this would be 6 grams

Thats the calculation that was given to us by the courier we use in Australia. So check with your courier they may have a slightly different formula they use.

Its a bit of work to calculate it all but can be done.

Our company currently uses a another cart solution that interfaces with our internal software. It would be great to switch over to some version of Shopping Cart (possibly Shopping Cart Creator Enterprise / Shopping Cart Designer Enterprise) but certainly shipping calculations would be a factor.

Unfortunately, in the US at least, billable shipping for companies like UPS can be significantly more complex in how they determine shipping costs than converting dimensional weight to billable weight - http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/ship/packaging/dim_weight.html.

Our current system keeps track of the actual weight of each item, the dimensions for each item (l x w x h), the number of items that pack to a box and the rules associated with each carrier (ex. UPS) and shipping method (ex. UPS Ground vs. UPS Next Day Air). Taking all of this into account it calculates the billable weight (actual or dimensional) for each shipping method and the number of boxes.

The system also allows for a number of other factors like a set handling charge per item or per box and /or a multiplier per shipping method (ex. UPS Ground @ 115%, UPS Next Day Air @ 119%, etc.).

There are still limitations with this system but it does get us closer to real world shipping calculations. For many though this would likely be more than is needed as a company shipping similar size/weight products could manually adjust for such considerations.

I think also you need to consider your actual needs versus what you can deal with. In other words, if you are an extremely huge company with a lot of products that deals in major volumes and needs the cart software to help with keeping Records and Bookeeping then you would need something much more robust than Shopping Cart Creator Pro.

Do keep in mind that although the Pro version of the cart software was given a lot more options, it's still built for the ease of use for the basic shop owner that just wants a web presence to be able to sell their products, it's in no way in competition with the major companies that have every bell and whistle you can think of. Think ease of use for those that aren't real great with dealing with those huge cart systems out there *coughs* *self* *coughs* lol. Many people can't figure out how to set up a lot of those really robust programs, they are horrendous in their setups. That's where the Shopping Cart Creator programs are extremely helpful and useful.

Not that you can't utilize them for large end companies mind you, there are a good handful here that do, just saying if you are needing a whole lot of integration with things then this would probably not be what you're looking for.

I myself have found it extremely useful and easy to use as well as easy to setup *grumbles... except the shipping and tax that is lol* so best way is to just check out the trial versions and see if they are what you need or not. If you see something very basic or even something not so basic missing that you feel is doable, by all means post your suggestions in the thread for the suggestions and who knows, you could see it in a future update

I definitely agree. Shopping Cart Designer Pro and Shopping Cart Creator Pro are great for what they are but for now at least they are just not quite what a company like ours needs. That's why I suggested that at some point there might be a place for a Shopping Cart Designer Enterprise and a Shopping Cart Creator Enterprise. We ship everything from ramps to stickers everywhere in the US so we would really have to have more complex shipping calculations. We may still use Shopping Cart Designer Pro and Shopping Cart Creator Pro for some little side sites though.

What I really like about this system is that these two parts are broken out separately and they're done as Windows programs (vs. hosted). I find the hosted solutions are just difficult to work with on the admin side of the equation. Having said that, I think for an enterprise solution more care would need to be taken to have a user interface that was a bit easier to sell to corporate (I like the playful graphics but maybe just a bit too much for the corporate world) and I believe we would need some divide on the creator side between things that should be changed with some frequency (departments, product information, images, etc.) and those things that should not be (sales tax, shipping methods, etc.).

At any rate, I just hope things keep moving forward with the shopping carts as I can see potential for a solution like this (pro with more features and/or enterprise with lots more features).