GeoZones [for Dummies]

[Qphoria]

This seems to plague a lot of people so I will try to make some GeoZones for Dummies notes here:

Glossary
Country - A country entry in in OpenCart'
Zone - a section of the land residing within the country. States, Territories, Provinces that belong to a country
GeoZone - short for "Geographical Zone" and is a group of countries and/or zones that are in a user-defined area.

• GeoZones are created to help define a geographical "zone" of the earth to be used for either shipping or taxation.
• Separate GeoZones can be created for tax & shipping or sometimes combined
• GeoZones can be comprised from a single country or zone, or multiple countries and zones
• Think of a GeoZone as your own personal "Label" for existing countries and zones. If you were to redesign the world, you could label your own country called "Happy Hippo" and it would include whatever countries/zones you wanted.

Creating a "Shipping" GeoZone

• A shipping geozone is an area of land that you want to have specific rate(s) setup for.
• Name your zone something intuitive so you remember what it is for (e.g. "USA Shipping")
• When customers create an account, he chooses what zone and country he is from. If that zone & country match up with the same zones and countries within a specific GeoZone, it will show up during checkout.
• You can have multiple geozones with overlapping countries and zones. In these cases, both options will display during checkout and the customer can choose the cheaper option

How Geozones work with customer address
Geozones map directly to the Country and Zone that the customer chooses

If you have a GeoZone for
California, United States
Then all customers who choose California, United States for their Shipping address will match with that zone for shipping and/or tax options

If you have a GeoZone for
All Zones, United States
Then all customers who choose any state in United States for their Shipping address will match with that zone for shipping and/or tax options


Example. Create & Test a USA Shipping GeoZone
1. In the admin menu, Goto Admin->Configuration->Localisation->Geo Zone
2. Click "Insert" to add a new GeoZone
Geo Zone Name: USA Shipping Zone
Geo Zone Description: USA Shipping Zone
3. Click the "Add Geo Zone" button
Country: United States
Zone: All Zones
4. Save
5. In the admin menu, Goto Extension->Shipping
6. Edit one of the zone modules (like weight-based or zone plus)
7. There should be an entry for your new "USA Shipping Zone". Enter the rates as instructed.
(ex. 5:10.00, 7:12.00, 10:14.00, 50:63.50, 999:200.00)

Be sure that you set the ceiling high enough. For example, if you are configuring the weight-based shipping, and only go up to 20lbs, then if a customers cart totals 21lbs or more, he won't see the zone option available because the range is too small. So be sure to go high enough to cover large orders. This is typically when you start seeing this error: Error: Shipping method required!. It means that there are no available shipping options because the only one you have enabled doesn't cover all ranges. Also be sure you've added the geozones you need. If you add a geozone for USA only, then people with addresses outside of USA will not have any options.

8. Save and goto the front end.
9. Create a customer account and be sure to set the Country to "United States" and the zone to any state.
10. Buy a product and checkout. You should see the USA Shipping Zone option at the price level that matches the weight range of the products in your cart.


Creating a "Tax" GeoZone

• A tax geozone is an area of land that you want to have specific tax rate(s) setup for.
• Name your zone something intuitive so you remember what it is for (e.g. "California Tax Zone")
• The product gets set with the new Tax Class that associates with this geozone.
• When customers create an account, he chooses what zone and country he is from. If that zone & country match up with the same zones and countries within a specific GeoZone, it will apply the tax to the product during checkout. (Or immediately if Display Prices with Tax = True).

Example. Create & Test a USA Tax GeoZone
1. In the admin menu, Goto Admin->Configuration->Localisation->Geo Zone
2. Click "Insert" to add a new GeoZone
Geo Zone Name: California Tax Zone
Geo Zone Description: California Tax Zone
3. Click the "Add Geo Zone" button
Country: United States
Zone: California
4. Save
5. In the admin menu, Goto Admin->Configuration->Localisation->Tax Class
6. Click "Insert" to add a new Tax Class
Tax Class Title: California Tax 9%
Tax Class Description: California Tax 9%
7. Click "Add Tax Rate"
GeoZone: California Tax Zone
Description: CA Tax 9%
Tax Rate: 9.0
Priority: 1
8. Save
9. In the admin menu, Goto Catalog->Product
10. Insert/Edit products and find the Tax Class entry under the Data tab. Change this to the new Tax class.
11. Create a customer account and be sure to set the Country to "United States" and the zone to "California".
12. Buy a product that has the assigned tax class and checkout. On the confirmation page, the "CA Tax 9%" tax should be added to your Totals.

If you need to make a "Rest of the World" zone and don't want to have to manually add each country, I created this mod: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7512

[kdmp]

I had to comment on this because of the title. Love it! Thanks for posting this Q!

[amplifywebdesign]

Fantastic. I desperately needed this guide, thanks!

[Daniel]

Can I add this to the documentation?

[Qphoria]

sure

[brandonyim]

Hi,

I still can't get my weight based shipping. I'm from Malaysia, we have Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia. I want to set Peninsular Malaysia is Free shipping but East Malaysia is on Weight Based Shipping but I unable to make the Weight Based Shipping for East Malaysia work.

Hope anyone can help here.

Thanks.

[eqbourne]

I want to set up a GeoZone for just the continental 48 States in the US. I'm offering free shipping to just those states. Would I need to setup a zone for each of the 48 states?

[Qphoria]

Yes.

[daysgonebyantiques]

I've got a few (maybe 3 or so) zones or places I can't get rid of. I can only offer the free shipping to the Continental US, others I'm asking to contact me for a shipping quote before purchasing. Anyway, I have looked every place I know and I'm obviously still looking in the wrong place(s) because there are still some non Continental US places still lingering around. Any suggestions?

[Artlife]

I've got a few (maybe 3 or so) zones or places I can't get rid of. I can only offer the free shipping to the Continental US, others I'm asking to contact me for a shipping quote before purchasing. Anyway, I have looked every place I know and I'm obviously still looking in the wrong place(s) because there are still some non Continental US places still lingering around. Any suggestions?

there are several US zones other than states, minor outlying islands, guam , puerto rico etc. don't remember them all because I deleted all the zones except those I wanted for united states, so I could delete all the extra countries.
In fact I wish you could delete a country without having to delete the zones. maybe somebody can give a tip how to mass delete zones, because deleting the hundreds of zone pages took a long time.

[itw_matt]

maybe somebody can give a tip how to mass delete zones, because deleting the hundreds of zone pages took a long time.

Can't you just login to the database and delete directly the from the table "country" ?

M

[Artlife]

maybe somebody can give a tip how to mass delete zones, because deleting the hundreds of zone pages took a long time.

Can't you just login to the database and delete directly the from the table "country" ?

M

I don't know. I thought about that, but not being very database savvy I didn't want to screw it up.
Just seems odd you can't delete a country and the zones that go with it.

[adelaida]

to setup a zone for each of the 48 states.. endless work! is there any automation?

[dbreckling]

This may be common sense to everyone else, but I recently found this out the hard way: you can assign a zone to only one tax class. Basically, you can't have two tax classes for the same zone (even if the tax classes are the same rate but different names), and if you try to do this, OpenCart will only recognize one class, which may or may not be the one you are assigning to your products.

I thought it might be a useful addition to the docs, even if it's common sense to everyone else.

[Qphoria]

You can assign a zone to one tax class, but the tax class can have multiple tax rates

[tri1976]

I would like to have 2 weight based shipping categories: US and International. For US, it seems straightforward. For International, I gather I will need to create geozone "International" and manually insert all countries to it. Is this correct? I don't mind the work...just want to make sure this is the proper way of doing it. Thanks.

[Qphoria]

Yes, at this time that is the only way unfortunately.

[tri1976]

Thanks Q. Do you know if I can create 2 different shipping rules for different geozones. For example, free shipping for US if total amount $50 and free shipping International if total amount $70. Let me know if this question doesn't belong here, I'll start a new thread.

[Qphoria]

Yes.
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=12538&p=61456

[Marcel]

You can assign a zone to one tax class, but the tax class can have multiple tax rates

I have more than one tax rate and they all populate the Totals column.
In Colorado we have to collect State tax, CIty tax for the city where the store is and then for about 40 other cities within the RTD zone.