How to set up tiered shipping rates based on weight and quantity

Flat-per-item shipping breaks down once an order gets to ten or twenty items—most shippers charge by total weight or total quantity bracket, not by linear multiplication. WC Vendors Pro’s Tiered Rate system lets you and your vendors set those brackets directly.

WC Vendors Pro includes a Tiered Rate Shipping system. This guide walks you through setting up shipping tiers that move away from basic multiplication to create complex, incremental rules based on total quantity or total weight. This is especially important if you use Google Merchant Center, as it provides the accurate, granular shipping data required to keep your ad accounts in good standing and your customers happy.

Prerequisites

• WC Vendors Pro must be installed and active.
• If using weight-based shipping, ensure your products have accurate weights assigned in their Product Data settings.

💡 Note:
To learn how to add weight to standard products, refer to the WooCommerce Product Documentation.

Enabling the global tiered shipping system

To enable incremental shipping across your entire marketplace, you first need to activate the Tiered Rate system globally. This serves as the “fallback” rule if a vendor hasn’t set their own rates.

1. Navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping → Vendor Shipping.
2. Find the Shipping system dropdown and select Tiered Rate.
3. Choose your Tiered rate basis:
   • Quantity: Calculate costs based on the number of items.
   • Weight: Calculate costs based on the total weight of the items.
4. Add your Tiers: Click the Add Tier button on the Tiered rate table to define your price brackets.
   • Example (Quantity): 1 to 5 items = $10.00
   • Example (Quantity): 6 to 10 items = $15.00
5. Click Save Changes.

💡 Note:
The last tier in your table acts as a “catch-all”. If a customer buys more than your highest defined maximum, they will be charged the cost associated with that final tier. You can also leave the Max field blank. The placeholder reads “No limit”, which makes the last tier an open-ended catch-all without needing a maximum value.

Customizing tiered rates for specific vendors

You may have some vendors who ship bulky furniture and others who ship small jewelry. You can customize these tiers for individual vendor accounts to ensure their specific logistics are covered.

1. Navigate to Users → All Users and click Edit on a vendor’s profile.
2. Scroll to the Store Shipping General section.
3. Set the Shipping type to Tiered Rate.
4. Define the specific tiers that apply only to this vendor’s products.
5. Click Update User.

How vendors manage their own tiers

If you’re a vendor, you can also configure your own tiered shipping rates directly from your dashboard:

1. Navigate to your Vendor Dashboard → Settings → Shipping.
2. Select Tiered Rate as the shipping type.
3. Choose either Weight or Quantity as the tier type from the Basis dropdown
4. Click Add Tier to create and manage your own weight-based or quantity-based tiers.
5. Save your settings to apply the rates to your products.

Overriding shipping at the product level

For specific products that are exceptionally heavy or require special white-glove handling, you can set tiers directly on the product edit screen.

💡 Note:
The tiered-rate fields appear on the Shipping tab only when the vendor’s (or global) shipping is already set to Tiered Rate.

1. Open a product in Edit mode.
2. Go to the Product Data box.
3. Click the Shipping tab.
4. Choose either Weight or Quantity as the tier type from the Basis dropdown.
5. Click Add Tier and enter the tier ranges and costs for this specific product.
6. Click Update to save the product.

💡 Tip:
Tiered rate sources are checked per product. Products with their own tiers use those; everything else falls back to the vendor’s tiers (or the global setting if the vendor hasn’t set any). The matched fees from each group are added to give the final shipping cost.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the shipping cost falling back to the global rate?

Check if the vendor has their own tiers defined. If a vendor or product does not have specific tiered rates set up, WC Vendors will automatically look at your global settings to ensure a shipping fee is still charged.

Why isn’t the weight-based shipping calculating correctly?

Ensure that every product in the cart has a weight assigned. If a product has a weight of “0” or is left blank, it won’t contribute to the total weight calculation, potentially landing the customer in a lower (cheaper) shipping tier.

Why is Google Merchant Center still showing errors?

Ensure your tiers are clear and do not have “gaps.” For example, if Tier 1 ends at 5 items, Tier 2 should start at 6.

If a customer buys from two different vendors, how is the fee calculated?

The system groups items by vendor. It will calculate the tiered cost for Vendor A’s items and add it to the tiered cost for Vendor B’s items.

Can I use decimals for weight-based tiers?

Yes. Tiers accept decimals—e.g. 0–1.5kg and 1.51–5kg.

Verify your tiered rates work

To verify your new setup:

1. Create a Test Product with a weight of 1kg.
2. Set a tier for 0-2kg at $10 and 2.01-5kg at $15.
3. Add three of these products to your cart (Total 3kg).
4. Verify that the shipping at checkout shows $15, not $30!

Need help?

If you have a question or run into any issues, we’re here to help.

• Premium users: Open a support ticket
• Free users: Visit our community forum