Shipping with Square Online
About Square Online shipping
As you receive orders from your Square Online site, you can ship your physical items from wherever you are all throughout the globe. You can also decide which regions you’ll ship to, how much to charge and configure other settings based on your needs.
Before you begin
Shipping settings from your Square account don’t sync to Square Online.
For more information on managing shipping rates in Account & Settings, check out how to Set up shipping rate profiles.
Create a shipping profile
To start, you’ll need to create a shipping profile. A shipping profile is a combination of settings that control where and how you’ll ship your items. There are two types of shipping profiles:
The default shipping profile applies to all of your shippable items except those included in a custom profile. To set up a default shipping profile for all items:
- From your Square Online Overview page, go to Fulfilment > Shipping.
- Under ‘Shipping profiles’, select Add shipping profile.
- Enter a name for the profile and choose Default (all items) as your profile type.
- Select +Add countries and check any countries you’ll ship to. Select Done.
- Select Add rate to choose a rate option from the dropdown menu. Complete all other details and select Done.
- Review your profile and select Save when finished.
Note: You can set up multiple default shipping profiles as long as the location information (e.g. states, prefectures, provinces, countries) is unique to each profile.
A custom shipping profile lets you set up unique shipping rates and regions for specific items. For example, you might sell items that you can’t ship to particular locations due to restrictions. Creating a custom shipping profile for these items lets you exclude any restricted regions. They also work with your default shipping profile to allow more flexibility in how you ship your items.
To set up a custom shipping profile for specific items:
- From your Square Online Overview page, go to Fulfilment > Shipping.
- Under ‘Shipping profiles’, select Add shipping profile.
- Enter a name for the profile and choose Custom (specific items) as your profile type.
- Select Choose items and check the items you want to include in the profile. Select Add items when finished.
- Select +Add countries and check any countries you’ll ship to. Select Done.
- Select Add rate and enter your details. Per order applies the rate to the entire order if any purchased item is part of the custom profile. Per item applies the rate to each purchased item that’s assigned to a custom profile. Select Done.
- Review your profile and select Save when finished.
Note: You can set up additional custom profiles following the same steps, but you can’t add an item to more than one custom profile.
Note: You can restrict shipped orders to only certain regions by setting up shipping for those regions only.
Shipping rate options
When adding a rate to your shipping profile, which types you choose depends on what you’re shipping. Here’s a quick overview of your options.
Set a single price for shipping, and charge either per order or per item. This is a good choice if you want to keep things simple and know that your shipping costs don’t vary much.
Offer free shipping based on order weight, order price or for all orders. Use this in conjunction with other rates to give your customers a deal on larger purchases (for example, ‘Free shipping on all orders over $50!’).
Set your own rates based on the weight of all items in an order. This can work well when you ship within a limited area. This option will not take into account the distance to the destination or what carriers actually charge.
To set up a shipping rate by order weight, you’ll need to make sure you’ve specified a weight for each of your items. To start:
- From your Square Online Overview page, go to Items > Site Items.
- Select an item from your list.
- Under Fulfilment, make sure Shipping is ticked so you can add a Shipping weight in the text box.
- Select Save when finished.
Note: If the weight of all items in an order is 0, the weight will automatically default to 0.1 lb/kg.
Learn more about how to add items and categories to Square Online.
Charge shipping based on the total price of an order. You could use this option to discount shipping for customers who spend more than a certain amount on a single order.
Charge shipping based on the number of items in an order. This is helpful if you’re selling items of a similar size and weight and your cost increases when you need to ship multiple items. This option will not take into account the distance to the destination or what carriers actually charge.
Rates for order weights, order totals and item quantities have a fallback rate option, which is what applies when you get an order that doesn’t fit into any of the shipping conditions you’ve set up. This is so you don’t have to be responsible for shipping costs in cases where a customer orders a combination of items you hadn’t anticipated or didn’t account for during initial setup.
Stock locations
You’ll also need to choose the location that shipping orders will decrement stock from. To start:
From your Square Online overview page, go to Fulfilment > Shipping.
Under ‘Shipping from’, select Edit by the location you want to update.
Choose a location from the drop-down menu and enter your location details.
Select Save when finished.
Update fulfilment settings for items
If you haven’t already, be sure to visit your Square Item Library to assign Shipping to the items you want fulfilled via shipping. To learn more about updating fulfilment methods for items, check out how to Set up items for your online store.
Non-physical items and shipping
Here are some ways your non-physical items are related to shipping:
If you sell non-physical items, they won’t count toward the order weight, order total or item quantity when calculating shipping rates.
You can use your shipping settings to limit where non-physical items are available for purchase. Learn more about how to limit the availability of non-physical items.