Calculated Shipping for Advanced Logistics Program

To better serve our merchants and customers, we launched the Calculated Shipping feature for the Advanced Logistics Program. Calculated Shipping automatically calculates the shipping cost that Wish should pay to merchants for each relevant order based on package weight and the latest Advanced Logistics Program’s pricing cards. It helps merchants more easily manage the shipping prices of their products included in the Advanced Logistics Program and it also provides customers a better shopping experience by allowing them to pay for shipping based on the package weight.

Currently, this feature is optional for all Mainland China-based merchants, so merchants can enable and disable the feature for each of their products (see “Set up Calculated Shipping for products” section above for details).

This article walks merchants through a number of details and some frequently asked questions around this feature.

Calculated Shipping overview and benefits

Calculated Shipping is launched to specifically address the following two challenges in order to streamline processes for merchants and enhance shopping experience for customers:

• Historically, merchants often needed to update the shipping prices of products included in the Advanced Logistics Program. This can be a manual and time-consuming process, in part due to the frequent changes to the Advanced Logistics Program shipping pricing cards.  
• When customers place an order with multiple quantities of one product, the total shipping price that customers pay is simply quantity * single-item shipping price. In other words, customers’ shipping prices increase linearly with quantities of the product. We understand this process has caused some confusion and complaints from customers, leading to incomplete transactions and cart abandonment. 

Upon enabling the Calculated Shipping feature for a product, merchants simply provide the package weight of the product, and the Calculated Shipping feature will take care of the rest. Specifically:

• Calculated Shipping will automatically calculate and display to merchants in Merchant Dashboard (see “View the shipping cost via Merchant Dashboard” section below for details) the shipping cost that Wish should pay to merchants for each order of the product based on the package weight and the latest Advanced Logistics Program’s shipping pricing cards. Merchants no longer need to manually set product-level shipping prices again.
• Meanwhile, when customers purchase multiple quantities of a product in an order, they pay for shipping based on the weight of items in an order, potentially improving conversion, cart completion, and sales.

Once merchants receive orders for products with Calculated Shipping enabled, they can continue to fulfill orders through the correct A-Super WishPost logistics channels (see “Fulfillment policy for relevant orders” section below for details) and pay the shipping fee to WishPost based on the actual weight of the package (per usual process of Wish weighing packages and charging merchants shipping fees via WishPost accordingly). After order fulfillment, merchants will receive the automatically calculated shipping cost (displayed in Merchant Dashboard when merchants first enable Calculated Shipping and provide the weight for a product; see “View the shipping cost via Merchant Dashboard” section below for details) as the payment for shipping. 

If merchants have provided accurate package weight of a product when enabling Calculated Shipping, the final amount Wish pays merchants for shipping the order to customers (i.e., the shipping cost) will be approximately the same as the amount merchants pay to WishPost (i.e., the shipping fee). Merchants therefore should effectively break even on shipping, which eliminates the need to manually and frequently adjust shipping prices or strategize for shipping-related margin. Meanwhile, merchants can also start to strategize for product-related margin and adjust product prices accordingly.

Here is a flow chart of how the Calculated Shipping works:

Example:

Assume customer A has purchased product B and this is the applicable shipping pricing card:

	weight range (g)	item fee (RMB)	fee per kg (RMB)
A-Super STANDARD (otype：5002-1)	<= 600	17	128
	600 - 850	20	120
	850 - 3000	21	119

(To check the latest shipping pricing cards for all destination countries supported by the Advanced Logistics Program, please visit this article.)

Below is the example of different order situations with 15% commission rate:

Order	Merchant-provided package weight	“Quantity” within the order	Calculated Shipping cost  (i.e., Wish pays merchants for shipping fees)	Calculated Shipping price (i.e., Customers pay for shipping)
1	0.25 kg	1	17+128*0.25=49	49/0.85=57.64
2	0.25 kg	2	17+128*0.25*2=81	81/0.85=95.29

 

Fulfillment policy for relevant orders:

After merchants enable the Calculated Shipping for a product, all fulfillment policies related to the Advanced Logistics Program still apply to the corresponding orders, as these orders are still Advanced Logistics Program orders. 

The only updated requirement for shipping these orders is the WishPost logistics channel selection criteria. Specifically, Advanced Logistics Program shipping orders created in WishPost for orders of products enabled with the Calculated Shipping will be subject to the following updated logistics channel selection criteria:

• Within a WishPost shipping order with at least one order’s product enabled with the Calculated Shipping, if the (quantity x merchant price) + calculated shipping cost for all corresponding Order IDs from Merchant Dashboard is less than $10, merchants may choose either the A-Super ECONOMY or A-Super STANDARD WishPost logistics channel to fulfill.
• Within a WishPost shipping order with at least one order’s product enabled with the Calculated Shipping, if the (quantity x merchant price) + calculated shipping cost for at least one corresponding Order IDs from Merchant Dashboard is greater than or equal to $10, merchants must choose A-Super STANDARD WishPost logistics channel to fulfill.

Note that for merchants currently providing only CNY price value for their products, the above threshold is ¥70.

For Advanced Logistics Program orders of products not enabled with the Calculated Shipping, please check this logistics channel selection criteria.

Set up Calculated Shipping for products

Before enabling Calculated Shipping for products, please make sure that products have accurate package weights and update package weights as needed.

Enable Calculated Shipping for products individually: 

1. Navigate to Products > View All Products page.
2. Locate the relevant product and click the link in the “Country Shipping Price” column.
3. On the “Edit International Shipping Options” page, toggle the “Enable Calculated Shipping for this product” to “On” and click “Save Changes” to confirm the setting.

If merchants later intend to disable Calculated Shipping and manually set the shipping prices themselves, they can simply toggle the “Enable Calculated Shipping for this product” field to “Off” and click” Save Changes” to confirm the setting.

Enable Calculated Shipping for products in bulk: 

1. Navigate to Settings > Shipping page.
2. Click on the Calculated Shipping tab.
3. Select the option to enable or disable Calculated Shipping.
4. Click “Apply bulk update”. 

Merchants can also enable/disable Calculated Shipping via API using the Products API > enable_disable_calculated_shipping > enabled.

View the shipping cost via Merchant Dashboard

Once the Calculated Shipping feature is enabled per steps above, merchants can view the automatically calculated shipping cost by scrolling down to the bottom of the “Edit International Shipping Options” page. 

Note that the shipping cost calculated by the feature will only apply to destinations supported by the Advanced Logistics Program. For destinations enabled with Calculated Shipping, the calculated shipping cost will be displayed under the “Calculated Shipping Cost” column. Please note that the calculated shipping cost displayed here is the amount that Wish will pay to merchants for shipping Advanced Logistics Program orders for this product to customers, not the shipping price displayed to customers.

Additionally, the calculated shipping cost displayed here is for a single quantity. If customers purchase multiple quantities of a product in an order, the calculated shipping cost will be calculated based on the combined weight of items in an order.

Calculated Shipping will calculate the shipping cost per variation. Therefore, for products with variations that have different weights, the shipping cost will be a range, displaying the calculated shipping cost for the lightest and heaviest variation of the product. If a product has only one variation or all variations have the same weight, then a number (instead of a range) is displayed here.

After merchants ship an order, they may go to the Orders > History page “Shipping Cost” column to check the shipping cost (i.e., how much Wish should pay merchants for shipping) of that order. If there are multiple quantities in an order, the amount displayed is the average per-order-quantity calculated shipping cost (per the above-mentioned calculation based on combined weight of all items in that order). This average amount in a multi-quantity scenario will be different from the single-quantity calculated shipping cost displayed on the “Edit International Shipping Options” page shown above.

Frequently asked questions

1. What kind of products can I enable Calculated Shipping for?

Merchants can enable the Calculated Shipping feature for all product categories that are supported by the Advanced Logistics Program. For products not supported by the program or non-Advanced Logistics Program orders, we will still use the merchant-set shipping price.

To learn more about the unsupported product categories of the Advanced Logistics Program, please visit this article.

2. What if I forget to provide package weight or provide inaccurate package weight?

Please make sure that the correct package weight is provided for this product. If merchants do not provide the package weight in the Merchant Dashboard, we will check whether the product has previously been shipped and weighed by WishPost. If yes, Calculated Shipping will use the package weight recorded by WishPost. Otherwise, Calculated Shipping will assume the package weight is 0 and calculate the shipping cost accordingly. Once the product is shipped and weighed by WishPost, Calculated Shipping will use the actual weight to calculate the shipping cost for future orders.

Starting September 14, 2022, Beijing Time, if merchants do not provide the package weight and WishPost does not have historical data for the product, Calculated Shipping will not calculate the shipping cost. Instead, the merchant-set shipping price will be applied for the product.

In order to try to break even on shipping, it is vital that merchants provide accurate package weight in Merchant Dashboard.

• If the merchant-provided package weight is higher than the actual weight of the package (weighed by WishPost for charging merchants WishPost shipping fee), the calculated shipping cost Wish pays merchants will be higher than the actual shipping fee merchants pay to WishPost. However, the corresponding shipping price displayed to customers may also be relatively high, which may negatively impact customer interest or conversion.
• If the merchant-provided package weight is lower than the actual weight of the package, the calculated shipping cost will be lower than the actual shipping fee paid to WishPost, which means merchants lose money on shipping (instead of breaking even).

After enabling Calculated Shipping and breaking even on shipping, it is important that  merchants focus on only using product prices to strategize for their margin, and adjust product prices as needed. 

3. Which WishPost logistics channels’ pricing card will be used to calculate the calculated shipping cost?

Firstly, please note that if Calculated Shipping is enabled for a product, order value is defined as ‘(quantity × merchant price) + calculated shipping cost’ according to the Confirmed Delivery Policy. 

To calculate the order value, Calculated Shipping will first use the pricing card of A-Super ECONOMY WishPost logistics channel. If the order value is below the threshold of the Confirmed Delivery Policy, Calculated Shipping will apply the pricing card of A-Super ECONOMY WishPost logistics channel. If customers purchase multiple quantities of a product in an order and the order value is above the Confirmed Delivery Policy threshold, Calculated Shipping will then use the pricing card of A-Super STANDARD WishPost logistics channel.

4. In the progressive commission structure, how is an order’s commission fee calculated if Calculated Shipping is enabled for the corresponding product?

Details can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions section of this Help Center article about Wish’s commission models.

5. How will Calculated Shipping calculate the shipping cost for a special or sensitive product?

Currently, if the product has previously been shipped via WishPost, we will use the historical data to determine whether it is a special or sensitive product and use the corresponding pricing card to calculate the shipping cost.

For new products or any products that do not have historical data captured by WishPost, we will use the pricing card for general products to calculate the shipping cost. However, merchants are still required to pay the shipping fee to WishPost based on the actual product category.

Starting September 14, 2022, Beijing Time, Calculated Shipping will first check the product logistics information provided by merchants (i.e., whether the product contains powder/liquid/metal/battery) to determine the product type (general products, special products, or sensitive products).

Merchants can choose whether the product contains powder/liquid/battery/metal in the Custom & Logistics section for each product on the Merchant Dashboard. For products with a few variations, please fill in the product information for each variation as Calculated Shipping will calculate the shipping cost per variation. (To learn more about adding logistics information manually/via CSV/via API, please visit this article.)

If the product contains powder/liquid/metal, Calculated Shipping will use the pricing card for sensitive products. If the product contains battery, Calculated Shipping will use the pricing card for special products.

If none of the above attributes are selected, we will check whether the product has previously been shipped via WishPost. If yes, we will use WishPost’s historical data to determine the product type and use the corresponding pricing card to calculate the shipping cost. Otherwise, we will use the pricing card for general products to calculate the shipping cost. 

Please note that merchants are still required to pay the shipping fee to WishPost based on the actual product type (per usual process of Wish weighing packages and charging merchants shipping fees via WishPost accordingly). Therefore, we recommend that merchants provide accurate product information including product weights and product types after enabling Calculated Shipping for their products.

 

Please contact the Account Manager for any questions or feedback.