If you ship relatively inexpensive, light-weight products (think t-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, CD’s, etc.) from the US to international markets and you are not using FedEx International MailService (FIMS), get ready to have your international sales revolutionized.
Here’s the description from the FedEx website:
FedEx International MailService® is a contract-only service that helps you tap into worldwide opportunities by helping you save money through shipment consolidation, cut down on paperwork needs, and provide delivery expectations for your customers. Simply consolidate your packages, label the bag, and have your FedEx courier pick it up. That’s it. We’ll sort, stamp, and deliver it to your customer, leveraging the destination country’s postal service.
What that boils down to is really low rates (like a few dollars for sub-1lb packages) to anywhere in the world in a reasonably good timeframe (FedEx takes 4 – 7 days to get your package to the destination country, handles all the import paperwork, and then hands it off to the local postal delivery service there. Total delivery time is generally 2-3 weeks). If you are familiar with the FedEx SmartPost service, FIMS is like an international version of that. For many US-based shops looking to ship internationally, it can be a game-changer.
But getting the WooCommerce cart calculator to show your customer the right shipping rate for FIMS can be a little tricky since your contracted rate is weight-based but also based on the aggregate of all the FIMS packages you ship on a given day (not per package). So you have to do some tweaking of the rate calculation if you want to be able to show your customer the lowest possible rate without you losing money on the shipping.
Important Note
FIMS is a contract-only service from FedEx. You must request to enroll in the service through your FedEx representative before you will be able to ship via FIMS and make use of this plugin.
Features
This WooCommerce Shipping Zone aware plugin includes:
- Apply FIMS rate in 1/10 pound increments for maximum accuracy
- Limit the FIMS rate to specified minimum / maximum charge
- Customize the shipping rate description your customer sees for FIMS
Upgrade to the PREMIUM version for these additional features:
- Optionally add the FedEx fuel surcharge to each shipment
- Add a configurable package weight to each order based on product dimensions
- Optionally tag individual products that should not add any packaging weight
- Limit FIMS availability to specified order weight ranges
- Limit FIMS availability to specified order subtotal ($) ranges
Download & install the zip archive
The plugin package installer can be downloaded from the WP2E project tab called “code”.
1 – Select the version to download if this option is available otherwise the “latest” version of the main plugin will be used.
2 – After downloading the zip archive install the plugin package installer in you local environment and activate the script from the plugin list.
3 – Under the section “Plugins” of the admin dashboard you should see a new “Dependencies & Licenses” link. Follow the instructions from this panel to finalize the installation of the missing dependencies.
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- Give a name to your project
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- Download the Installer Package
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- Install & activate the plugin locally
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- Install the suggested dependencies
Tips: Use the WP2E panel to add/suggest new dependencies to the local installation. Press F5 in the list of dependencies if the changes are not displayed right away.