Above 5 kg, two things change. Neither needs setting up, but both are worth knowing before a customer meets them.
The price starts to depend on distance
Under 5 kg a parcel costs about the same wherever in Australia it goes. Above it, distance counts — the same 8 kg box costs more crossing the country than crossing a city. TellShip prices this for you, from where you actually ship from, with nothing to configure.
The size of the box starts to count
Past 5 kg, a large light parcel can be charged on the space it takes up rather than what it weighs. A roomy box with 8 kg in it can be priced as though it held 9 kg.
This is the point at which describing your real boxes is worth doing — see Do I need to set up packaging? Below 5 kg it changes nothing.
The ceiling
22 kg is the limit for domestic parcels. Anything heavier is refused rather than quoted, so a customer sees no shipping option at all. If you regularly send more than that, it needs handling outside checkout.
International is capped at 2 kg.
What this means in practice
If your catalogue crosses 5 kg — some stores are all under, some are half over — the two things worth doing are:
- Make sure every product has a weight. Above 5 kg a missing weight does not just lower the price, it can put the parcel in the wrong pricing altogether.
- Describe the boxes you actually use, so the size counted is the real one rather than a standard parcel we assumed.