045 Systems 03

Shipping Rules AI

Scheduled

Takes the shipping logic nobody wants to maintain — zones, weight breaks, dimensional rules, carrier splits, the exceptions stacked on the exceptions — and lets you state it in plain words instead of a spreadsheet.

System03
PlatformSHOPIFY
StateSTANDBY
01 / FUNCTION

What it
does

The hardest of the three systems and the least glamorous. Shipping logic is where a store quietly loses money. A rate fires when it should not, or does not fire when it should, and nobody notices for a month.

01

You state the rule in plain words

Write it the way you would explain it to someone starting on Monday. No rate table, no condition builder, no nested spreadsheet you are afraid to touch.

02

It holds the edge cases

Weight breaks, oversize and dimensional items, remote postcodes, carrier splits, orders that have to leave from two warehouses. The parts that make shipping logic long rather than difficult.

03

You test it before it goes live

Replay a rule against orders you have already shipped and compare what it would have charged with what you actually charged. Nothing reaches checkout until you have seen that comparison.

04

You can ask why a rate showed

Every rate carries its own working: which rule matched, which one overrode it, and which services were excluded before pricing. You get an answer, not a shrug.

02 / RESOLUTION

One rule,
resolved

A rule as a merchant would write it, and the rate it produces for a single order. This is the designed behaviour rather than a recording. The system is not in build yet, and we are showing you the shape of it so you can tell us where it is wrong.

Rule test
Shipping Rules AI · rule set 03 Design preview
Merchant Free shipping over $200, metro only. Anything over 22 kg goes by road, not express. Remote postcodes are a flat $18 on top. Anything longer than 1.2 m is oversize — $25, and it cancels the free shipping.
Shipping Rules AI Read back: four rules, one of which overrides another. Free shipping applies in metro zones above $200. Weight above 22 kg forces the road carrier. Remote postcodes add a flat $18. Oversize is any side longer than 1.2 m, adds $25, and suppresses free shipping. Saved as one set. Nothing changes at checkout until you tell it to. Parsed: 4 rules, 1 override
Merchant run it on last Tuesday’s order: 24 kg, 1.4 m long, remote postcode, cart was $260
Shipping Rules AI One rate at checkout: $77.90. Road freight for that zone is $34.90 from your imported table, plus $18.00 remote and $25.00 oversize. Free shipping never came into it — the destination is not metro, so the $200 threshold was not in play, and the oversize rule would have suppressed it anyway. Matched: zone 3 Applied: oversize surcharge
Merchant why didn’t express show
Shipping Rules AI Your express service is capped at 22 kg by the carrier and this order is 24 kg, so it was excluded before pricing rather than priced and discarded. If you want express offered above the cap, that is a change to your rule, not to the system. Excluded: weight break 22 kg
Illustration: example rule and example order, not a real merchant’s data
03 / SEQUENCE

How it
goes in

Four steps. The last one is the one that matters: nothing takes over your live rates until you have watched it agree with them on orders you already shipped.

01

Install

Add it to your store. Your checkout keeps doing exactly what it does now.

Step 01
02

Import your current rates

Your zones, rate tables, carrier services and product weights come across as they stand. Nothing is rewritten on the way in.

Step 02
03

Write your rules in plain words

Say what should happen. It reads the rule back to you as conditions so you can see whether it understood the same thing you meant.

Step 03
04

Replay last month before you switch over

Run the new rules across the orders you already shipped. Every difference is listed with the rule that caused it. You switch over when the list looks right.

Step 04
04 / SPECIFICATION

The
detail

This one is designed and not yet in build, so the rows below describe intent. We would rather leave a row blank than fill it in with something we have to walk back.

Platform Shopify.
Surface Your shipping settings in the Shopify admin, and the rate shown at checkout.
Reads Your existing zones, rate tables, carrier services, and product weights and dimensions.
Tests against Your own past orders, replayed before anything reaches checkout.
Explains Every rate it returns: the rule that matched, the rule that overrode it, and the services excluded before pricing.
Status Scheduled. Designed, not yet in build.
Pricing Not set. To confirm
Availability No date published yet. To confirm
05 / COMMS

Ask us
about it

Send us the shipping rule you most dread editing, the one with the exceptions stacked on it. We will tell you straight whether this is designed to hold it.