Shipping zones are specific geographical areas to which you can ship your products. These zones allow you to set shipping rates and delivery options based on the destination and create different shipping rates and options for different zones.
These Shipping Zones should be created within Shopify and the Swap Dashboard for Swap Global.
Defining Shipping Zones
Each shipping zone contains a country or set of countries or regions to which you want to apply the same shipping rates and options. Setting up shipping zones primarily aims to streamline the shipping process. By grouping locations with the same shipping costs and rules, you can provide accurate information to your customers.
Shopify shipping zones are related to Shopify Markets. To use Shopify shipping zones, the countries or regions included in your shipping zones must also be part of an active Shopify market. If not, customers from these countries cannot complete the checkout.
📖 To learn more about Shopify Markets, please refer to this article.
How to Set Up and Expand Shipping Zones
📖 Please refer to this article for information on creating and editing Shipping Zones.
Swap Shipping Zones
This section will explain how Shipping Zones in Swap work.
Details Section
The details section currently just consists of an input for the zone name. The name is the internal name used to reference this zone. It is displayed only to you.
Countries Section
The countries section is where you select which countries this zone should include. Any countries already in another zone will be disabled in the dropdown.
Taxes & Duties Buffer Section
In the Taxes & Duties Buffer section, you can add an optional buffer to the amount charged to customers for both duties and taxes. You can increase or decrease the tax and duties charged by a fixed percentage.
A decrease buffer allows you to partially or completely subsidise the cost of duties and taxes, resulting in a cleaner checkout experience.
An increase buffer allows merchants to cover extra fees that may not be accounted for at checkout.
Custom Fees Section
The custom fees section allows you to create as many custom fees as you like, which will be charged to the customer at checkout.
All custom fees created will be displayed and can be edited or deleted, and new custom fees can easily be created.
Clicking on a custom fee or the Add New Custom Fee button will open the custom fees form. All custom fees must have a name, which will be displayed on the order details page. The fee can either be a fixed amount or a percentage of the order subtotal.
⚠️ If VAT-inclusive pricing is enabled, the order subtotal used to calculate the fees will be the sum of the pre-VAT product prices, not the subtotal displayed on Shopify that includes VAT.
More information about custom fees can be found here.
Rule Settings
This setting controls whether tax-inclusive prices (e.g. including VAT or duties) are considered when evaluating subtotal-based shipping rules.
Example
Store Setup:
Free shipping rule for orders over $100.
VAT-inclusive pricing enabled.
VAT rate: 21%.
Customer Checkout:
Displayed subtotal (incl. VAT): $103.
Pre-tax subtotal (excl. VAT): $85.
Effect of the Rule Setting:
Setting | Subtotal Used | Free Shipping Applied? |
Enabled | Displayed subtotal ($103) | Yes |
Disabled | Pre-tax subtotal ($85) | No |
Why This Matters
If disabled, Swap evaluates shipping rules based on pre-tax subtotals, which can result in customers not qualifying for free shipping even though their displayed total exceeds the threshold. Enabling this setting aligns rule evaluation with what the customer sees during checkout.
Rules Section
The rules section allows you to create complex rules determining the shipping options displayed to customers.
A zone can contain as many rules as needed. The passing rule with the highest priority will display shipping options to the customer.
Clicking on a rule or the Add New Rule button will open the rule modal.
All rules require a name. This name is just used internally on the dashboard and is only displayed to you to reference the rule.
The rule interface is split into two sections: Conditions and Shipping Rates.
Conditions
This section determines which conditions must pass for this rule to be active. You can add conditions for either cart weight or cart subtotal.
Clicking the Add Condition button will show a dropdown menu for these two cart variables.
As many conditions as needed can be added to each rule. Conditions on the same variable will be joined with an OR. Groups of conditions on different variables will be joined with an AND. For this rule to be active, at least one condition line must pass for each cart variable.
Each condition line has three inputs:
The Comparison Operator: Greater than or equal to, greater than, less than or equal to, less than, and between.
The value to compare against.
The unit for the value: Currency or weight units depending on the condition variable.
In the example above, this rule will be active if the cart subtotal is greater than or equal to 100 GBP and the cart weight is less than 10 kg.
Shipping Rates
If a rule’s conditions pass, the customer will see all of the shipping options in this section.
The display name is the name for the shipping option displayed to the customer.
Shipping Rate Settings
When you open the dropdown for each shipping rate in your rule, you’ll see settings specific to that rate. These options allow you to control how the shipping method appears to customers at checkout and whether Swap Protect insures it.
Hide breakdown for this shipping method
Hides the line-by-line tax or fee breakdown typically appearing under this shipping method at checkout.
Enable this to maintain a cleaner, simpler checkout page without displaying detailed charges.
Remove “(Includes Taxes & Duties)” suffix
Removes the default “(Includes Taxes & Duties)” text appended to the shipping rate name by Swap Global.
If you prefer to display your shipping rate name exactly as you’ve set it (without automatically referencing taxes/duties), check this box.
Add Swap Protect insurance to this shipping method
Marks the shipping rate as “Protected” by Swap Protect. When customers select a protected shipping method, the shipment is covered by Swap Protect’s insurance.
Important Notes:
Rate Code Change: Enabling Swap Protect alters the shipping rate code prefix from SW-G- to SW-G-PRT-.
Updating Rate Name/Price: Change your rate settings if you want the rate name or price to reflect its protected status. Swap Protect will apply automatically, but you can choose the textual/price display.
Additional Reminders
These settings are applied individually for each shipping rate option.
Shopify and your WMS (Warehouse Management System) use the rate code displayed in this section to identify the selected rate for order fulfilment.
If you have local currencies active on your Shopify store, then Shopify will convert these rate amounts to the customer’s currency before displaying them.
Currently, only the store’s base currency will be an option in the currency dropdown.
If you change your base currency on Shopify, all the currencies in all your Swap shipping zones will be updated to match.
Rule Priority
To prevent unknown results when conditions for multiple rules pass, you must order the rules by priority. When shipping options are being determined for a zone, rules will be tested in priority order, and the first rule with passing conditions will have its shipping options returned. Rule priority can be changed by pressing the reorder icon and dragging the rule to a new position.
The rule at the top of the list has the highest priority.
Form Validation
The Save button will be grey when the page is incomplete or invalid and will turn green when the form is properly filled out. Clicking on the Save button when grey will display a message detailing what needs to be fixed. When the page is successfully created/updated, you will be redirected to the shipping page, and a success notification will be displayed.