Shipping with Square Online
About Square Online shipping
As you receive orders from your Square Online site, you can ship your physical items from wherever you are all throughout the globe. You can also decide which regions you’ll ship to and how much to charge, and you can configure other settings depending on what your needs are.
Before you begin
Shipping settings from your Square account don’t sync to Square Online.
For more information on managing shipping rates in Account & Settings, check out how to Set up shipping rate profiles.
Create a shipping profile
To start, you’ll need to create a shipping profile. A shipping profile is a combination of settings that control where and how you’ll ship your items. There are two types of shipping profiles:
The default shipping profile applies to all of your shippable items except those included in a custom profile. To set up a default shipping profile for all items:
- From your Square Online Overview page, go to Fulfillment > Shipping.
- Under “Shipping profiles,” select Add shipping profile.
- Enter a name for the profile and choose Default (all items) as your profile type.
- Select +Add countries and check any countries you’ll ship to. Select Done.
- Select Add rate to choose a rate option from the drop-down menu. Complete all other details and select Done.
- Review your profile and select Save when finished.
Note: You can set up multiple default shipping profiles as long as the location information (e.g. states, prefectures, provinces, countries) is unique to each profile.
A custom shipping profile lets you set up unique shipping rates and regions for specific items. For example, you might sell items that you can’t ship to particular locations due to restrictions. Creating a custom shipping profile for these items lets you exclude any restricted regions. They also work with your default shipping profile to allow more flexibility in how you ship your items.
To set up a custom shipping profile for specific items:
- From your Square Online Overview page, go to Fulfillment > Shipping.
- Under “Shipping profiles,” select Add shipping profile.
- Enter a name for the profile and choose Custom (specific items) as your profile type.
- Select Choose items and check the items you want to include in the profile. Select Add items when finished.
- Select +Add countries and check any countries you’ll ship to. Select Done.
- Select Add rate and enter your details. Per order applies the rate to the entire order if any purchased item is part of the custom profile. Per item applies the rate to each purchased item that’s assigned to a custom profile. Select Done.
- Review your profile and select Save when finished.
Note: You can set up additional custom profiles following the same steps, but you can’t add an item to more than one custom profile.
Note: You can restrict shipped orders to only certain regions by setting up shipping for those regions only.
Shipping rate options
When adding a rate to your shipping profile, which type you choose depends on what you’re shipping. Here’s a quick overview of your options.
Note: Set up Real-Time Shipping by upgrading your Square Online subscription.
Real-Time Shipping (RTS) offers the most accurate shipping rates and helps avoid under- or over-charging for shipping in North America. While checking out from your Square Online site, carriers will provide dynamic rate estimates based on distance, weight and the number of boxes needed to ship your items.
Learn more about setting up Real-Time Shipping with Square Online.
Set a single price for shipping, and charge either per order or per item. This is a good choice if you want to keep things simple and know that your shipping costs don’t vary much.
Offer free shipping based on order weight, order price or for all orders. Use this in conjunction with other rates to give your customers a deal on larger purchases (for example, “Free shipping on all orders over $50!”).
Set your own rates based on the weight of all items in an order. This can work well when you ship within a limited area. This option will not take into account the distance to the destination or what carriers actually charge.
To set up a shipping rate by order weight, you’ll need to specify a weight for each of your items in your Square Item Library. Learn more about creating and managing items from Square Dashboard for details.
Note: If the weight of all items in an order is 0, the weight will automatically default to 0.1 lb/kg.
Charge shipping based on the total price of an order. You could use this option to discount shipping for customers who spend more than a certain amount on a single order.
Charge shipping based on the number of items in an order. This is helpful if you’re selling items of a similar size and weight and your cost increases when you need to ship multiple items. This option will not take into account the distance to the destination or what carriers actually charge.
Rates for order weights, order totals and item quantities have a fallback rate option, which is what applies when you get an order that doesn’t fit into any of the shipping conditions you’ve set up. This is so you don’t have to be responsible for shipping costs in cases where a customer orders a combination of items you hadn’t anticipated or didn’t account for during the initial setup.
If you use Real-Time Shipping, the fallback rate will apply when the shipping carrier can’t supply a shipping rate automatically.
Stock locations
You’ll also need to choose the location that shipping orders will decrement stock from. To start:
From your Square Online Overview page, go to Fulfillment > Shipping.
Under “Shipping from,” select Edit by the location you want to update.
Choose a location from the dropdown menu and enter your location details.
Select Save when finished.
Update fulfillment settings for items
If you haven’t already, be sure to visit your Square Item Library to assign Shipping to the items you want to be fulfilled via shipping. To learn more about updating fulfillment methods for items, check out how to Manage Square Online item settings.
Shipping labels
As you fulfill orders, you can print labels directly from your Square account for any items you’ll ship. Learn more about how to .
Non-physical items and shipping
Here are some ways your non-physical items are related to shipping:
If you sell non-physical items, they won’t count toward the order weight, order total or item quantity when calculating shipping rates.
You can use your shipping settings to limit where non-physical items are available for purchase. Learn more about how to limit the availability of non-physical items.