Index
- What you need to get started with Fastway
- Enabling the Fastway app in your Netcash Shop
- Calculating the right shipping cost per order
- Setting up packaging options
- Setting up shipping rates and delivery times
- Customising customer delivery information with Netcash Shop
- Processing orders with the Fastway app
- Additional settings
What you need to get started with Fastway Couriers
You can package and ship your customer orders with Fastway using the integrated Fastway Courier app available in the Netcash Shop App Market. The app is pre-installed for all new Netcash Shop customers, so you can get your online store’s shipping set up ASAP.
To set up the app, you’ll need to create a Fastway Couriers eWallet Account. This gives you control over your shipping and packaging costs in real-time, so that your store and customers benefit from the full range of Fastway shipping services.
- Visit www.fastway.co.za > Tools > eCommerce
- Complete the form and a Fastway sales representative from your local franchise will get in touch to help set up your account.
- Be sure to set up an eWallet with your account – this saves you R2 per parcel and gives you visibility and control over your courier costs in real-time. You can top-up your eWallet as you need to. If you don’t have an existing eWallet account with Fastway, select ‘No’ on the application form, and vice versa.
- You’ll receive your Customer Account details directly from Fastway. Note that there is an annual subscription fee charged by Fastway of around R500 ex VAT. Rates may vary from year to year, so we recommend chatting to Fastway for the latest rates when applying for your account. These fees are billed to you directly by your local Fastway franchise.
- Packaging can be purchased from your local Fastway franchise/depot if your online business will be using their standard packaging sizes (A2-A5 parcels, called “satchels”).
- It is recommended that you have access to a printer at home, in the office, or at a trusted local print store in order to print shipping labels (waybills) and manifests.
Please note: Fastway Couriers does not ship parcels over the weight of 30kg (actual or volumetric). Any items that are more than 30kg would default to another shipping option which you can set up in your Netcash Shop (i.e. at checkout, a customer would not be able to choose Fastway Couriers for delivery if their order contained an item greater than 30kg).
Enabling the Fastway app in your Netcash Shop
Once you’ve received your customer account details from Fastway and paid your subscription fee, you’re ready to get started. Watch the tutorial video and follow the steps below to complete your account setup.
- Login to your Netcash Shop dashboard > Apps or find the Fastway app pre-installed under Shipping & Pickup > Fastway Couriers.
- Use your Fastway Courier Customer Account details to set up the app and click ‘Save’.
You will now see your details have been updated in the app dashboard, displaying your eWallet balance and account settings. You can manage shipping labels, view parcel manifests, print labels, and set shipping rates all from the app.
Calculating the right shipping cost per order
In order for Fastway Couriers to calculate shipping and packaging requirements in real-time for your customer orders, you will need to add the weight and dimensions of each product to your catalog.
To add this information to your products, you have 2 options:
- If your products have different dimensions and weight, go to Catalog > Products and update each product individually, or use the Bulk Editor for updating multiple products and variations at once.
- Alternatively, you can stay in the Fastway app and edit these directly in the Product Settings section.
- If your products have the same dimensions and weight you can set these defaults in the Fastway app instead, and these will be used to calculate all delivery costs.There is then no need to update these in the Netcash Shop Catalog.
Once added, Fastway will use this information to choose the most efficient shipping rate and packaging for your customers’ orders based on what items they have in their cart on checkout and their delivery address.
Setting up packaging options
Setting up packaging is easy with Fastway. By default, their standard parcel satchels (secure packaging for set sizes) are loaded into the app. These are created to provide you with the most economical option for each order. You can choose to use these and their related shipping costs for your products, as well as add custom packaging sizes depending on your store’s needs.
To add custom packaging options:
- Click ‘Edit’ on the Packaging settings section
- Name your packaging and add the measurements and weight of it under the Set Custom Packaging section. Click ‘Add New Box’ to save this packaging type, and add as many others as you need. All custom packaging types will be shown in this section, and you can add/remove them at any time.
- If you’d like to use only custom packaging, you can disable/enable Fastway’s default shipping satchels easily by turning them on/off in the settings.
Setting up shipping rates and delivery times
No matter your shipping strategy, you can update the Fastway app to suit your business’s needs.
You can setup and combine:
- Fastway standard rates – this is the default setting and is ideal for when you’d like to charge your customers the rate calculated by Fastway at checkout. You can also set up Free Shipping in addition to these rates.
For example: For orders of R1,000 or more, you offer free shipping and customers who checkout with orders of this value aren’t charged for delivery. Fastway still charges your eWallet for the parcel as usual.
For all other orders of less than R1,000, you charge Fastway’s standard shipping rates. This means that customers are charged a set rate at checkout for delivery based on the size of the item(s) in their cart and their delivery address. Fastway still charges your eWallet for each parcel, but you recover that cost from the customer. - Subsidised shipping – ideal if you’d like to increase or decrease the shipping rate Fastway provides in order to subsidise the cost of packaging your products by a % or Rand value.
For example: You add extra packaging to your parcels that costs you R5 per order. So, you increase the standard shipping rates by that amount or more to make shipping more affordable and profitable for your business. At checkout, the customer sees the total charge for delivery, and Fastway only charges you their standard delivery rate for that parcel, meaning that you gain R5 or more per order. - Flat rate shipping – this works well for businesses that would like to charge a set delivery rate regardless of the shipping cost Fastway charges.
For example: You offer one rate of R50 for delivery to all customers, regardless of where they live. At checkout, every customer is only charged R50 for delivery, and Fastway charges you the full shipping rate for each parcel. This means that sometimes you break even on a parcel’s shipping cost, make a small profit, or make a loss, depending on the size/weight and shipping address of the parcel. - Free shipping – you can specify a minimum order value and offer free shipping to customers who meet this requirement.
Fastway standard rates:
To charge your customers the standard rate that Fastway charges per parcel, simply leave all settings on the Shipping Rates page blank. At checkout, Fastway will calculate the delivery fee your customer is shown based on the items in their cart and delivery address.
Subsidized shipping
To change the price of delivery shown to your customers, simply add the amount in Rands or percentage value to the “Amend the Price” section of the Shipping Rates settings.
For example, if you’d like to add R10.00 to every order’s delivery cost to cover the cost of packaging, add “10” to the text box.
Flat rate shipping
Flat rate shipping is the best choice if you’d like to charge a standard rate for shipping for all orders, or set a flat rate for different shipping zones regardless of the rate Fastway calculates at checkout.
For example, if you wanted to set different rates per delivery region, you could set these up as follows in the screenshot below. If you wanted to instead charge a flat rate of R50 for delivery, regardless of the region, you would simply update these to each reflect “50”.
Free delivery
Free delivery is a common incentive online stores use to encourage customers to purchase more items to a greater value. You can offer free shipping with Fastway for all delivery regions, or set specific order values per region. In the example below, the store has chosen to offer free delivery for all orders of R4,000 or more except for Outlying areas, where free shipping is only offered on orders of R9,999 or more.
Delivery times are set by default to Fastway’s standard time frames per zone, defined as:
- Inner Short-haul: ½- 1 day
- Local: 1-2 days
- Major: 2-3 days
- Regional: 3-5 days
- Outlying: 5-7 days
You can update these to include your order processing and preparation time by adding a day or more to each time frame. For example, if you are typically able to have an order ready for shipping within 1 day, you can add a day to each time frame in the app. To use Fastway’s time frames, you can leave each box blank instead.
Customising customer delivery information with Netcash Shop
Ensuring your customers are charged the correct shipping cost and provided with a smooth delivery service is important to any online business. Fastway and Netcash Shop make this easy – all you need to do is add ‘suburb’ and ‘postal code’ to your checkout fields.
Fastway uses Netcash Shop’s Store Labels to get this information. To update checkout to ask for a customer’s suburb, in your store dashboard go to Settings > Edit Store Labels > and click ‘Add a custom label’ > and search “city”.
- Update Checkout.AddressFields.City.required to “Please enter your suburb”.
- Update Checkout.AddressFields.city to “Suburb – no special and/or other characters”.
For the postal code, a change is needed as well. Go to Settings > Edit Store Labels > click “Add a custom label” > and search “postal code”.
Change Checkout.AddressFields.Postal.postal.optional to “Postal code”.
At checkout, customers will now see the required fields of ‘Suburb’ and ‘Postal code’ for delivery, which will be captured in your Netcash Shop dashboard under Orders as well as in the Fastway app to create the relevant waybill.
Processing orders with the Fastway app
Once a customer has placed and paid for their order in your online store, it is automatically captured in the Fastway app for you to manage. Only paid orders will be visible in the app.
Before processing your orders for shipping, it’s important to:
- Check that you have enough funds in your eWallet balance to create your shipping labels.
- Validate the customer’s address to match Fastway’s database (and avoid any delivery issues)
Based on the customer’s address, click into the ‘Suburb’ box and start typing a suburb name.
Select the correct suburb and postal code combination from the dropdown menu, and the rest of the information will autofill.
To add packaging to an order, simply select the packaging type (preset as Fastway’s satchels or your own custom packaging options) and input the exact weight of the parcel.
If there is more than one parcel in the order, click ‘Add parcel’ to add the next item.
Once you’re happy with the details, click ‘Submit’. You can now create your shipping label.
- Click ‘Create label’ and the order (consignment) will be added to your Fastway Manifest, and the order status will update to ‘Shipped’. The tracking number will reflect in your Netcash Shop Orders panel, as well as be present on all update emails sent to the customer about their order.
From the Fastway manifest, you can print/reprint labels; bulk print labels (“Print all labels”); or “close and print the manifest” to print out the list of parcels you are shipping.
When you are ready to hand over your parcels, give your local Fastway franchise a call to arrange a collection time. You can also set these up with the franchise in advance, which is ideal if you have specific days of the week or month that you ship orders on.
When the courier comes to collect, each parcel will be scanned in. You can track your parcels each step of their journey via the app in your Netcash Shop or via your Fastway Customer Account login.
Shipping region
If your store only delivers to certain areas or within a certain radius, you can use Netcash Shop’s settings to create these zones.
Advanced settings:
You can specify the areas you’d like to deliver to by using postal codes, provinces, and countries with this option. This means that customers will only see Fastway as a delivery option if their delivery address falls within one of these areas. Please refer to our guide on Shipping Zones for more detailed information.
Limit delivery by zones on a map:
This is a great option for creating your own delivery radius on a map. The map will use your store’s location as a starting point, and you can create for example a 10km delivery radius around it. You can add one or multiple delivery zones, depending on your needs. This means that customers will only see Fastway as a delivery option if their delivery address falls within one of these zones. Please check out our article on Zoned Shipping here.
