In some circumstances it may be necessary to filter rates based on the postcode or zipcode a customer is in. Our extensions support several different methods for filtering based on zipcode:

The method you choose depends on your country location and postcode format in place.

With all the paid WebShopApps extensions you can put any combination of multiple countries, states, or postcodes on one line.

Examples where this is useful:

• Specify rates for all of Europe in one set e.g. ITA, FRA, DEU …
• Specify exemption rates for Alaska, Hawaii e.g. AK, HI
• Specify UK postcodes, e.g. BT%, IM%, GE%

Numeric Based Zipcodes

This approach is most commonly used in Australia and USA. It is not suitable for use in the UK or Canada.

You can specify a range of zipcodes to match on. For example if you put a range from 3000 to 4000 if the customer enters their zipcode as 3500 it will match on this row.

The following example shows usage when “Use Zip code Range to/From” is set to “Yes”

Here are some scenarios with rates that would be shown if using the table above :

UK Based Postcodes

Use UK based filtering if working on UK postcodes.

The filtering works by looking at the first part of a postcode.

Note that the whole postcode must be entered on the cart/checkout (for example, “SS1 1AA”, rather than “SS1″) – the extension will take the prefix of the postcode entered.

Let’s take the following examples:

The extension is intelligent enough to see that these postcodes need to match on SS9, E1, PA25 and PA2 respectively.

When in the UK we recommend you use UK postcode filtering if available.

This feature is not supported in the free Matrix Rate extension, we strongly recommend you purchase the Premium version or the even more powerful Product Matrix Extension if you wish to use postcode filtering in the UK.

WC postcodes – these are a special set of postcodes in London. They must be entered into your CSV in the following manner WC1A, WC1B etc…

An example of the format for filtering is shown in Product Matrix.

Note: In the Shipping Method configuration there are settings you will need to select to setup UK Based Postcode Filtering

Canada Based Postcodes

Use Canada based filtering if working on Canadian postcodes. The filtering works by looking at the first part of a postcode and matching this on the range specified in the csv file.

You specify in the zip from column the starting range e.g. A0A. In the zip to column specify the end range e.g. A8A. It will then match on all postcodes that start with A from 0A to 8A, so for instance A0Z would match, A7G would match, etc. 

This feature is not supported in the free Matrix Rate extension, only the Premium version and Product Matrix.

All other types of Postcodes: Pattern Based Filtering

There are 2 special characters:

To match all post/zip codes beginning with a a sequence. i.e. to match any postcode beginning with 902 you would enter 902%.

This is very powerful but doesn’t fit all requirements.

For example, if you need to use UK postcodes and treat the postcode EH12 2JK differently from EH1 2LD then  simply entering just EH12% would potentially match both if no space is present. This can be solved by creating rules using the underscore character “_” which represents one and only one character of any type per underscore used.

So you would create a rule such as:

This example shows usage when “Use Zip code Range To/From” is set to “No” and you are just pattern matching:

Here are some scenarios with rates that would be shown if using the table above: