Delivering, not just collecting

Aura could already take an order a customer comes to fetch (§34). This is the other half: charging for delivery, and printing the sheet that goes on the parcel.

It stops short of a courier integration on purpose. Booking a collection through a carrier's API means their credentials, their sandbox and their outages — and you would not be able to send a single parcel until all of that worked. Rates you copy off your courier's price list, plus a waybill you can print, is the part that lets you sell delivery this afternoon.

40.1 Setting your rates

Back Office → Delivery → Rates. Each option is one of three shapes:

• One flat price — "Courier, R99". Simplest, and right for most shops.
• By weight — the bands off your courier's sheet. A ceiling is inclusive: a parcel of

exactly 1 kg takes the "up to 1 000 g" band. Leave the last band's ceiling empty for "and anything heavier". If you don't, a parcel over your heaviest band is refused rather than priced — deliberately, because inventing a price is how you ship at a loss.

• By zone — a price per area. Bands may also carry a weight ceiling, which gives you a

zone × weight table.

Free over. Optional on any option: "free over R750". It applies only once a price has been found, so spending enough never turns "we don't deliver there" into free delivery.

40.2 Zones

Delivery → Zones maps a postcode's opening digits to a zone name — 80 → Cape Town metro. The longest match wins, so 8001 → CBD sits inside 80 and takes precedence. Type a postcode into Check a postcode to see which zone an address would land in before a customer does.

An address in no zone gets no zone-priced option. That is the honest answer, and the customer sees the same thing you do.

40.3 Weights

A weight-priced option needs to know what things weigh: Menu → edit product → Shipping weight (g). Leave it blank and Aura treats the product as unweighed — not weightless. A basket containing anything unweighed will not quote a weight-priced option, rather than quoting the lightest band for a case of wine.

The weight field is there whether or not you count the product's stock: a t-shirt nobody counts still has to be posted.

40.4 The parcel

Delivery → Parcels lists every one, newest first. Each gets a waybill number the moment it is raised (WB-20260804-000001), and that number is unique for the life of your account.

Packed → Shipped → Delivered, one button at a time — the parcel only ever offers the move it can actually make. A delivered parcel cannot be un-packed. Cancelling needs a manager, because a parcel already on a van means a refund or a recall.

Waybill prints an A4 sheet: the address as large as the page allows (that is what the courier reads), your details as the sender so a failed delivery comes back to you, the waybill number as a scannable barcode and as digits somebody can read down a phone, the service and weight, any delivery notes, and a signature block. Reprint it whenever you like — it is generated from the parcel, not stored.

Two things on that sheet are copies taken when the parcel was raised, on purpose: the address and the price. A customer who moves house must not rewrite where last month's parcel went, and next month's rate rise must not rewrite what this one cost.

The weight prints as "Not weighed" rather than "0 g" when nobody weighed it. A courier charging by weight needs to know the difference, and so does anyone checking their bill.