Non-physical items and shipping rates

Alpaca support > Non-physical items and shipping rates

Non-physical items and shipping rates

Updated on March 5, 2021

Shopify has a featured which lets you specify products as physical or non-physical items. This option has an effect on your checkout pages, and your Alpaca cart page integration.

When a customer tries to checkout with only non-physical items, Shopify will automatically skip the “shipping method” step in the checkout. This is because non-physical items are supposed to be things like digital downloads, gift cards, virtual classes, etc. which don’t require shipping, pickup, or delivery.

Alpaca will also automatically hide the “delivery methods” on the cart page if the entire cart doesn’t “require shipping”, or in other words, only contains non-physical items.

Convert non-physical items to physical items

Shopify has a bulk editor tool which lets you update many products at once. Here’s how to use the bulk editor:

Navigate to the Products tab in Shopify. Click on the checkbox at the top left, and then select Edit products.
Click on Add fields and then Requires shipping.
Make sure the Requires shipping checkbox is selected for all products that are supposed to be physical items. Your changes should be saved automatically.

Now when checking out with those products, you should see the Alpaca “delivery methods” integration on the cart page, and you should see the “shipping method” step in the Shopify checkout.

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