UPS Gateway & some Canadian rate variance issues

[michaeltansley]

First time posting here. Please forgive me if I don't get it exactly right.

Our website displays & uses prices in Canadian Dollars but we have noticed that when using the UPS Shipping Gateway there is a variance between the rate returned by the gateway and the rate returned by using the UPS website directly.

After some tracing and learning to read the XML logs it seems that the UPS gateway is sending a currency code of USD to the UPS api interface but it is also sending our item prices for valuation which are in CAD (Canadian Dollars). This accounts for the variation in rates since our dollar is less than the USD. This affects the shipment valuation which of course can adjust the rates especially for larger value shipments.

Is there some simple way of adjusting the UPS gateway to send CAD to UPS? I can't find anything specific. The company that hosts and looks after our installation of AbleCommerce Gold seemed to indicate that the software would have to be adjusted and recompiled. This seems excessive just to adjust a currency code.

The UPS gateway also converts everything to metric although it does convert properly and DOES send the correct measurement code to UPS. Any 'user-friendly' adjustments for this setting as well to turn off the conversion since our site quotes dimensions in feet, inches & pounds.

Thanks

Michael Tansley

[Katie]

Hello Michael,

Welcome to the forums. I certainly hope we can help you solve this issue.

I have a few questions...

1 - What version of AbleCommerce are you using. You can find this in the footer of the Merchant Admin pages.

2 - What is your warehouse address? Go to Configure > Shipping > Warehouses for this info.

3 - Have you made any customizations with regards to currency?

Thanks
Katie

[michaeltansley]

Hi Katie,

1 - AbleCommerce Gold (build 5078

2 - Sales Tax HST #101107399RT
4630 Dufferin St, #12A
NORTH YORK, ON M3H 5S4
CA

3 - None that I'm aware of.

Michael

[Katie]

Hi Michael,

I do believe this is working. Here is what I did to test:

1) Setup default warehouse using the information in your post above.
2) Configured a 1 lb shippable product to use the Canada warehouse.
3) Configured a currency for CAD. Used the Auto-Exchange update with exchange rate 1.0673
4) From the retail storefront, I changed the currency for a user to Canadian dollars.
5) Added the product from 2) above to cart and proceeded to checkout with UPS shipping methods configured.

I received 2 rates for an address in Toronto: UPS Next Day Air $30.41 and UPS 2nd Day Air $19.75

Then, I changed my currency back to USD and repeated step 5) above.

I received the same 2 rates for the same address in Toronto, except the amounts were changed to the following:

UPS Next Day Air $28.49 and UPS 2nd Day Air $18.50

So, it looks like this is working without any customization needed. I even went back to the change logs to make sure that we hadn't fixed a bug after build 5078, and nothing shows up.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Katie

[michaeltansley]

Hi Katie,

Hmmm, interesting. Wonder why we get different results.

We have the base default currency set to CAD for our store so where else could currency be setup?

Does the AbleCommerce UPS gateway always assume USD and expects the Canadian rate passed to it to be converted to USD?

Do we need to setup USD currency under the currencies section? Would this cause the UPS Gateway XML request to convert our price to USD to send to UPS?

Does this also apply to the parcel dimension? Our site uses pounds and inches but it is converted to centimeters & kilograms to send to the UPS gateway.

I am fairly new to this product and finding my way around it to be honest.

Michael