Using the Rate Sandbox

Testing your rates via your store checkout is a good way to ensure that your customers are seeing the shipping rates you expect but it’s a slow process. Whilst you’re getting things set up you can use the Rate Sandbox in the app to quickly test your rates.

The Rate Sandbox allows you to enter a delivery address and a selection of items and run a test to see what the app will send back to Shopify when they request rates for you shop.



To use the sandbox, click the link in the main menu. You’ll need to add some address details to start with. Most fields are optional though you will at minimum need to set a country and postcode (if the destination country uses postcodes).

Next, you can optionally add some cart items. You can search through your store inventory and select as many products or variants as you like. Once a product is selected you are free to modify the quantity of each item.

When your test is set up, simply click ‘Run test’ and you’ll see the results that the app calculates. You will be able to see rates via the Rate Sandbox during and unlimited development trial without needing to set the first name field to ‘Addition’ like you would at checkout.

ⓘ It is important to remember that the Rate Sandbox shows what the Postcode Shipping app will send to Shopify when they request rates from us. This might differ from what you and your customers see at checkout. There are a variety of reasons for this including other rates being set up in Shopify or if your store uses multiple locations or delivery profiles.

Including inactive resources

It can sometimes be helpful to include inactive Shipping Zones, Regions, Rates, Modifiers and Product Groups when running a test via the Rate Sandbox.

This is particularly handy when you are setting up Product Groups and you want to keep certain groups inactive so that the products in them are considered part of the 'General' group.

To include inactive resources, simple tick the box above the "Run Test" button:




Just bear in mind that the results that you'll see via the sandbox won't reflect what customers will see at checkout until you make the inactive resources active.

Updated on: 23/03/2023