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Many of our international merchants ship according to their respective countries' regional shipping measurements. For example, they may need to weigh and measure their items by kilograms and centimeters instead of pounds and inches that our North American merchants would normally use.
Therefore, a common question we get asked often is whether there is a setting to change the store's weight/measurements to metric, or if the merchant would need to convert their metric units to standard and list them accordingly (i.e. writing 2.20 when you want to show 1 Kg).
The truth of the matter is that - when it comes to dimensions and weights - Shift4Shop is neither on the metric or standard system.
In reality, the requirement to specify your products in metric units is entirely dependent on your shipping carrier. As far as your Shift4Shop store is concerned, the numbers entered in the product's dimension fields are just that - they're simply numbers. They carry no denomination whatsoever.
When the cart sends a 5lb order's details to a specific carrier for real-time shipping rate calculation; the cart doesn't send an order as weighing 5lbs. Instead, it simply sends the order as weighing "5" in the weight field. The shipping carrier receiving the request then applies this number to their default method of measurement and applies the denomination.
To explain it a different way; if you are using a North American carrier like USPS and your orders are 20Lbs, the Shift4Shop software sends USPS an order weight of "20" and it's up to USPS to return rates based on their standard weight denomination. (i.e. Lbs.)
On the other hand, if your shipping carrier is a Regional based carrier such as Australia Post, the order weight is calculated based on their metric unit of weight measurement, which is grams.The same order listed above would be sent to AUPost as weighing "20" and the shipping rate would calculate as 20 grams, thereby returning a likely incorrect rate.
Therefore, if you are primarily using a shipping carrier that deals in metric units, your product weights and measurements should be entered (in the Shift4Shop store) using the metric unit's numerical value to ensure proper calculation takes place. There's no need to convert the weight into Lbs equivalents since your carrier will use their base unit of measurement for the calculation.
Additional Information
If your carrier is using standard weight units, you may need to sometimes enter product weights in ounces. Please review our separate article located here for a quick conversion table that illustrates how to enter ounce increments as pounds.
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