Some of you may be aware that Google Base introduced two new attributes lately. Tax and Shipping.

So Far, on the Google Base Help Discussion Group people are having slight difficulties implementing these. This post will hopefully allow users to understand from a Google Basers perspective not only how to achieve, but, why it is best to implement sooner rather than later.

You may be asking yourself why did Google chose to do this at this time or year, the festive season is upon us and yes you are busy with a million and one other things, but, something to consider is, we are all in the same boat. It is worth noting that although it is not currently shown in results, Google will be displaying this information very shortly to give customers (potentially your customers) a more accurate price to base their purchase on. You must ask yourself, is the time worth spending now to achieve this worth it? or are you willing to allow your competitors to reap the rewards?. 

It is simple to set up and by following the steps detailed below you are well on your way. I have taken screenshots to accompany the instructions to make it even simpler.

So lets give it a go and stay ahead of your competitors and hopefully get those well deserved sales!.

The option to enable tax and shipping is within your account settings, this is found along side your data feed.

TAX SETTINGS 

Located within your Google Base settings you will find the newly added Tax and Shipping Settings (Fig 1.) Here you can create and manage your tax and shipping settings (Fig 2.) Currently, as you can see from the drop down menu, United States is the only available option, this will no doubt change in the future to include both UK and DE (Fig 3.) Once you enter the Tax settings you have three options. If you choose No.1 you are declaring that you do not charge sales tax and therefore your customers will not incur taxable charges. 

Option 2, allows you to select checkboxes for the states in which tax is applicable. You will also be given a Tax Rate to set for each state selected individually. 

Lastly if you chose option 3, you will be asked to select check boxes of states where tax will be charged, however this time Google will determine the tax payable by the customers zip code. You will also be given a check-box to select for every chosen state to set Tax on shipping (Fig 4.)

SHIPPING SETTINGS 

As with Tax Setting, Shipping is broken into three options also (Fig 5.) 

Firstly you can select a flat rate, (Fig 6.) Here you will clearly see 3 steps, 1. The rate of charge, which can be a percentage of purchase price or a set fee, for example 10%, $5.00 or Free shipping.
Free Shipping is an option given in the flat rate settings and may cause confusion as previously Google stipulated that promotions such as “FREE SHIPPING” was prohibited.

Option 2.  Create a shipping cost based on, number or items, total weight or cart price. You will be given 4 steps to complete. (Fig 7.) The first being which of the fore mentioned bases to create shipping on. Once selected you will then set a range and a shipping rate for each rate set out.
Next, an estimate on delivery speed followed by a name for the shipping method, i.e, Ground, Premium etc.

Your last option in terms of shipping (Fig 8.) is Carrier Calculated. Use this method if you want to base your shipping on a carrier rate table e.g. FedEX etc.
If you chose this method, there are 5 steps to follow. You must firstly select your carrier (one per shipping method) then your chosen service from that carrier. You can select to adjust rates and set exceptions, however, these two settings are optional and are not required as standard.
Specify your origin, (location of item being sent) in ZIP code format and name your shipping method and once saved you are all done. If you have multiple options of shipping simply complete this process again.

Well Done!

Thinking you have now added everything you need to?. In one way you have, however, you can go that one step further and include the shipping and tax attributes within your feed.

Including them is something you may want to consider if some items vary from the flat rate you have set in your shipping rate or some items are tax exempt.

Settings applied in your account will always be used as default values with feed included attributes overriding only items that hold a corresponding value.

A new post will be added very shortly on how to include these attributes within your feed, but until then, you can check out the Official Google Help Pages and good luck!