Delivery explained: charges, zones and couriers

Delivery is really two separate jobs wearing one name. The first is deciding what the customer pays, which happens at checkout. The second is getting the parcel to them, which happens after the order lands. Sohoj Dokan handles both, and most confusion comes from mixing them up — so this guide walks through each in turn.

The three parts of delivery

Part	Where you set it up	What it decides
Pricing	Delivery Settings → Zone Settings	What the customer is charged at checkout
What you collect	Delivery Settings → Advanced	The address detail and notes you get with each order
Dispatch	Delivery Settings → Courier	Which courier the parcel goes to, in one click

You need the first one working before you can sell anything. The other two make life easier once orders start arriving.

Part one: what the customer pays

The three charge modes

Your store has one delivery charge mode, and it decides how every order is priced. Pick it before you build your zones, because it changes which fields the zone form asks for.

Mode	The charge is	Best for
Flat rate	One fixed amount per zone, whatever is in the cart	Clothing, gadgets, cosmetics — parcels of similar size
By weight (per kg)	The zone’s per-kg rate × the order’s total weight	Rice, lentils, spices — anything sold by the kilo
Combined	Per-kg for weighted items, plus one flat fee when the cart has standard items	Stores selling both, like a grocery with packaged goods

Flat rate is the default and it is what most stores should use. Only move to a weight-based mode if the weight of an order genuinely changes what it costs you to ship.

How each one adds up

Flat rate. The customer picks a zone, that zone’s charge is added once, and that is the whole calculation. A ৳60 zone charges ৳60 whether the cart holds one shirt or six.

By weight. The charge is the zone’s rate per kg × the total kilograms in the cart. At ৳30 per kg, five kilos of rice costs ৳150 — and it stays ৳150 however expensive the order is, because a weight-based charge is never waived by a free-delivery threshold. That is deliberate: the courier still charges you for the weight.

Combined. Each product carries a Charged by delivery weight? switch. Items with it on are charged per kg; everything else is a standard item and adds the flat fee once, no matter how many standard items there are. The free-delivery threshold applies only to the standard part, and it is measured against the subtotal of the standard items alone.

There is a worked example of all three in delivery settings option explanations.

Weight comes from the product

Both weight-based modes read Weight per unit from the product itself — Products → edit a product → Delivery Weight.

A product with no weight set counts as 0 kg, which means it adds no delivery charge at all. This is the single most common way to lose money on delivery, so set a weight on every product before you switch modes, not after.

Zones

A zone is an area you deliver to and the price for reaching it. Customers pick one at checkout, so the name should be something they recognise instantly — “Inside Dhaka”, “Outside Dhaka”, “Chattogram City”.

Each zone has:

• Zone Name, shown at checkout
• Delivery Charge or Rate per kg, depending on your mode
• Free Delivery Threshold, which waives the charge on orders above an amount
• Status, Active to show it at checkout or Hidden to keep it off
• Default Zone, pre-selected at checkout — only one zone can hold this

The arrows beside each row set the order customers see. Put your busiest zone first, or make it the default.

Start with two zones, inside and outside Dhaka. You can split them into districts later, once you know where your orders actually come from.

Note: Deleting a zone does not change the delivery charge on orders that already exist. Past orders keep what they were charged.

The three ways to give free delivery

These get mixed up constantly, so here they are side by side:

You want	Do this
Free delivery on everything	Set every zone’s charge to 0
Free delivery on larger orders	Set a zone’s Free Delivery Threshold
Checkout to work before you have zones	Turn on Free Delivery Mode

Free Delivery Mode is the one people misread. It only matters when your store has no active zones — it lets customers check out at ৳0 without picking a zone. The moment you create an active zone, the switch stops mattering and the zone’s charge applies.

The trap: Free Delivery Mode off with no zones set up blocks checkout entirely. Customers cannot order at all. If your store is brand new and orders are failing, this is almost always why.

What the customer sees

At checkout the customer picks a zone and the charge appears immediately in the total. That preview and the charge saved on the finished order are calculated by the same rule on the server, so the two can never disagree and the figure cannot be tampered with from the browser.

Part two: what you collect with the order

Delivery notes

Whether customers can add instructions — a landmark, a floor number, a delivery time. Three settings: Disabled, Optional (the default), or Required. Whatever they write shows on the order detail page, so it is in front of you when you pack.

Required is worth using if your deliveries depend on landmarks, which in much of Bangladesh they do.

Detailed address

Under Advanced, turning on Ask detailed address at checkout adds City and Zone selectors next to the address field, and asks for house and road details. The customer must pick both, so every order arrives with a precise delivery area attached — which is what turns courier dispatch into a single click instead of a lookup.

This information is used at dispatch when Carrybee is enabled on the Courier tab. If it is not connected yet, a warning appears under the switch.

Part three: getting the parcel out

Connecting a courier

Connect Steadfast, Pathao and Carrybee from the Courier tab, or from Integrations → Shipping. One, two, or all three — each has its own switch and credentials, taken from your own account on that courier’s portal. Pathao and Carrybee also need you to Test Connection & Fetch Stores and then pick a Pickup Store.

Full credential locations are in connect Steadfast & Pathao.

Sending an order

Open the order and use the courier’s panel to send it. You get back a consignment ID and a tracking code you can copy or open. Confirm before sending to courier is on by default and shows a review window first so you can check the detected area; turning it off makes dispatch a single click, which is faster in volume but removes your chance to catch a wrong address.

Two rules worth knowing up front: an order that is already Cancelled or Delivered cannot be sent, and an order cannot go to two couriers.

Labels print from the order page, or in bulk by selecting orders in the list. See ship with couriers & print labels.

Common questions

What you notice	Why
Customers cannot complete checkout	You have no active zones and Free Delivery Mode is off
An order shipped for free by mistake	The product had no Weight per unit set, so it counted as 0 kg
A large order still paid delivery	Weight-based charges are never waived by a threshold — only the flat part is
The zone form is missing the charge field	You are in By weight mode, which uses rate per kg instead
A zone will not save	Every active zone needs a Rate per kg above 0 in weight-based modes
The threshold did not apply in Combined mode	It is measured against the standard items’ subtotal only
The courier panel is not on the order	That courier is not enabled yet under Integrations → Shipping
Pathao shows no pickup stores	Create one in the Pathao merchant portal, then fetch again
Charges changed but old orders did not	Deliberate — existing orders keep the charge they were placed with

In the mobile app

The merchant app covers delivery from More → Delivery Zones: the charge mode, the zone list, and both Advanced options. Free Delivery Mode and Delivery Notes are currently web-dashboard only. Courier dispatch and labels work from the order screen as they do on the web.

Tips

• Choose the charge mode first, build zones second. Doing it the other way round means filling the same form twice.
• Set a weight on every product before switching to a weight-based mode. Items without one ship free.
• Place a test order on your own storefront after any delivery change, and check the charge at checkout.
• Two zones is a fine starting point. Add detail when your order history justifies it.
• Set your busiest area as the Default Zone — most customers will not change it, and one fewer decision at checkout is worth real money.
• Connect your courier before your first sale, not during it. Fetching credentials while a customer waits is nobody’s idea of a good afternoon.

What’s next

For every option in detail, read delivery settings option explanations. To create your first zone, see set up delivery zones & charges. For free delivery and notes, see free delivery & delivery notes. To connect a courier, see connect Steadfast & Pathao.