Thanks for your input, it is appreciated.
The problem I have is that I need to build this system with mulitiple
clients in mind, and needless to say, they will all want to calculate it
differnetly.
I need to somehow build an admin facility that keeps everyone happy.
Joe Bloggs Printing Machinery will no doubt want to do it by weight X
location whilst Foo Bar CD's will only want to do it by amount X location

This is going to do my head in me thinks, but thanks for the input.
RG



"pittendrigh" <sandy@montana-riverboats.com> wrote in message
news:fadd89e6.0308060010.7ce296ed@posting.google.c om...
> Why not:
>
> For each database inventory item include a nullable
'shipping_cost_factor.'
> If not set, it defaults to a well known value.
> This allows setting a higher than default factor for
> large volume or heavy products (300 cubic feet of styrofoam,
> and/or five gallons of epoxy resin both cost more to ship than a
> tube of tooth paste).
>
> Then, at calculate-shipping-cost-time, you take the factor,
> for each item, and multiply it by a second number, which
> comes from a lookup table, indexed by the customers Zip code
> (distance from your warehouse), and then multiply that times
> a dollars-per-cost factor, to arrive at the final price.
>
> shipping_cost_factor * zip_distance_from_ware_house * dollars_per_factor
> == final_cost.