If customers ordering from different locations all see one delivery fee, check what this particular parcel costs to send to each customer before confirming the order. A single national fee can make the total easy to understand, but it is only workable if the delivery costs it must cover are sufficiently predictable. If they vary, you can lose money on some orders or make the fee feel unfair on others.
For this order, confirm the parcel’s size and weight, the collection and delivery locations, who will travel or meet the handover, and the total the customer will pay. Compare the available route options and prices, then decide whether to quote the actual delivery cost, absorb part of it, or apply one clearly bounded fee to a group of routes. Keep any promised total tied to the details you have checked.
Start with the order in front of you
A customer asking for “delivery” may mean different amounts of work depending on where they are and how the parcel will change hands. Write down the item, packaging, parcel dimensions and weight, collection point, destination and the handover arrangement. If the buyer must travel to meet the delivery, include that effort in your comparison too. A low delivery charge can still leave a poor overall experience if the meeting point is inconvenient.
Then check the currently available options and prices for those exact parcel details and selected locations. Moveka Send lets you do this before agreeing the order total. It gives you a practical route-specific figure to work with, rather than asking you to guess a universal charge. If a customer changes the destination or parcel details, check again: the amount you are comparing depends on those inputs.
Choose how to present the delivery charge
There are three useful approaches to consider. A route-specific quote makes the delivery part of the total clearer for each order. It can also introduce a separate amount to explain, so show it before the customer confirms. A single fee is simpler to communicate, but only makes sense if the routes it covers have costs you can reliably absorb. A “free delivery” offer still has a cost: the business pays it, often by accepting a smaller margin or including it in the product price.
Shopify describes flat, absorbed and shipment-calculated charges as different strategy choices. Use that framework to decide what your own checked routes can support.[1]
For a small seller, a good middle ground may be a few bounded zones rather than one fee for every location. For example, you might set a fee for routes you regularly serve at similar cost, and quote other destinations individually. Treat those zones as a policy to review against actual orders, not as a claim that every location within a large region costs the same. If the quotes do not cluster closely enough to support a zone, use route-specific pricing until you have better evidence.
Test the fee against your margin
A simple example shows why one fee needs a cost limit. Suppose an order’s selling price is KSh 2,000, and the product and packaging together cost KSh 1,300. Before delivery and other costs, KSh 700 remains. If the seller offers “free delivery” and covers a KSh 250 delivery charge, that leaves KSh 450 before any other expenses. If a different route costs KSh 500, the same offer leaves KSh 200. These figures are illustrative arithmetic, not local delivery prices.
You can use the same reasoning to decide whether a flat fee is viable. Compare checked route costs with the amount you plan to charge or absorb. If you want one fee across several destinations, consider the higher costs in the group as well as the lower ones, and ask whether the remaining margin is acceptable when a higher-cost route is chosen. If you discount the item at the same time, recalculate using the amount the customer will actually pay.
Confirm the total and handover
Before accepting the order, send the customer a clear total and explain what the delivery amount covers. Confirm the destination, parcel details and handover plan together. If you are quoting a single fee, say which routes or conditions it applies to, and check that the cost evidence supports that promise. If the available options or prices do not fit your planned fee, offer the customer a route-specific total or revise the fee before they commit.
Keep a short record of the route, parcel details, delivery amount charged and amount you covered. After several orders, you will have useful evidence for deciding whether a bounded zone is consistent enough to keep, or whether individual quotes serve you better. Revisit the policy when the parcel type or the routes you serve change.
Moveka is your best practical next move for this order because you can check available delivery options and prices against the actual parcel and selected locations before you commit to a single fee or promise the customer a total. Enter the details you have confirmed, compare the figures, and then agree on a charge that fits both the handover and your margin.
