Wildcard in Shipping Zone Zip Codes Not Working

WC does not support zip+4 postcodes for this as far as I know. Plugins like USPS etc also only support the 5 digit zips.

Are you saying customers add zip+4 and it matches no zones?

I have had my WooCommerce live for only about 7 months. I was using a different platform prior to that and occasionally had customers enter their zip+4 for some reason. This would cause issues so I modified the code for that previous platform to accept and truncate zip+4 entries. Because of this experience, I chose to enter my WooCommerce tax rate zip codes in 12345* format to ensure taxes would be properly calculated even if someone entered a zip+4.

I was doing the same with my shipping zone setup and was surprised it didn’t work because the WooCommerce tutorial video stated that wildcards are supported. That’s really my main point here. Either there’s a bug or the shipping zone video tutorial is mistaken.

I wonder if it would be best to truncate zip+4 during customer input. Thoughts?

Yes, if I run into issues with customers entering zip+4, I will likely write a function to truncate zip codes. I don’t anticipate it will be a major issue. I just wanted to be prepared in case it comes up. I thought adding wildcards to my shipping zone zip codes (as I did with tax rate locations) would be a quick, easy way of doing that.

My main concern was that the video states wildcards are OK and they weren’t working for me. I did some further experimenting in my test store, and found that wildcards do work if there are four or fewer digits preceding the wildcard. So 123* and 1234* will work, but not 12345* will not. That’s not quite what I was looking for, but I can always go with the truncate function solution if it becomes necessary.

If you do want to use 12345*, I think you also need to define 12345 without the *

Can I ask what your truncate function looks like? I used to be able to put in 92001* for all of my zip codes and it would accept 5 digit and 9 digit zip codes. Now it does not. If I use the * it will accept 9 digit zip codes in checkout and not 5 digit. I need a way to force 5 digit zip codes so tax is calculated.
Thanks

In addition to 92001* did you also add 92001? That’s how I entered all the zip codes for my shipping zones. So for every zip code, I have two entries, one in the form of 12345* and another in the form of 12345. That did the trick for me and I didn’t have to write a truncate function.

I should do the same for my tax rates, but I have not yet done so (lots more zip codes to duplicate), so I can’t say if the technique described above will work. It certainly seems like it should, though.

What I did do to cover myself when I get the occasional customer who enters a zip+4 is the following: I entered the various tax rates for my state and the zip codes that correspond to these rates (all in the form of 12345, no *). For all of these, the Country Code is US and the State Code and City are *. Then I enter one last row in which I set the Country Code to US, the State Code to my state, and ZIP and City fields to *. I set this row’s rate to 8%, which is near the middle of the range of tax rates for my state, as well as a fairly common rate throughout my state. This way, if a zip code match is not found, but the shipping state is mine, the tax rate falls back to 8%.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it really only comes up on a rare occasion for me. 8% is often correct anyway, and when it’s not, the over/under charge is negligible.

With all of that said, I have not yet upgraded to WooCommerce 3.0.x (still running 2.6.14). I am hopeful this will still work in the new WooCommerce, but that remains to be seen for me.

Thanks for the reply. I did not try the ? wildcard. Maybe entering 2 zips for every area would work too. I ended up trying what you mentioned in your reply just before this one. I took out the last number and inserted an asterisk. Since I’ve uploaded over 2400 zip codes in my tax table there are a lot of numbers to work with. The only caveat is that zip codes that have the first same 4 numbers are basically combined. Not really a big deal since the tax rates are usually the same.. or very close. So.. 9000* includes 9000(1-9) AND it will accept any zip+4 code. So, this is the best solution for me.
Thanks!