Is it possible to add a handling fee to each order which will be in addition to shipping charges? This would be to cover the cost of packaging materials.
 
thanks :)

Why would you not include that in your original price?

We're new at this :) What we want to do is cover the cost of the box and packing materials. We wouldn't add that to the product price because they are small items and someone might order 1 or 10 which would result in an overcharge. It's my understanding that this is normally added to the actual shipping costs. So if the box and padding costs 2 bucks, then I need to add 2 bucks to the actual shipping. Somehow.

Hi GingerSue
 
Perhaps this will work:
 
Administration > Payment Systems > Edit Payment System
Fee settings
Processing fee
 
You would set the processing fee for each payment gateway used.
 
I don't know how this will be presented to the customer.
Hope this helps.
 
Chris

This is best done in the shipping module. Perhaps Viart would look at adding a markup/discount percentage off real time rates. Most carriers return real time servers return published rates, they expect the e-commerce softweare to apply discounts and upcharges for handling. For a 10 lbs package shipped from Toronto, VIART returns the UPS shipping costs as shown below (our actual UPS costs with our discount applied are in brackets)
 
Local $11.91 ($5.49)
California, US $34.64 ($15.60)
London, UK $211.38 ($81.00)
 
As you can see there is a huge difference between published rates and net rates, so presenting only published rates will scare clients away. This makes the real tilme rate module unusable for most stores.
 
The good news is you can program your own own rate table into Viart. Caution: it's a lot of work, the feint of heart need no read on!
 
1) Using your shipper's zone guide, determine which zones you will be shipping to. For each of these zones you will create a unique "shipping module".
2) Next, withing each "shipping module" create a "shipping type" and define the country and states for that zone.
3) For each "Shipping Type", calculate your base rate (1lb rate) for that zone using your shipping contract. Compute any discounts/markups then enter this into the "Shipping Type -> Shipping Cost -> Per Order" field. Then determine the incremental cost for every lb from the rate table and enter that into the "Shipping Type -> Shipping Cost -> Per Weight" field.
 
Do this for every zone and you'll have a full zone-shipping implementation!

is there some reason this could not be a custom field in the order profile page?
 
Administration > Order Profile Settings > Edit Custom Field