Extended shipping offers you the ability to configure your shipping rates differently for multiple locations and transportation methods. It also allows you to use different shipping rate plans at different times (for instance holiday vs. standard).
Extended shipping is based on a three-tier system. The first tier is called a Plan, and it is a grouping of shipping methods associated with locations and rate calculation methods. Only one plan can be in effect at a time, so you can have a Standard Plan and a Holiday Plan, for instance.
Each plan is a combination of shipping Methods. A Method can be defined by any criteria-transportation, physical location, etc. For instance, you can have several methods called Ground, Air, Sea or you can use Methods to define locations such as Northern California, with a separate Rate Table (defined below) from the Southern California Method.
Each Method must have a Rate Table associated with it. A rate table is a grid with shipping charges defined by criteria such as weight or dollars.
For a demo of extended shipping, please click here.
For further documentation on extended shipping, you may download:
Extended Shipping - Getting Started Guide
(pdf file, 2 megabytes).