Setting the units used to determine weight in OpenCart 1.5

One of the critical factors to calculate shipping a product is its weight.  Depending on the region being served, the units used for weight may need to be changed so that customers do not need to calculate the value.   The following tutorial will show how to set the unit of measurement used for determining the weight of your products in OpenCart 1.5.

Adding or Modifying the unit used for measuring weight

1. Login to the Administration Dashboard as an Administrator
2. Hover over SYSTEM in the menu bar, then when the  drop-down menu is shown, click on LOCALISATION. Another drop-down menu will appear when you hover over LOCALISATION.  Click on WEIGHT CLASSES in the drop-down menu that appears and you will see the following screen:
   
   
   
   
3. Select the weight title that you wish to change, then select EDIT to proceed.   When you edit a Weight Title, you will see the following:
   
   
   
   Note that if your store uses more than one language, each unit will have a corresponding blank for the translation.  The above screenshot illustrates this requirement.  
   
   Weight title - full word or phrase used to describe weight unit
   Weight Unit - abbreviation used for the weight title
   Value - conversion value based on the default weight.  If this unit is the default weight, then it would be se to 1.00000
4. When you have completed adding or editing the Weight Class, select SAVE in order to save your entries

Weight is a determining factor used to select the shipper which would be used to ship a product in your store.  Weight will only be seen by the customer if it is included in the product description displayed by the storefront.  Otherwise, it is only seen by the Administrators and other employees who have access to the Administration Dashboard.  Here are a few screenshots of the product catalog and product description where the weight value is displayed:

The screenshot in the above left shows the product in the catalog view for an administrator.  Weight and weight class are clearly show there in kilograms. In the screenshot to the right, the weight is also displayed and in this case it is shown in both kilograms and pounds.  The description is not automatically changed if the units of weight are changed in the store.  The description would need to be updated to include the changed weight unit and weight of the product.

The weight class is very important to the shippers, so you will also see the weight classes in the shipper information.  Here's a screenshot of what you see in the shipper details:

To find more information on Shippers within OpenCart, please go to Managing Shippers within OpenCart 1.5 and Determining the Weight Code and Class used by Shippers in OpenCart 1.5.