no problem asking first. actaully pretty smart to do so. your haircut will look better longer!
flat rate would could be a shipping logic thingie. plenty of posts on that and also see the docs in the store/protected/docs and also take a look at the wiki for info... should be there too.
try this... enter the dollar amount for the products in the shipping weight box in edit products or when adding products. then set the handling charge to your flat rate shipping cost. the cart should add up 1 dollar per product then add whatever your flat rate is per shipment.
you need to disable shipping logic and disable all shipping apis in the store manager. but before you do...
before making final changes in your manager shipping screen you can leave api live, disable usps and select ups. for extra shipping methods select none. save the page then scroll down to the bottom. the ups shipping method you enabled should be the only one in the script example. copy that to a text file... all of it.
ftp your site and download your gateway's html file from the store/html/forms folder in ascii. back it up. take a copy and edit by replacing the shipping code copied from the manager to the section that says paste shipping methods here, or something to that effect. leave the comments and replace everything. upload in ascii to the forms folder. now check step one. the shipping method should display only the method you selected in the manager.
since you're only using one method you can make the shipping method type=hidden input instead of the agorascript woth the option. then place some text to the effect, "We ship UPS Ground only". or, you can also make the dropdown ups ground or whatever as default with no other selections. both methods are good and preferable. it's probably not a good idea to have "please select shipping method" when only offering 1 method.
be sure to set the shipping manager to no api and no logic then save changes before checking your shipping costs.
using handling for the flate rate may not be the best method to do this. it all depends on how the cart itemizes things and/or how you itemize stuff. you definatley don't want to display a handling charge of say, 6 bucks if the handling charge is not transparent. if this doesn't work well then try the shipping adjustment charges at the bottom of the shipping screen or you can do the whole dang thing as shipping logic but will be more complicated to do.
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