set shipping amount per item

would anybody be able to help me out--we drop ship alot of our items and need a way to add shipping cost per item then have the software add it up and present the client with the total shipping price---

or a way to add a handling fee and have a total fee at checkout--(I would turn shipping off

Hi,
   Can you provide more detail about what you would like to achieve.
What should you want to happen if someone purchases a combination of items or multiple of the same item, do you just want to multiply / add them.
I suspect from what you are saying the closest is :-

Incremental calculation based on order quantity.
Example: charge $5.00 for the first item, then an additional $1 on the next 9 items, then $0.50 on all items over 9. If the order contained 22 units, shipping would be calculated as follows: ($5 + ($1*9) + (.50*12))=$20.00.

Hi,
   At the moment ProductCart does not support this, but it the ability to do so is a request that does come up so it's been added to the internal request system.

There are a whole set of issues around shipping and it's one of the most complex areas for e-commerce stores. Offering a flat shipping rate by product, although seemingly the simple option can in many cases lead to anomalies. For example actual shipping costs are rarely linear and sending 5 of the same item, or a combination of items, is much cheaper than sending just one and a flat amount per product does not reflect this.
To get this working as a flat rate per item will require some custom coding and there are several people active on the forum that are more than capable of completing this work