In Magento, table rates are excellent for specifying shipping rates to different destinations and are fairly easy to set up. The main issues that users encounter when they try to configure table rates usually have to do with improper formatting of the required CSV file. If the CSV file is not properly formatted for import, the import will not succeed and Magento will display Error while saving this configuration: Invalid Table Rates File Format.

Formatting errors often occur because the file that Magento exports does not include quotation marks around all the header values. See Country and Region/State below compared to the other header values.

Country,Region/State,"Zip/Postal Code","Order Subtotal (and above)","Shipping Price"
AUS,*,*,0.0000,10.0000
GBR,*,*,0.0000,20.0000
NZL,*,*,0.0000,15.0000
USA,*,*,0.0000,15.0000

Hopefully this problem will be fixed in future releases, but for the time being it is necessary to format that the CSV file properly by opening it with a text editor, such as Notepad++ or Textwrangler, and adding quotes around Country and Region/State as shown below.

"Country","Region/State","Zip/Postal Code","Order Subtotal (and above)","Shipping Price"
AUS,*,*,0.0000,10.0000
GBR,*,*,0.0000,20.0000
NZL,*,*,0.0000,15.0000
USA,*,*,0.0000,15.0000

Once quotation marks have been added and the file is formatted correctly, the import will go smoothly with no errors.

For instructions on setting up table rate shipping in Magento, refer to the Magento Knowledge Base.