Thread

http://www.jshop.co.uk/ is worth a look.

I think I remember looking at that sometime ago. It doesn’t look like it has a feature for dealing with returns, which for us along with keeping an accurate inventory is becoming crucial.

Curious if you would like the system to “payout” and credit the customer in some fashion, along with keeping track of the inventory.
The cart being able to payout seems a little scary to me, although even paypal has refunds.
I guess on a large site manual inventory adjustment could be a problem.

I reviewed quite a few shopping carts and I dont remember seeing a return feature in most of them. I was just looking for a more robust way of handling digital downloads for an upcoming project. I would think a 1-800 number would be better at handling returns than a website. Returns are subject to abuse if not policed properly. Anyway, Avactis does have the ability to track inventory and add “add-ons” to the products. My biggest thing was the ability to get a full script from them for free as a developer and 50% off from there on out. And the idea that I can create a full-on CSS site and have a somewhat accessible site (their code still uses tables).

M.

I guess it depends on what type of products you sell. We sell physical products which can and do go wrong, customers can also return products simply because they ordered the wrong size or they don’t like the colour. As you increase your volume this can quickly become a headache if there is not a slick way to return these items to stock, create new paper work and somehow reconcile all this with your accounts.

So Marcus,

Tell us about the templating system of Avactis?  You mention their store is tables based, but is there a system in place that allows you to modify it?  Is it straight-forward or do you have to wade through hundreds of include files?

CCP, while not as easy as EE’s templating system, shows signs of being relatively easy to adjust the HTML/CSS.  Again, I’m just in the beginning stages of uncovering it’s power, but from what I’ve seen, I’m relatively impressed.

Marcus, unfortunately returns are part and parcel of everyday trading. When I return a product to a local store they just bleep it, their system registers the item has gone back in to stock and then they either create a new sale / replacement or whatever. This is obviously all neatly recorded on their till roll, transaction record for the day. It shouldnt be anymore difficult in a web store.

Currently we process the returns through MYOB as it is our accounts package. We then also have to manually adjust the inventory on the live website. It would be much better if we could deal with the return through the store admin and then just export the sales data at the end of the day / month.

No doubt. I agree that they are a part of the business. I think I misunderstood what it was that you were saying. I thought you were saying that you wanted a piece of functionality on the site that automated the return process. As for your concern I can understand that. I used to own a Physical Retail Shop so I understand the process. I would think that the functionality you are looking for would come only from the maker of the point of sale product you are using. For instance I used Quickbooks POS system when I had my shop. In order to have full integration I would have had to contract with them to build me an online store. Which I believe they do… Anyway, what is desired and what can be had usually fall under the pressure of how much it costs. And in your situation I would think it would be kinda pricey…

M.

Hmm I am not sure it actually needs to be so complicated. Most carts have a feature that lets the shop admin create an order manually, for phone orders etc. If I could add a product to an order and check a ‘returned’ check box so that it would create a minus value it might be enough to solve the problem. Then when the order is created, it would put the returned product into stock and the accounts would balance when exported to MYOB.

Had a tour of Netsuite the other day, powerful but not sure we want to go there yet!

What was the verdict on clickcartpro?

I am looking at coolcommerce. As the simple commerce module wasn’t enough to do what I needed it to do. The only reason I need another cart is because simple commerce module can’t work with paypal pro.

What is everyone’s preffered choice? And could you list an example or a few of them in action. (With EE ofcourse) Thanks!

It’s been mentioned a few times elsewhere, but this looks the most promising IMO:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/

For a nice, clean shopping cart and checkout, CCP works out pretty nice.  I managed to develop the entire frontend with Expression Engine, reverse related my products, etc…  I used CCP’s Remote API to submit purchases to CCP.  For my purposes, which were very specific, it worked out nice.

Since I’ve got everything in Expression Engine, I’m prepared to transfer everything over to an EE solution as soon as Ellis Lab releases their own ecommerce solution.

I’m confused stephen you mentioned CCP and I think I googled the wrong thing here:
http://www.clickcartpro.co.uk/
Is that the wrong site then, mentions of an acronym might of thrown me off.

have you got a link for an integration stephen?
The frontend site for CCP sales, is less than inspiring, but hey if it works.

Yeah, I’m not a fan of the application by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn’t disqualify it because there isn’t anything in the ecommerce arena worth getting excited about.  Magento has the wow factor going on, but it’s still got it’s own issues and it won’t integrate with EE, so I don’t get too excited over it either.  Having said that, the only thing I find intriguing about CCP is the remote API.  It works and it’s easy to setup.

What browser are you using?  To be honest, I got all this setup this weekend, working strictly in Safari and haven’t done any validation or previewing in IE or Firefox.  PM me if you’re using Safari.  Otherwise, I’ll post back here when I have it debugged and valid.

ClickCartPro.com is the url, but it gets redirected to http://www.kryptronic.com/khxc/ccp0-display/clickcartpro_main.html

EDIT/ADD:  For individuals catching this thread starting here, I explained why CCP was intriguing to me earlier in this thread.  It has a remote API that allows you to submit purchases outside of the system.  In other words, you can setup forms and submit products to CCP.  I have EE weblogs controlling the product frontend and when a user purchases a product, the products are submitted to CCP.

Oh ok, that works, I was rusty and visited wikipedia to remember what CCP was and then went out to the co.uk which is usability findability lacking.
Thanks for the link.