View Orders
Change username / password
Edit admin settings
Edit top categories
Edit categories
Edit products
Edit product options
Discounts and coupons
Edit States
Edit Countries
Edit Postal Zones
UPS Shipping
Edit Payment Providers
Troubleshooting
View Orders
When orders start coming into your online store, you can view the
details here. Using the date selections up top you can view a list
or all orders for different date ranges. Orders that have an authorization
code are shown in black, but those that have not are shown in red.
This could be because your customer gave up before making payment
at the payment processor. It could also be however that they did
make payment, but did not make it back to your store to complete
the order for some reason. Check with your payment processor to
make sure.
To see the complete details for an individual order click on the order ID. Here you will see the shipping details, tax and order totals.
You also have the option to dump the orders to a CSV file, this can be opened in Excel so you can save or print the information regarding your orders...
Change username / password
The default username and password for the online web administration
is mystore / changeme. For security reasons you are encouraged to
change this as soon as possible.
Edit admin settings
This should probably be the first page to visit in setting up your
store. On this page you can set the general attributes of your
online store such as your email address for sale notification and
the URL of your online store - the URL will generally be the same as
your domain unless you have placed the store in a folder on your
site. You can also choose your shipping options as well as the
number of items to display per page and whether or not you want to
use the stock management feature. If you decide to use it then you
will need to set a number of hours that a product becomes
unavailable if it is added to someone else's cart. During the set
time nobody else can order the last item available in stock if
another customer has placed the item in their cart. An "Out of
Stock" message will appear by default - if the purchaser leaves the
store without purchasing the product will again become available
after the time you have chosen..
Edit top categories
You can choose to display your products on the store using a category
/ subcategory system, or to just use a category system. If you
chose
the former then you will need to set these top categories. If you
chose to just use a plain category system then these will be ignored.
Please note that after version 4.0.0 top categories are no longer
used.
Edit categories
Your products are organized into categories by default, such as
socks could be in the clothing category. If you only have a few
products and do not want to take advantage of this feature then
instead of making your main "Products" link to categories.asp,
just make it to products.asp. Then, define just one category to
put all your products into..
Edit products
This is where you can setup the details about the products you wish
to sell online. The first screen will show a list of the products
you have in your database under the categories you have chosen.
Normally products will be shown in bold black type, but if a product
is configured to not have a "Buy" button, then it will
be shown in red. If it is configured
to not be shown on the store at all, then it will be shown in "strikethrough".
If you chose the "New Product" or "Modify Product" options you will be given a screen to edit the product options. Certain options such as the product reference number, price, section and name are obligatory and are therefore marked with a red asterix. Please note that the references to the product images are just references. You must upload them to your site via ftp. If you add a large image or long description then in the products page a link will be automatically shown to a "product details" page which will show this extra product information. There may be more or less information shown on this page depending on the shipping options you have chosen, such as the product weight. So, it is probably best to set your shipping options before setting up your products.
Edit product options
Product options are such things as the choice of different sizes
for one of your products, or the product color for instance. To
be able to select a product option in the Edit products admin page,
you must first have set them up here. The fields are the Option
Name, which is the one shown to your customers on the store. Then
you have the Working Name. This can be useful if you have several
different products which use the same Option Name, like "size",
but have different settings, like (small,medium,large) for your
T-Shirt sizes and (8,9,10,11) for your shoe sizes. Having a working
name like "size (shoes)" and "size (t-shirts)"
means that you can distinguish them in the store admin section.
The options themselves should be listed in the Options boxes in
the order you wish them to appear. There is also the possibility
of having a "price difference" to the product base price.
So for instance if choosing the X-Large option adds an extra one
dollar to the product price, then just enter a 1 in the box corresponding
to that option. If you do not wish to use this feature, just leave
this box blank or zero. On your store the price change will show
in real time.
The "New Text Input Option" allows you to provide a field for the purchaser to add their own information, so for example if you were selling domain names, the client could type in the name they were wanting to order.
If you have problems adding the product options to products, try
going to your admin main page and look for the "Admin Tweaks" section.
Then make sure "Use simple product options display" is
selected. This will only affect your admin section pages by the
way, as some browser configurations, notably on a Macintosh
have problems with the advanced javascript used. The publicly viewable
pages will not be affected and are compatible with all browser
configurations.
Discounts
and coupons
Discounts and coupons are powerful marketing tools that allow
you to give your clients special offers on products or categories,
allow wholesalers to purchase at special rates, provide incentives
through your offline advertising or help clear "difficult
to sell" stock amongst many other uses...
Edit States
The store software displays a list of the US states in the checkout
phase, and on this page you are given the option of supporting that
state, and if shipping to that state incurrs any State Taxes.
Edit Countries
The store software displays a list of worldwide countries in the
checkout phase, and their attributes can be edited here. Firstly
you can chose if you wish to ship to the country at all. Be careful
when deciding this as it is tempting to support every country to
increase sales, but unfortunately some also attract more fraudulent
orders than others. Country tax can be set on this page also. The
figure is expressed as a percentage, so for instance if a country
incurs 16% tax, then just enter 16 in the box provided.
The position can be used to set the order the countries are displayed
in the checkout drop down. "On Top" will put that country
on the top of the list. "On Top of Top" will put that
country above that even. This means that you can have the "United
States" above the "United Kingdom", and then the
rest in the usual alphabetical order.
If you have chosen "Weight based shipping" you are also
given the option to set the shipping zone that applies to that country.
We have ordered the countries roughly into the United States, the
Americas, Europe and the rest of the world, but do examine these
carefully for the countries you decide to ship to.
FSA This
setting only applies to "Free Standard
Shipping".
It enables you to set free shipping only for orders within a particular
country. Only those countries
checked will be eligible for free standard shipping. Remember that
a rule will have to be set up first in your discount admin page
for this to apply...
Edit Postal Zones
This option is only shown if you have chosen Weight Based shipping.
The first screen is a "named" list of the zones you wish
to support. The names are for your own purposes only really, and
can be anything like "Zone 1", "Europe", "Eastern
Europe" or whatever has meaning for you. Once you have added
some zone names and clicked submit, go back to this page and you
will see that there is a link "Edit Zone Rules" next to
the zone names. The first column is a list of weight limits. The
second column is a list of costs. The actual scale of the weight
limits is irrelevant really and can have any meaning you wish, such
as grams, kilogram's, pounds etc. So you can set a list of rules
as follows
| Max Weight | Charge |
| 0.2 | 0.3 |
| 0.5 | 0.5 |
| 1 | 0.9 |
| 5 | 2 |
This would mean that any product whose weight you have set up to
0.2 would be charged at $0.30. Any product weight up to and including
0.5 would have a shipping charge of $0.50 and so on until the
highest
weight in the table. For products above the highest weight in the
table you can set the system to add say an extra 50 cents for
every
1 weight unit above the highest weight. If you wish the highest weight
in the table to in fact be the highest shipping charge then just
enter
zero for the "For every 0 above the highest weight, add an extra
0".
Price
based shipping
This option follows the same rules as weight based shipping
as described above with the obvious difference that we are referring
to maximum price rather than maximum weight. After editing your
list of rules you'll need to apply the rules on the countries
admin page.
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Shipping methods
"Edit USPS Shipping Methods" and "Edit UPS Shipping Methods"
only show up if you turn on USPS or UPS shipping. This is to limit the shipping
methods available for USPS and UPS.
UPS
Shipping
More information can be found on the UPS set
up page.
Edit Payment Providers
The payment providers allowed by the system are shown on this page.
You will need a valid account with the payment provider, and once
you have that you need to enter the account details on these pages.
The "Email" option means that no payment is taken for
that particular order, and only details of the order are recorded
in the database. It is useful for taking orders where payment will
be taken later, and also for testing the system prior to going live.
Payment options that are operative are shown in Bold. Those
that are in demo mode are shown in red.
Please note that there is actually no demo mode available for PayPal.
They recommend setting up a cheap (say 1 cent) product for testing.
Hopefully the Orders Admin page will be the one you will visit most so it is important to know your way around. You will receive a notification email for each order that is placed through your store but it is a good idea to check the page regularly in case the purchaser didn’t make it back to your store after buying and the email notification wasn’t triggered.
Clicking on the View orders link in your online control panel will bring up the orders admin page:
The interface here will provide you with all the information on orders as well as the ability to search your order database, change the order status, download orders etc.
To take advantage of the advanced search features, click on “Power Search”.
The various options on this screen are outlined below:
To refine the search options you can select one or a combination of parameters:
Orders From / On – Orders Till: This is where you can specify a date range. Clicking on the “DP” button will bring up a calendar for easier date selection:
It is also possible to add single numbers to the From / Till fields. If you need to view orders between the last 2 to 4 days then place 2 in the Orders From box and 4 in the Orders Till. If you need the orders from 4 days ago then place 4 in the Orders From box and leave the Orders Till field blank.
Order ID: if you know the order id you want to check then placing the number here will bring up the details of that particular order eg. Type “503” to view the details of order number 503.
Search Text: This will allow you to perform a search on the following parameters:
authorization number
order name
email address
address
city
state
zip
phone
… and can be further refined by choosing the date selection and/or Order Status. This will also come in useful for your marketing when you can make advertising decisions based on where your orders are coming from.Order Status: This allows you to view all orders dependent on the status of those orders. For example you can view all Completed Orders over a particular date range.
Start with power search: Selecting the checkbox will set a cookie so that the advanced search panel appears each time you visit the Orders Admin page.
Power Search: Clicking will hide the advanced search panel.
Order
details
When viewing the order admin page or looking at the results of a search you will be presented with a table of results:
Order ID: This is the order number and the first order on your store will be “501”. Click on the order number or on the Name to bring up the full details of that particular order.
Printing the invoice / packing slip
If you press <ctrl> and click the Order ID at the same time you will be presented with a printable version. (PC and Microsoft Explorer only. Other combinations will have to select the Printable Invoice Checkbox at the bottom of the page).Method: This will show how the client has paid. Information in red will indicate an uncompleted order.
Auth code: This is a very important field and particular attention should be paid to the message that appears here. Under normal circumstances, when an order goes through an authorization code will appear here – this means that the order has been received and the purchaser has returned to your store and should have received email notification of their purchase. If you see an “authorize” button, as in the example above, the most likely reason is that the buyer abandoned the cart before going through with checkout. It may be that they changed their mind, suffered a power failure or were simply testing the system, however it may also be possible that they never made it back to your store after purchase. For this reason it’s important to check with your credit card processing admin page before deleting or authorizing. If you find that the order did in fact take place then you can click on the authorize button and add the authorization code given by the payment processor. If there is no record of the order you can delete from the drop down in the “Status” field.
Status: This is where you can set the status of your order and the default options are unauthorized, cancelled, deleted, authorized, packing, shipping, shipped, completed. It is possible to change these values in the Admin Order Status page to give a clearer message to the public if they choose to view the status of their order.
Using Internet Explorer on a PC there is a quick method for changing lots of order status at once. If you say change an orders status to "Shipped" and hold down the Ctrl key the all the orders on that page will have the status changed to shipped. This is not available on other browsers.Purge deleted: Once an order is deleted, it will remain in the system for 3 days – this is a security measure in case an order is deleted by mistake. Selecting “purge deleted” will remove all trace of deleted orders.
Dump orders to CSV file: Clicking here will prompt a download of the orders. This can be opened in Excel. It will give details of the order such as address, price, quantity and shipping.
Dump details to CSV file: This will also include the product information.
At the bottom of the page it is possible to quickly flick through date ranges, for example, orders from a month ago, a week ago, yesterday etc.
Overview
The multiple category system introduced in version 4.0.0 allows for a hierarchy of up to 10 levels and replaces the previous hierarchy of Top category > Sub category > Product. This means that you can tailor your store set up to meet the needs of your product requirements. Products can be added to several categories if necessary and you can have categories with the same name on your store but differentiate between them in your control panel by assigning unique "working names".
Accessing
the Categories
Select the “categories” link from the left hand menu of your control panel.
The Screen Explained
Order Category Path: This will give you the hierarchy of your category set up. The Home option refers to categories.asp / categories.php. The drop down option on the left allows you to order the categories on your store.
Category Name: This is the working name assigned to your category – it may be different from the name that appears on your store depending on the naming system you have chosen. Text in bold denotes a category that can have products added to it. The number in brackets (15) refers to the category id and is useful when manually setting up links on the store.
Discounts: Option to assign a Discount
Modify: Modify the properties of the Category
Delete: Delete a Category
Adding
a New Category
Click on the New Category button
The Screen Explained
Category Name: This is the name of the category that will appear on your store.
Category Working Name: This is for internal use only and is useful when you have categories that could have the same name.
Sub Category Of…: This drop down allows you to choose the category above the one you are adding. In the example above, “Toshiba” will be a sub-category of “laptop1”.
Category Function: There are two options when setting up a new category. The category may have products added to it, in this case select “Products can be added to this category”. If there are to be further sub-categories in the hierarchy then select “Categories can be added to this category”. It will not be possible to add a product to a category that has subsequent sub-categories.
Category Image: This is an optional field where you would place the path to the image to accompany the category name.
Category Description: Also optional if you would like to describe the category to your users. It is possible to add HTML to this field.
Notes
Products can only be added to the last category in your hierarchy - these are shown in bold type in your categories admin page. Be sure that when creating sub categories you don’t get into a loop of categories when the "Top Category" of one of your categories links back to one of its own sub categories. If this occurs you will see the error message “LOOP”. You must fix this before adding more categories / products.
Discounts and coupons are powerful marketing tools that allow you to give your clients special offers on products or categories, allow wholesalers to purchase at special rates, provide incentives through your offline advertising or help clear "difficult to sell" stock amongst many other uses.
This explains the options you will see when you go to add a new discount or coupon.
Coupon or discount
The difference between a coupon and a discount is that a coupon will need a special code to be entered during the checkout phase for it to be applicable. A discount however will apply to all of your website visitors, as long as the conditions you can set below are met. Coupons are especially useful therefore for promotions in magazines or through other advertising.
Coupon / Discount Effect
You can choose between Free Standard Shipping, Flat rate discount
or Percentage discount. You can set up more than one coupon or
discount at a time to have combinations of these.
A flat rate discount would be for instance "$20 off if you
spend over $150 on our store".
A percentage discount would be for instance "5% discount on
all our goods".
Working Name
You have to assign a name or phrase to the discount you create.
This text will also be shown to your website visitors to inform
them of the discounts available so it should be meaningful and
short. Examples of "Working Name" would be
"
Free Standard Shipping on orders of $35 or more"
"
10% discount if you buy 3 or more products from our store"
Coupon Code
If you are creating a coupon, you will need to assign a coupon code. This is the code your website users will need to enter to access the discount. For instance, if your coupon code is GH777733D then in your magazine advertising you could put the following "Special offer for readers of this magazine. Enter the code GH777733D during checkout to receive a 5% discount".
Number Available
With some promotions you may want to limit the number available.
For instance
"
5% discount to the first 50 people who purchase".
If you do not want to limit the number available, just leave this
field blank.
Number Days Available
Allows you to set a time limit in days. If you do not want to limit the time available, just leave this field blank.
Threshold
Amount
You may want a certain discount to only take effect at a certain minimum quantity. For instance "Free standard shipping on orders of $35 or over", then just enter 35 in the Threshold Amount. Just leave blank if you do not want to set a threshold amount.
Min
/ Max Purchase Amount (version 3.6.3)
This allows you to set minimum and maximum purchase limits for
discounts to apply and also the ability to include discounts and
coupons
within
a banded range that can be defined here. So for example, spend
between $50 and $100 products for a 5% discount - spend between
$100 and 150 for
a 10% reduction etc.
...or you could have a simple set up like $25 off all orders over
$100.
If you do not want to use this feature, just
leave the fields blank.
Min
/ Max Quantity (version 3.6.3)
This allows you to set minimum and maximum limits for discounts
to apply and also the ability to include discounts and coupons
within a banded range that can be defined here. So for example,
buy between 5 and 10 products for a 5% discount - buy between 6
and 10 for a 7% reduction etc.
Also note that if your "banded" discounts have the same name they will
only be displayed once which can be advantageous. For instance the case where
For every 11 products purchased, get one free.
Make sure the maximum quantity is greater than and not equal to the minimum quantity.
If you do not want to use this feature, just leave the fields blank.
Discount
Amount
The actual amount of the discount. For instance for a Percentage discount of 20%, just enter 20 here. For a flat rate discount of $15, just enter 15 here. Please note that for Free Standard Shipping, this value is ignored.
Scope
You may want to have a discount of 5% if your customer buys 5
of a certain product. You may however want to offer a discount
of 5% if your customers buys 5 of any product on your website.
Likewise if you wanted to offer a discount of 5% if someone spends
$50 or more on one particular product, or you may want to offer
a discount of 5% if someone spends $50 or more on your website
as a whole.
The "Scope" allows you to do both of these types of discount.
You would use the setting "Applies globally to product totals" for
setting up a discount which applies to product totals on total
purchase on your store. Once you have set up a discount of this
type it is automatically in effect and you need do no more.
"
Applies globally but to individual products" would set up
a discount that applies to totals of a particular product, but
again, once set, it applies to every product on the store.
"
Applies to individual products / cats" however allows you
to narrow down the effect of a discount to an individual product
or category. Once you have created this type of discount, you can
then assign it to a particular product, category or top category.
To do this, go to your products, categories or top categories admin
pages and you will see a column "Discounts" with a button "Assign".
You can click on this button to assign the discount. Please note
however that with this type of discount, even if assigned to a
category, totals are taken for individual products, not totals
or products purchased within a certain category.
Restrict
to certain countries
This setting only applies to "Free Standard Shipping". It enables you to set free shipping only for orders within a particular country. To set the countries to which free shipping applies, go to your countries admin page and you will see a column "FSA" which stands for "Free Shipping Applies". Only those countries checked will be eligible for free standard shipping. Remember that a rule will have to be set up first in your discount admin page for this to apply.