Hi guys, Ive been trawling around trying to find out how the owner/administrator finds how much money hes earned in any given month.
Its fairly self explanatory to see how much a said vendor earns, however - how on earth does the site owner know how much earnings hes made after all the vendors have been paid out.
Is this a big oversight in regards to development or an oversight by myself.
Regards
Crystal ball! Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Note that cs-cart developers and marketing are not merchants. Hence they don’t really understand what it means to sell products that are purchased at a cost and sold for an amount… Sellling sofware or service is quite different.
Most small businesses live off of reports. The sales reports are not accurate and there is no costing (and cost history) capability in cs-cart. Cost should be part of an order that is visible only to the administrators and then that data should be used (along with taxes, shipping cost, shipping charge, promotions, discounts, etc.) to derive gross and net costs as well as P&L. But unfortunately, this basic business operational informmation is not part of the standard cart.
Hi tbirnseth,
Thanks for your reply.
Thats a BIG oversight on cs-cart’s part, I cant believe they find the store owners profits to be so insignificant.
Ive came across the following addon : [url]http://www.snorocket.com/addons/profit-loss-reports.html[/url]
Do you think this is would fill the gap, the description is a little vague though.
Regards
I have no idea and I would not offer an opinion on another addon supplier’s addons and their ability to do what a customer expects. Sno is a reliable member who has been around here longer than I. So I would ask him about whether his addon will solve your particular need.
[quote name=‘deang’]Hi tbirnseth,
Thanks for your reply.
Thats a BIG oversight on cs-cart’s part, I cant believe they find the store owners profits to be so insignificant.
Ive came across the following addon : [URL]http://www.snorocket.com/addons/profit-loss-reports.html[/URL]
Do you think this is would fill the gap, the description is a little vague though.
Regards[/quote]
The Profit Loss Reports Addon will only work on the Professional and Community versions, Thanks - Sno
[quote name=‘snorocket’]The Profit Loss Reports Addon will only work on the Professional and Community versions, Thanks - Sno[/quote]
You mean both?
[quote name=‘JesseLeeStringer’]You mean both?[/quote]
Correct, the Profit Loss Reports will work on both Professional and Community.
We can code it to work on MV if someone would like to pay the development, I wouldn’t expect the costs to be too much since 90% of the work is already coded - Sno
[QUOTE]Hi guys, Ive been trawling around trying to find out how the owner/administrator finds how much money hes earned in any given month.[/QUOTE]
I feel sorry for any business that actually relies on a shopping cart program to determine this. A shopping cart is meant to attract business and receive orders, an accounting program is meant to determine realistic business profitability as soon as the orders rcvd online are entered into the system. While viewing basic at a quick glance type sales reports through your online store is fine, try to combine an online store with an acounting program and you will end up with an overbloated boat anchor that does neither well, just my very humble opinion! 
But isn’t that what the developers are trying to do? Why have all the back-end stuff they do otherwise…
I completely agree with you that a business is broken up into salles and operations. Once an order is in, the sale is done and everything else should be handled in the operational side of the business with software that is really geared toward operations (shipping, rmas, payment [repudible merchants will charge at time of ship rather than time of sale], accounting, inventory managment, etc.).
In many businesses, an online store is just a portion (and usually a smal one at that) of their overall business.
And my opinion is humbler than yours! 
[QUOTE]But isn’t that what the developers are trying to do? Why have all the back-end stuff they do otherwise…[/QUOTE]
I would tend to believe this is a constant thought struggle for shopping cart developers as to just “how much” accounting functionality, or exactly what should be attempted to be performed/added to the cart platform. I am sure that after reading multiple user requests to add accounting/business mgmnt. functionality they tend to consider, and often end up adding nothing more than weakly performing functionality that in the end serves no useful purpose beyond extreme beginners level.
Personally, if an addon is not top notch, then I would rather never see it in the cart as it only creates bloat and more work for the developers in maintaining it. Prime example is the Barcode Addon and Quickbooks export currently in CS-Cart, neither are what would be considered full featured, complete solutions, so do they really provide any real benefit?
Alright, I have wasted enough time talking rather than doing, time to start/finish the upgrade to 2.1.3!
Ahh, but you can check off the line item on requirements if it says:
- must have barcode
- quickbooks integration
Guess you’ve never bid on a government contract! There’s a big difference between “has” and “useful”!
Fun conversation and I agree with you on all counts.