Ok, I am now testing the checkout process and I may have read a few place that there is a serious shortcoming with CS-Cart in this area of order confirmation & invoicing…!
Why does the order get confirmed when the payment has failed
Why do I get 2 or 3 invoices and confirmation when the whole thing fails and then at the end if I get the payment confirmed it generates another invoice & order no.?
Is there a fix for this?
How does one manage customer relationship when you got incorrect or invalid confirmations going out?
Anyone has a solution or has a workaround for this major issue.
Apart from this so far I have liked what I’ve seen & testing in CS-Cart.
Why does the order get confirmed when the payment has failed
Why do I get 2 or 3 invoices and confirmation when the whole thing fails and then at the end if I get the payment confirmed it generates another invoice & order no.?
Is there a fix for this?
How does one manage customer relationship when you got incorrect or invalid confirmations going out?
Anyone has a solution or has a workaround for this major issue.
Apart from this so far I have liked what I’ve seen & testing in CS-Cart.[/QUOTE]
They are working to improve the issue with failed orders being created.
In the meantime, go into Orders->Order statuses and make sure that “Notify customer” is checked only for those statuses you want.
Just wondering if anyone has a timeline on the fix. Sounds like this a know problem for a while.
So, turning notification ‘on’ or ‘off’ will kind off over the the annoying factor, however, it still leaves the store manager with the extra work of housekeeping and cleaning up failed order.
This is going to be a MAJOR problem for a business if I am receiving 100s of order per day and sorting through what is failed and what is ok, plus I am assuming the invoice will also need to be cleanned up or removed.
Just wondering if anyone has a timeline on the fix. Sounds like this a know problem for a while.
So, turning notification ‘on’ or ‘off’ will kind off over the the annoying factor, however, it still leaves the store manager with the extra work of housekeeping and cleaning up failed order.
This is going to be a MAJOR problem for a business if I am receiving 100s of order per day and sorting through what is failed and what is ok, plus I am assuming the invoice will also need to be cleanned up or removed.[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately (fortunate in this case), the order and the invoice are one-in-the-same.
Yes, people have been asking that this be fixed for a long time but the developers have needed convincing it seems. They seem to finally understand that it poses a number of problems ranging from order management headaches to compliance with requirements for sequential invoice numbers. There is no way to know when this will be addressed but it is at least listed as ‘in development’ rather than ‘planned’. You might want to contact the developers and ask if they have any kind of rough timeframe though I doubt you will get much more than "in evelopment’ for an answer.
[QUOTE]Unfortunately (fortunate in this case), the order and the invoice are one-in-the-same.
Yes, people have been asking that this be fixed for a long time but the developers have needed convincing it seems. They seem to finally understand that it poses a number of problems ranging from order management headaches to compliance with requirements for sequential invoice numbers. There is no way to know when this will be addressed but it is at least listed as ‘in development’ rather than ‘planned’. You might want to contact the developers and ask if they have any kind of rough timeframe though I doubt you will get much more than "in evelopment’ for an answer.[/QUOTE]
Bob, guess I don’t understand why this is such an issue, perhaps it is because of the way we process our orders?
All orders we rcv online are entered into Quickbooks at which time a “Sales Receipt” is created for credit card or COD payment methods, and an Invoice is generated in Quickbooks for orders placed via Purchase Order with Net 30 Day terms. So, all invoice or sales receipt numbering is handled/determined by our internal accounting program, in fact, the order/invoice numbers from the store has no use to us at all other than perhaps locating a prior order placed online. The sales receipt and invoice numbers we generate in Quickbooks do not at all match the online orders, so they are basically of no use other than for online tracking purposes, we would not even really need a number referenced to the online order. From the time the orders are entered into Quickbooks the balance of the order processing, shipping etc is all handled from Quickbooks. When the order is shipped, we post the tracking numbers back to our online store changing the order status to Completed at which time a shipment notification is emailed to the customer, done.
As far as the Failed orders, this actually is beneficial to us in my opinion as we rcv a Failed order email notice and the Failed orders are color coded red in the admin making them easy to spot. 90 % of the time our customers quickly re-enter the payment details & complete the payment transaction, and the ones that get scatterbrained, we simply call and help them “fix” the problem changing the order status to Processed.
All sales reporting, accounting, sales tax calculation, reporting for income tax preparation, etc is all done from within Quickbooks.
[QUOTE]You are missing that he wants to do this in the cart. I know you prefer to use the best tool available but that may not be an option for him.
Bob[/QUOTE]
Thanks Bob, thought I was starting to loose my mind trying to figure out why sequential online invoice numbers were such an issue for everyone except myself!
SO, I have said it before & I will say it again:
Shopping Carts are Shopping Carts, Accounting Programs are Accounting Programs, try to use either of the two to do the job of both, and you will end up with “something” of which does a half assed job at both functions!
[quote name=‘Struck’]Thanks Bob, thought I was starting to loose my mind trying to figure out why sequential online invoice numbers were such an issue for everyone except myself!
SO, I have said it before & I will say it again:
Shopping Carts are Shopping Carts, Accounting Programs are Accounting Programs, try to use either of the two to do the job of both, and you will end up with “something” of which does a half assed job at both functions! :D[/QUOTE]
I basically agree with you however it is noteworthy that there are other carts which distinguish between orders and invoices. They will need to address this when they provide for backorders (which is on the roadmap).
Also, don’t forget the disadvantage that a customer cannot look up his invoice information when it is stored in Quickbooks.
[QUOTE]Also, don’t forget the disadvantage that a customer cannot look up his invoice information when it is stored in Quickbooks.[/QUOTE]
I guess it just is never an issue as our customers always have the option to login & view their past order history. Only difference is our online order numbers are different from our internal system order numbers.
[quote name=‘Struck’]I guess it just is never an issue as our customers always have the option to login & view their past order history. Only difference is our online order numbers are different from our internal system order numbers.[/QUOTE]
And that is a problem for people in Europe - the tax authorities want a copy of the invoice when any deduction is taken. That means they would need to contact you for a copy of their invoice which negates one of the advantages of an online system. I realize this is at the margins but, like I said, other carts provide this feature which means other carts might be a better solution for those who need this.
The developers are likely to address this when they provide for backorders. They already provide for multiple shipments; in the future, those shipments will likely be associated with an invoice that reflects what was actually shipped rather than the full order amount. All this information will then be available to the customer in their Account area.
[QUOTE]And that is a problem for people in Europe - the tax authorities want a copy of the invoice when any deduction is taken. That means they would need to contact you for a copy of their invoice which negates one of the advantages of an online system.[/QUOTE]
I see your point Bob,
Especially in regards to European business users.
For us here in the US, we could (and actually did for awhile) match our online orders with our internal numbers in Qbooks, then we came to the conclusion that at least for us, it wasn’t worth the extra effort of keeping them matched.
I do understand their reticence to provide a timeframe. It sounds, at least, that they understand this is a very high priority issue (“working on it at this moment”).
I have opened a suggestion in the UserVoice area so that we can escalate this to the highest priority. This may not be a bug per se but it is a serious flaw in the design of the cart and needs to be addressed as quickly as possible - each day it is not leads to likely lost orders and confusion for both the customer and shopowner. It is probably the reason for a substantial number of abandoned carts.
Without taking anything away from any of the other requests, I think this request is clearly more important than eBay integration, Deal of the Day, or even the shipping issues.
Please vote to have this issue addressed in the standard cart ASAP:
Would clear a few minds who still think sequential invoicing numbers are NOT needed. Not everyone needs quickbooks or can afford it. The best logic for the developers to implement would be to have an option for generating invoice when the status is ‘processed’ or any other status that a user deems OK and selects for generating an invoice.
Thanks for the thread jain1980, now I can see I am not alone when I stopped all my trial work on CS-Cart for this reason and am willing to wait patiently for the next month to see if things change in this area.
As highlighted, I see this as a major make or break area for any online shopping cart.
Interesting to read how people are saying their conversion rate has gone done since moving to version 2.0.XX. I am surprised some of you are still hanging in there.
Here is a link to the bug tracker where you can also add your comments or need to change this part of the cart as a matter of priority and hopefully the developers are looking, reading and willing to act, though there seems to be very little update communication coming back from them which is a worry.!!
