I have posted this as a bug but CS-Cart feels everything is working fine. I believe this works fine if you are using the Professional version and not the Multi-Vendor. They told me to post it in the forum and ideas to get some others peoples feedback and votes. I don’t have any votes left. As one of the 3 people using this Multi-Vendor software, I have used all of my votes up creating other features.
Here is the situation:
A customer orders 6 of a product. The vendor only has 5 items in stock. The vendor goes into the order and clicks the New Shipment link. He then decreases the quantity of that item from 6 to 5. Everything here works fine except when the Admin goes into the Seller Account Balance to make a payment to the vendor for that order. The payment amount shows for the amount of 6 items and not a payment amount for 5 items. Therefore if the Admin doesn’t read through every single order and catch this, then the Admin will end up paying the Vendor more money then the Vendor should get.
If you have many vendors on your website and you receive a lot of orders through your website, then this is an Admin’s worst nightmare. The site finally gets big so you are making money except you are losing money now because you can’t keep track of the adjusted inventory shipped and the payments that go with them.
:idea: I believe there are 2 things that CS-Cart needs to do to make this process work properly.
#1. Whenever the Vendor adjusts the New Shipment item quantities to anything less then the number of items the Customer purchased, the difference in the amount of money that was decreased needs to be relayed to the Vendor Account Balance. This way the Admin is not paying the Vendor more then they are suppose to pay them.
#2 When this happens, an automatic notification needs to be sent to the Admin, so the Admin knows to refund the decreased amount of money back to the customer.
Please let me know what you think.
I am still fairly new to cs-cart, but my understanding is that if you enabled inventory control, then in this case, you would only be able to order 5 & not 6?
i believe there will be another solutions for this situation, please give any advice regarding this matter
i hope anyone read this can give their opinion about this matter
thanks
[quote name=‘seabassvg’]I am still fairly new to cs-cart, but my understanding is that if you enabled inventory control, then in this case, you would only be able to order 5 & not 6?[/QUOTE]
Sebassvg, You are correct, but what happens when the vendor makes a mistake and lists that he has 6 in his inventory and he really only has 5. He made a mistake and now has to fix it. This is a very common thing with marketplaces these days. A lot of vendors sell on multiple marketplaces because they want to reach a wider audience of customers. Sometimes they sell an item on another marketplace and either forget to take it off or don’t get it taken down fast enough from the other marketplaces.
Normally when this happens a vendor (like in the professional version) would notify the customer that they fell short on the inventory and just send a refund for the difference. This can’t be done with the multi-vendor version because the admin is the one that controls the funds, not the vendor like in the professional version. Therefore the admin needs to be notified of when they need to refund a partial payment. If they are not notified then the admin will end up not refunding the customer and over paying the vendor.
A simple fix would be what I have listed as the 2 steps above. If anyone else has an easier way to do this please share it. Also please share this with CS Cart management. The more people that complain about the problem, the better chance someone will actually look at it. For those of you that have not gone live yet, you will soon face this issue.
[QUOTE=vidan;]i believe there will be another solutions for this situation, please give any advice regarding this matter[/QUOTE]
Vidan, I have searched around the system back and forth and have not found another solution. After emailing the CS Cart team, CS Cart is only seeing this from the angle of the professional version since that is what the Multi-Vendor Version is built off of. In the eyes of the professional version the solution is to notify the customer and refund them, but as I mentioned above, this does not work for the multi - vendor because the admin is the one with the money. The admin needs to be notified, so they can give a refund back to the customer and send the correct amount to the vendor.
I just posted this problem in the bug tracker, hopefully this will get looked at.
[quote name=‘bb3’]I just posted this problem in the bug tracker, hopefully this will get looked at.[/QUOTE]
CS answer:
Please let me explain it.
The shipments functionality is implemented only for notification purposes.
For example: to notify the customer that 5 items are already sent via some certain shipping service…
one more shipment with a notification about sending the last item can be created after a time.
In the case you described (when the vendor was mistaken and sold more items than he has), the vendor should first resolve the problem with the customer (it is not known if the customer is content with 5 items instead of 6),
the customer will probably want to cancel the order in full.
Then the vendor should contact the administrator of the store and ask him to edit the order and make a refund to the customer.
It is impossible to use the shipments functionality to resolve this problem because
shipments were developed principally to provide the ability to send products by parts.
Hello,
I have the multi vendor set up.
I have installed the PayPal adaptive method, those vendors who have a PayPal account are paid immediately when the customer hits the submit key, so they will have the money and can send a refund for the item out of stock.
Those who do not have a PayPal account I must submit the payment myself, I deal with manufactures and certified wholesalers, many of them do not give you quantities??? I am just setting up and have not run across what you all are talking about but it did occur to me that this could be a potential problem…I was looking to see if there was any discussion about it…my thinking was that the wholesaler/manufacture would contact me and let me know they were out of stock and have an idea of when they could fulfill the order…in turn I would have to contact my customer and inform them so they could decide if they wanted to wait or if they wanted a refund…then if they wanted a refund whoever had the money would have to make the refund…but wow, that could be a nightmare! I see the discussion happened clear back in 2011…has any solution been acheived?