Marks List 1 of 3 of Requested Mods and Capabilities

Here is part 1 of 3 of a list of mods or capabilities that will make this the most desired and sought after cart of them all. If this cart has these incorporated into it, then you would have the top dog cart of all and I know for a fact you could pull people from al over, including specialty modders.



If you need more information, I can provide it, just let me know. I would like to also see your thoughts on these items as these have been topics of conversations of late between me and multiple people.



There are some mods listed here once you notice them, if they are incorporated, would make the cart totally appealing to the majority of modders in every community. Especially if the API capability was added to the cart. You throw that at them and you will have them for sure.



I hope this is a help and I anxiously await word back to see your thoughts on them. I am not one to be short on ideas or suggestions, so I hope I am a help. I do have more, but was running out of time and did not want to make you wait. If you have further questions on any of these mod capabilities I am suggesting here, then ask me, I have more detailed ideas for all of these, but did not want to post a super long post and it was already long enough unless someone requires more info.





MarkWhoo



Conversion Tools: Many people will require an easy transition to convert their businesses over to this platform. Are their conversion tools available to do this X-Cart to CS Cart move easily? What of OSCommerce or other platforms? The transition to this platform needs to be as smooth as possible.



Affiliate Module: An affiliate module will be a must have for those of us that have affiliate programs currently available to our customers. One that does as it should and have more capabilities for special promotions, tracking, excellent banner ad creation and more. An affiliate program that offers features that most other professional affiliate programs offer their users so we will be comparable and have a decent tracking system that is not easily spoofed or hijacked.



Configuration Mod: Configuration style product packager to enable the grouping of a kit made up of multiple products, assembly of computer system etc. One that actually works with ease. If available, this mod should allow you to group already existing products together in a specific grouping in order to create kits or groups of products for the end user. I use this a ton and this capability allows me to make more money off of seemingly passed up sales of just individual sales, but grouped the end user goes for it.



Package Tracking: The ability to notify your customer and subsequently track a shipment by the shipper’s tracking number. (Area to add tracking info for package(s)) (If packages are coming from multiple areas, have the ability to add more tracking numbers for ALL packages destined for customer) This is a must have. A Single Tracking Number area is available in xcart, but not for multiple shippers or locations. This is located on the customers order sheet that contains all of the order details such as products, quantities, addresses, card info etc. This is a basic capability that is required by most stores.



Mall Style CSCart: This is a huge plus. If you have a set up for multiple providers as Xcart Pro would be compared to XCart gold. If there is a CSCart set up that could handle more than a single store set up would be a fantastic draw. Right now I know of several people running mal set ups out of their xcart applications (pro) If they are to leave xcart and go to another platform, could you compete? I do not see an application capability at the moment. Only single store set ups are mentioned that I have seen.



Shipping Calculations Area: Improved shipping calculation area to allow the admin to set up add on costs, adjust for rate hikes by the vendors, handling fees for real time shipping or complex shipping cost set up for multiple applications. Also drop shipping capabilities are a must. This shipping area leaves a lot to be desired, but it is the same at a lot of platforms, so with help it could be jazzed up and do well for us.



Separate Shipping for different Providers: If there is a mall set up, the ability for ALL providers to have their own unique shippers and costs. This is a MAJOR issue in xcart right now. It is said to have ability for All shippers to have their own shipping, yet it is the same set up the admin does for ALL providers. This is not a reasonable situation as all providers will not have the same capabilities as others. This particular shipping capability would depend on the ability of CSCart to provide a mall set up though.



Multiple location Shipping: Support for shipping from multiple locations is a great perk. There are people that have a drop shipping set up for their vendors and they are always located at different locations in the US. Now if they are located in the Central US, and their vendors are on the east, west AND central US areas, then you can see how a single location capability is not a proper set up.



Froogle Feed / Uploader: This is an easy mod to create and it is one that is heavily used by me personally. I use a Froogle Feed for ALL of my stores and would not be without one. I have not seen this advertised nor spoken of, so it would be required. Uploading or ftp capabilities would be a huge plus for this mod. This could contain your log in name, password, name of feed, tracking name for tracking module (I use an affiliate name and track through tracker AND affiliate commission tracking for all completed sales to watch conversions.



BizRate Feed / Uploader: The BizRate feed capability is one that is used by several people I personally know of, but it is not as heavily used as the Froogle Feed is. I guess it is due to the fact that this one os more a CPC (cost per click) feed to two price comparison locations. I personally would see it as a plus if it were available. Uploading or ftp capabilities would be a huge plus for this mod. This could contain your log in name, password, name of feed, tracking name for tracking module (I use an affiliate name and track through tracker AND affiliate commission tracking for all completed sales to watch conversions.





eBay Feed Generator / Uploader: Like Froogle, this is also a major player in tools. This is a must for many of the online stores I have. Why? Well I use it mainly to list my products with links back to my online store. I use it to capitalize on eBay’s cornering on the paid keyword engines such as Overture, Google and more. eBay spends millions on cost per click key words and if you have an item that you sell that you could compete easily with links back to your store! Lets you take advantage of eBay paying for YOUR advertisement.



Internal Tracking System: This would require the ability to track from the front door to the back door. This could require conversion tracking capabilities as well. This could be a major mod or capability in standard cart depending on capabilities. Would be able to generate reports for year end, month end, product analysis, monthly analysis, annual analysis, cost comparison, profit tracking, per year and month.

Store stats, cart analysis for abandoned carts, ability to send coupons on the fly to abandoned customers. A system that works much like the capabilities of any decent business package would. If you are interested in this more, I would make a list of all capabilities to make it a viable tool.



Inventory Export / Import: Easy export of inventory data for manual comparison and warehouse counts. Also ability to set it up into different formats to import into other programs such as for example QuickBooks to track your inventory etc.



Quick Books Integration: Actual Quick Book compatibility, not just say so. A way to export data easily into the QuickBooks program to enable us to actually keep track of our businesses easily without a ton of troubles to make the program work as it should. To date the only thing there has been is lacking attempts at making a viable Quick Books Integration. This is a must have and many people to date are doing manual conversions to get data back and forth between their carts and Quick Books. This is insane. If this was actually real and it was guaranteed to work, it would draw many people over or to this cart in the first place. It is hard to find an actual program capable of this. It CAN be done as there are people that DO make their carts work with QuickBooks, but it is many house of their working with the code to hack it to work, and then they do not want to share it with others. Stop the insanity and be the first to make this actually work!!!



Advanced Order Management: this allows the admin to add to an order, subtract from an order, raise or lower costs, shipping and more. It allows to ALL aspects of the order to be changed and manipulated if for example a customer calls prior to an order shipping out the door.



Return Goods Authorization: The ability to return a product and make it automated as much as possible is a desire of many. All that would be required to do by the admin is either approve or deny the RGA. If it is denied, then the ability to send a reason via email would be nice.



Special Offers Capability: This for example is the ability to add the function to the cart for a buy one get one free, or buy two get one free. Buy this get free shipping, or buy this and get that for free. If you purchase this amount you can get this discount etc. this was recently attempted by xcart and it was a great idea, but it bombed in the fact that it has yet to work properly and is costing tons of points to make it work as it was described to. The typical “Buy X, get Y free offer” typically carries the disclaimer “of equal or lesser value”.

Yes, Yes, Yes.



We need a solution CS-Cart → Quickbooks



and great addition would be



ShipWorks

http://www.interapptive.com which currently works with Miva, Yahoo, osCommerce, ShopSite and eBay.

I agree with that

I might have to go back to x simply because my fulfillment company wants me to provide an order export either in XML or CSV format or Quickbooks.



We must have ability to export the orders.



Please help.

[quote name=‘ilookfab’]…go back to x simply because my fulfillment company…Please help.[/QUOTE]

I’d give your fulfillment company a resignation if this is the case.

snorocket - it is industry standard to supply orders at least in csv format preferably in xml so the orders are processed in real time

95% OF successful businessES use fulfillment services because it allows for extra time to concentrate on things such as sales rather than tedious work to pack - my labour costs more than $7-10 per hour - this is what i mean

a company pays a big buck and would not prefer me seeing packing for the money they pay me. this is not what i am hired to do. it is as simple as that.



THE POINT STILL REMAINS THE SAME



THERE IS NO WAY TO EXPORT ORDERS BUT TO PRINT AN INVOICE - IT IS A PROBLEM

Creating a simple password protected script for this would be easy. You could even have it so that it changes the headers and gives them a prompt to download it.



I have not tested it yet but I think that there is a froogle feed. I would like to see a feed for pricegrabber, nextag, etc. Once you create a feed for one of them it would be easy to create them for others.

[quote name=‘ilookfab’]I might have to go back to x simply because my fulfillment company wants me to provide an order export either in XML or CSV format or Quickbooks.



We must have ability to export the orders.



Please help.[/QUOTE]



I bet if we sponsored the functionality then perhaps we could get it sooner than later. I vote for CSV and XML. I’ll put in my $10 bones.

:slight_smile:

XML and CSV, QB is nice, but can live without it



Thanks

We need a solution CS-Cart → Quickbooks







Exactly!

For any business doing any kind of volume, they need more than just being able to print orders. I know there is a Quickbooks export, but I agree there should be a .csv and .xml too. This would allow more flexibility for other software programs. Not to mention just for research purposes.



I would also agree that there needs to be more integration with something like Quickbooks. Since CS-Cart is designed for small businesses and many small businesses use programs like Quickbooks, then it makes since that the two should work better together.



Right now you have the ability to be able to import orders into Quickbooks, but what do you do when the order is shipped. To manually have to put in all the tracking numbers is a HUGE waste of time.



Thanks,

Jim

You’re actually better off exporting the orders into an order manager like Stoneedge and then using that to manage all your orders. you can then export from Stoneedge to Quickbooks and be very accurate day to day. it even keeps track of your estimated bank deposits from the credit card companies to track for any missing batches.



there isn’t an export from CSCart to Stoneedge currently, but I will be eventually writing my own script and will share it once I have it done.



that’s what I do with my current cart and it works really well. for those using fulfillment companies, you can send order lists to your company directly from stoneedge. or you could also modify the email template in cs-cart to xml and send that to your order company as well in realtime