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How Do Shopping Carts Know How To Fulfill Orders and Manage to Integrate The Accounting Needs

By on February 25, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

How Do Shopping Carts Know How To Fulfill Orders and Manage to Integrate The Accounting Needs It can sometimes be a difficult task matching accounting systems with your order fulfillment system. There are many categories of products on a Website: those products that are pending, those that are in back-order status, those that are to be drop-shipped, and those that have shipped. An order management system must also be able to print up sales invoices, packing slips, address labels and inventory reports. Some management systems can actually interface directly with the main shippers such as FedEx, UPS and USPS. Your orders should be able to integrate directly into your accounting system if things are to work as smoothly as possible. If you are a small merchant you may be thinking at this point that there is no way your shopping cart can handle all of this, well, the truth is that there are several ways that small merchants can deal with the needs of order fulfillment and accounting integration. One way for small merchants to integrate order fulfillment with accounting is to select a shopping cart purposely because it has the order management features you want. You can also import orders into an order management system on your desktop such as StoneEdge Order Manager from Stone Edge Technologies, Inc. or Dydacomp’s Mail Order Manager, which has Ecommerce Integration. These order management systems can import orders from the following shopping carts: AmeriCart, Miva, ShopSite, Storefront, and Yahoo. You can also start with an accounting program such as QuickBooks and use it to track your order fulfillment. When using QuickBooks you may find value in using Fishbowl by Fishbowl Inventory. Fishbowl fits small to mid-sized companies and uses the QuickBooks platform for the accounting aspects and incorporates advanced inventory tracking that can handle multiple locations, manufacturing, credit card integration, UPS/FedEx integration and a complete wireless bar-coding for warehouse inventory as well as EDI, shopping cart and merchant services. How Do Shopping Carts Know How To Fulfill Orders and Manage to Integrate The Accounting Needs

BusinessFlow by MainStreet Commerce is complete order management and multi-channel sales software that integrates with ecommerce as well as eBay sales. Order management is linked to inventory control, payment processing, marketing and also to customer relationship management. No one likes it when an order gets messed up least of all the customer, so having a order management system that coordinates perfectly with your accounting system is vital to the success of your business. When making your shopping cart decision take the time to check out similar Websites to see how they’re shopping cart works. Don’t be afraid to ask questions of customer service before you buy the shopping cart. Know what your needs are regarding order fulfillment and accounting and make sure that what you buy fits the bill. Being able to track orders, know what is pending, what has been filled, what has shipped and what orders have been returned are all equally important. How Do Shopping Carts Know How To Fulfill Orders and Manage to Integrate The Accounting Needs.

 

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Shopping Cart Advanced Features

By on January 12, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

Shopping Cart Advanced Features

Advanced features is what sets apart the basic, simple shopping carts from those that offer merchants the chance to gather information from customers that can be used in marketing decisions, or allow merchants to gather and keep track of customer’s names and addresses to a shopping cart that has the ability to email the customer a purchase confirmation or notify past customers of a sale that is happening on the site. Advanced features can also help the customer to make buying decisions such as recommending product selection based on buyer preferences based on past order history.

A customer may be able to look at their past order history, check the status of recent orders or track a package that is in transit to them. Cookies on the shopping cart can identify a customer as a past customer and provide data on that customer that will enhance and improve the present shopping experience of that customer.

Advanced features may vary from one shopping cart to the next but some common advanced features include: Order management, which is the ability to view new orders, or to view past orders, to print invoices and packing slips for each order. Product Management, which is the ability to add and edit products quickly or to view statistics in the product database. Web Page Management, which is the creation and updating of the entire Website. Advanced shipping would include custom shipping methods or the ability to utilize real-time shipping calculation from major carriers such as USPS, UPS and FedEx.

Tracking of Inventory, which would include managing and updating items for sale, and pricing of items. Featured Items in which select items appear on a special section of the home page or all pages in areas that would be eye-catching to site viewers. Sales Reports that might include a printout of all sales in a given time period, and the ability to view and compare weekly, monthly or yearly sales comparisons, sales trends, and to evaluate these trends. Order Status is the ability to update the order and the shipping status available to the customer in the customer login area.

Multiple Currencies and exchange rates for all product categories. Customer Management, which would include the ability to find, updates, and view archived information on all customers. Email list management is the ability to email a customer after a purchase to confirm the purchase and to thank them for their business, or to email out notices of an impending sale or special discount, or to announce new products.

Ad tracking ability that can track all click-through advertising and resulting sales. Affiliate Manager to allow the Website owner to run an effective affiliate program to promote the site Wholesale Manager, which would allow the site owner to offer a wholesale membership option. Other advanced features include volume discounts, customer discounts, minimum purchase, promotional codes, coupons, and gift certificates, digital download manager, Bill Me Later capabilities, Traffic and Hit Counter, Ticket manager to care for problems with orders, a Will Call capability and an online manual and documentation to help get the shopping cart up and running.

 

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What is Involved in Shopping Cart Software

By on November 29, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

What is Involved in Shopping Cart Software

There are many things that go on within a shopping cart. There are many different features and management systems, so many that it can be mind-boggling. When deciding on which shopping cart program to purchase you should know what the basic parts of a shopping cart system entails so that you can make a smart buying decision.

All shopping carts have some kind of ordering system whether it is a simple online ordering system that includes buttons that have HTML attached to them such as is done with the Paypal shopping cart or a store-front ordering system where everything is done on site.

All shopping carts also have the ability for customers to add items to the cart, delete items from the cart, and input quantity desired. All shopping carts collect data such as the customer’s name, address and phone number. All shopping carts have to include shipping modules unless the products are all digital in nature in that case there would be a download manager.

Advanced shopping carts would allow customers to have several options per item such as color, size, weight, shape, height or width. Some carts even have choices between bulk or single item orders.

Shopping carts normally have shipping options with common ones being USPS, UPS and FedEx, DHL, CanadaPost, and also AustraliaPost. Not only do you have the different carriers but you also have other shipping options such as delivery time: next day, second day, ground, and air.

Tax calculation are also a part of what shopping carts need to offer when the customer has a physical address that is in the same state or city as the merchant. Tax calculations are done by zip code. Merchants who have stores in multiple rates would have a hair-pulling experience if not for advanced software plug-ins such as TaxWare’s Sales/Use Tax System or CertiTax which can calculate for the customer in real time the exact taxes.

Buyers insist on secure transactions before they hand over their credit cards so it is important for the shopping cart to integrate a payment gateway that is secure, protection for credit card numbers that are stored on the Website, an SSL secure connection certificate between the customer and the Website to discourage hackers from stealing sensitive financial information from the customers. It is also important to have a secure Sockets Layer (SSL) between the customer and the Website. If your Website server is not secure customer won’t buy. It is also important to have secure order retrieval.

Not all payment gateways are compatible with all shopping carts so you need to verify that the payment gateway is compatible before making your purchase. The most common U.S. based shopping cart compatible payment gateways are Authorize.net, LinkPoint, veriSign PayFlow Pro, and WorldPay. PayPal is another alternative payment system for most shopping carts but PayPal’s proprietary Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is not always available so you have to check before deciding to use PayPal.

Most shopping carts nowadays provide email confirmation of order placement and a few provide email confirmation of shipment.

Cookies, temporary IP number assignment and randomly generated cart numbers are all ways that shopping carts have to help keep customer orders straight. Because some shoppers turn off cookies it is important that shopping carts be set up with other methods alongside cookies just in case.

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