Need really dumb level help to create an order

[ploughguy]

Hi,

My apologies in advance for this - I have almost certainly done something (or not done something) that is causing this problem, but I have not been able to solve it on my own.

I have a CC 434 store which I am planning to update to version 6 once I figure out how to get it to do what I want.

I have downloaded the 6.1 installer onto a test system.  The installer creates a database with a single product.

I created myself as a customer and that worked nicely.  Now I am trying to create an order in the admin console to sell myself a test product.  I cannot get CC to save the order.

I feel as dumb as a box of hammers for having to ask this question, but I have messed about with it for hours and I am flummoxed.  

I have defined a single tax for Australia at 10%.  The order builder is not calculating tax automatically, but then it does not do it in 4.3.4 either, so I am not sure that is a problem. (It is nice that it now calculates the total all by itself.)

The primary indicator of trouble (aside from the order not being saved) is that the inventory item line has gone red (ish).  I changed the inventory for the test product to have 100 items in stock.  Problem persists.

Please put me out of my misery and explain what I have done wrong (or, more likely, not done.)  Otherwise I will have to spend tomorrow reading code...

Thanks for your help.

Russ

Edited January 20, 2018 by ploughguy

[havenswift-hosting]

Russ

Did you actually add the inventory line by clicking the green plus next to it ?

Check out our Enhanced Admin Order Entry plugin (and our others while you are there) from this page https://www.cubecart.com/extensions/developer/havenswift-hosting

Ian

[ploughguy]

Huh!  That'd be it.  I assumed that was there only to add another blank item line (which it also does...)  Clearly I have missed some documentation somewhere.

I will dig around to avoid further embarrassment.

The plug-in mechanism is impressive - full credit to the (maybe stable) genius that cooked it up.  Nice work.

Thanks for your help.  I have noted your enhanced order admin offering (and other useful looking stuff) - I will check it out once I fully understand the scope of the basic product.  There several nice looking options that plug gaps in the raw functionality.

Thanks again.  Now, back to the tax calculation problem.

Russ

Edited January 20, 2018 by ploughguy

[havenswift-hosting]

The Enhanced Admin Order Entry plugin calculates tax and shipping correctly for you when entering orders as an admin

Ian

[ploughguy]

Right-oh, now we are cooking. I stole some time to do some more testing.  I have been delaying installing the Havenswift adv adm addon because I want to get value out of the one-week evaluation and guaranteeing testing time requires duck alignment in several of life's many strata.  If you see what I mean.

However, I have these gaps, and it looks like your beautiful extension will plug many of them.  I have prefixed each one with my interpretation of the fit based on your extension's Features page.  Does Havenswift have the time to review and comment?

Thanks in advance for what looks like a very useful enhancement

Russ.

• Complies: Restrict shipping solution to a list.
• Complies: Tax calculated automatically.
• Probably complies - may require template customising: Customs declarations, aka commercial invoice and sometimes called a pro-forma invoice, although I believe an accountant might disagree.  Is the pro-forma invoice intended to provide a customs declaration? If so it requires a consignment note number and a declaration with signature and date. (Presumably it can  be customized to do the job, but if it is correct out of the box, so much better.)
• Almost definitely not: Tax-inclusive prices and totals on invoices and related documents  (this is an Australian legal requirement - item prices, extension prices, subtotals and totals must all be tax-inc, with a single "Includes GST of $x.xx" at the bottom.  I suspect this should really be a whole-of-CC development to provide a suite of options for price, total and tax presentation.  Other countries undoubtedly have different rules again.  This should not be too difficult to do (said the customer) because I observe that tax translation of prices is done by a class, so the change should be relatively contained.
• Unknown: Order inventory sort on refresh.  This is quite important.  Firstly, it gives a neater result if all similary items are listed together in the order.  And If some pillockxxxxx customer is dictating an order over the phone, the order of dictation will be completely random and sometimes contain duplicates.  When the duplicates are pointed out (if they are detected) there will be two possible responses:  No, I only need one of those, or Yep, I really need two. Sending an extra one that they don't want results in increased outbound shipping, return shipping and the issuing of a refund, which usually eliminates any profit that the order might have generated. Sorting the inventory when the refresh button is tapped will at least put the dups side by side.  Sorting the items at least puts the dups adjacent.  Aggregating them into a single item might even be better.  At least highlighting the duplicates would be useful.
• Unknown: Add tracking URL (specific to shipping partner) and tracking number to "Order shipped" email and customer-viewable order information if tracking number has been recorded.  As in "Track your order at http://www.tnt.com with consignment note number 999999999.
• Unknown: Add vendor note to customer to tax invoice and to customer-visible order information.
• Unknown: Item numbers displayed in the order inventory listing.
• Unknown: Record actual shipping cost
• Unknown: Recording shipping payment method, selected from a list (e.g. I currently use CC - paid by credit card and SS - Stamps or Satchels from Stock.  I run a monthly report that selects all CC shipping payments by partner and produces a CSV file that I import into my accounting system MYOB to create the shipping purchases, and another that creates the associated payments.  This reduces accounting and reconciliation effort immensely,)  This is fairly simple for me to do, but so much better if you at least capture the data.
• Template change?: Omit "Discount" field on invoice and cart totals unless the Discount value is non-zero.  It is generally good bottom-line practice to not remind people that discounts are even a concept unless they really deserve one.  I think this can be done by doctoring the template.
• Template change?: Add mobile phone number to the address block (second line under the name) to help reduce returns.
• Template change?: Display expected weight
• Template change?: Add legislated (in Australia) "TAX INVOICE" and ABN (= vat ID) to invoice.  Customers cannot claim purchases as deductible inputs unless they have a compliant tax invoice.
• Template change?: Australia Post addressing standards (and many others) prefer that the town name is in upper case.  I think this can be fixed in the template using the smarty UPPER variable modifier.

[havenswift-hosting]

Hi Russ

I have just answered your PM where you asked these same questions, but thought it might be useful to put up similar answers here in case it helps anyone else

Ian

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• Complies: Restrict shipping solution to a list.

The plugin will give you a list of available shipping rates based on what shipping modules you have installed and what rates are returned by them - it will give exactly the same as if the customer was entering the order themselves on the front end of the store plus will also give a "FREE" shipping option 

• Complies: Tax calculated automatically.

Yes exactly

• Probably complies - may require template customising: Customs declarations, aka commercial invoice and sometimes called a pro-forma invoice (although I believe an accountant might disagree.)  Is the pro-forma invoice intended to provide a customs declaration?  If so it must have a consignment note number and a declaration with signature and date. (Presumably it can  be customized to do the job, but if it is correct out of the box, so much better.)

The module provides html templates for Invoice (replacing the built in one so changes can be made which are then not lost when doing an upgrade) and also for new documents called Pro Forma Invoice and Packing List.  Basic html documents are provided with the module and you can them customise these to your heart's content using any valid html and also incorporating any standard CubeCart variables that are available

• Almost definitely not: Tax-inclusive prices and totals on invoices and related documents  (this is an Australian legal requirement - item prices, extension prices, subtotals and totals must all be tax-inc, with a single "Includes GST of $x.xx" at the bottom.  I suspect this should really be a whole-of-CC development to provide a suite of options for price, total and tax presentation.  Other countries undoubtedly have different rules again.  This should not be too difficult to do (said the customer) because I observe that tax translation of prices is done by a class, so the change should be relatively contained.

Customers in Australia have been using CubeCart as it is since it was first released and I guess this is a little like the UK tax requirement for sequential order numbers which is not enforced for small businesses. If it is only on documents though, I dont see any reason why it could not be done using the html templates built into the module - as long as the data is available as a variable then it can be manipulated and printed.

• Unknown: Order inventory sort on refresh.  This is quite important.  Firstly, it gives a neater result if all similar items are listed together in the order.  And If some pillockxxxxx customer is dictating an order over the phone, the order of dictation will be completely random and sometimes contain duplicates.  When the duplicates are pointed out (if they are detected) there will be two possible responses:  No, I only need one of those, or Yep, I really need two. Sending an extra one that they don't want results in increased outbound shipping, return shipping and the issuing of a refund, which usually eliminates any profit that the order might have generated. Sorting the inventory when the refresh button is tapped will at least put the dups side by side.  Sorting the items at least puts the dups adjacent.  Aggregating them into a single item might even be better.  At least highlighting the duplicates would be useful.

The module doesnt have this feature but it could be added.

• Unknown: Add channel-specific tracking text with URL and tracking number to "Order shipped" email and customer-viewable order information if tracking number has been recorded.  As in "Track your order at http://www.tnt.com with consignment note number 999999999." and "Track you order at www.austpost.com.au with tracking number 99999999".

We already have added an option called "Delivery Agents" - can you read the description of this functionality on the module page https://www.cubecart.com/extensions/plugins/enhanced-admin-order-entry as I suspect that this could be used for this

• Unknown: Add vendor note to customer to tax invoice and to customer-visible order information.

This is standard functionality ?

• Unknown: Item numbers displayed in the order inventory listing.

The module doesnt have this functionality but again could be added

• Unknown: Record actual shipping cost

The module doesnt have this functionality but again could be added

• Unknown: Recording shipping payment method, selected from a list (e.g. I currently use CC - paid by credit card and SS - Stamps or Satchels from Stock.  I run a monthly report that selects all CC shipping payments by partner and produces a CSV file that I import into my accounting system MYOB to create the shipping purchases, and another that creates the associated payments.  This reduces accounting and reconciliation effort immensely,)  This is fairly simple for me to do, but so much better if you at least capture the data.

The module doesnt have this functionality but again could be added

• Template change?: Omit "Discount" field on invoice and cart totals unless the Discount value is non-zero.  It is generally good bottom-line practice to not remind people that discounts are even a concept unless they really deserve one.  I think this can be done by doctoring the template.

This is more of a front end design / coding issue rather than anything to do specifically with Admin Order Entry although I suppose it could be added as a feature but would need to know in more detail how you would want it to work especially around using discount coupons etc

• Template change?: Add mobile phone number to the address block (second line under the name) to help reduce returns.

You can easily add this to the html templates

• Template change?: Display expected weight

We display the weight on the admin side of things within our module so that is covered and if you mean on anything printed, then that could also be done by changing our html templates

• Template change?: Add legislated (in Australia) "TAX INVOICE" and ABN (= vat ID) to invoice.  Customers cannot claim purchases as deductible inputs unless they have a compliant tax invoice.

Yes, that can easily be added to the html code so that is displayed

• Template change?: Australia Post addressing standards (and many others) prefer that the town name is in upper case.  I think this can be fixed in the template using the smarty UPPER variable modifier.

Again if you are talking front end, then several skin template files would need to be modified.  If you are talking about only on printed documents, then can can easily be done by modifying the html documents built into the module.

Ian