X-Cart forums

[alkalar]

We publish eBooks and maintaining the Washington state tax tables is more trouble than it's worth.

We'd like to continue to show our titles, but direct people to "regular" outlets such as Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc. We can add the links to the description, but I need to know how to disable and hide the "sales" info and internal links. In other words, we want to make it impossible for a "customer" to buy something from this site and not even lead him to think he can.

We like the other features of XCart and already have an investment in the sales pages for our "inventory".

Can anyone tell me how to remove the sales "stuff"?

[totaltec]

It's not going to be straightforward, there is no "checkbox" that will remove all the cart functionality.

A series of simple edits in the templates will accomplish this, but it is probably outside the scope of a simple answer. I think you might want to post the job, and get an X-cart expert to help with this.

[alkalar]

I can cut html code and PHP. If that's what it takes, I just have to know where to go and what to alter.

[Pyro]

Originally Posted by alkalar

I can cut html code and PHP. If that's what it takes, I just have to know where to go and what to alter.

To Mike's point, anyone can do anything if they are given enough direction. I could compose a symphony if told each note to write.



You could start by deleting all shipping zones and disabling all payment gateways. That would prevent any orders from being placed. After that, it is just a matter of using webmaster mode to locate the templates that you need to clean up in order to remove any buttons or other features that are no longer relevant.

[cflsystems]

Originally Posted by alkalar

We publish eBooks and maintaining the Washington state tax tables is more trouble than it's worth.

We'd like to continue to show our titles, but direct people to "regular" outlets such as Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc. We can add the links to the description, but I need to know how to disable and hide the "sales" info and internal links. In other words, we want to make it impossible for a "customer" to buy something from this site and not even lead him to think he can.

We like the other features of XCart and already have an investment in the sales pages for our "inventory".

Can anyone tell me how to remove the sales "stuff"?

The first part about the WA State sales taxes - I have a mod that connects directly to WA State DOR and applies correct tax to WA purchases based on shipping address. There is no need to maintain anythign within XC.

As for turning site into catalog only - as others mentioned - not just copy/paste solution, it does require changes to few files and usually where you apply the changes depends on the cart version and if files are modified form originals.

[PhilJ]

http://forum.x-cart.com/showthread.php?t=62924

[alkalar]

Originally Posted by cflsystems

The first part about the WA State sales taxes - I have a mod that connects directly to WA State DOR and applies correct tax to WA purchases based on shipping address. There is no need to maintain anythign within XC.

As for turning site into catalog only - as others mentioned - not just copy/paste solution, it does require changes to few files and usually where you apply the changes depends on the cart version and if files are modified form originals.

We actually have two problems:

1. The tax rate problem (we're currently doing it by 5-digit zip code)
2. Reporting taxes to the state by zip code. Right now, it's a manual job that's very labor intensive for our bookkeeper.

Any automated solution has to handle both problems. We actually get very few sales from our site (most sales come from Amazon, the 800-pound gorilla of the eBook world). And even fewer of those sales are from within the state (maybe 2 - 3 per month).

Right now, it would be easier and more cost effective to direct buyers to Amazon or other retailers and take the "hit" (usually around 30%) on the sales price. We're actually publishers and it was probably not wise to think we were also retailers (but Amazon was only paying 35% royalties when we started out and we were actually selling more on our site than via Amazon).

[cflsystems]

Well I can't say much about how you do bookkeeping and reporting but what the mod does is to connect to WA DOR and "ask" what the total sales tax % is for that order for that shipping address - not just the zip code but the whole address so proper sales tax % is returned - zip code only will not always result in correct sales tax due to tax zones as you know. This is applied to the sale and recorded with the order. How you export and record orders from XC to your bookkeeping software is a completely different question.