X-Cart forums

[RQJay]

I am sorry, I dont have a live shop yet, so I would not know...
Is there any certain reason why we would need a module just for phone orders?
I was under the impression that I could just enter the customers info, and order directly from my computer, onto the site??
Please let me know.

[CC]

Well that was directed at Carrie, so I wouldnt have expected you to know.

You maybe able to do that for a customer once, but think ahead, what are you going to do next time they call up? I can't see you remembering every customers password, so you would have to use anonymous accounts which isn't all to effective if the customer actually wants an account.

[CenturyPerf]

The problem is the cookie function. You can take a phone order, but unless you flush your X-Cart cookies at each new order and register as a new user (which will log your own IP) you will have a mess. This cart was just not built to run manual orders through it.

The purpose of the Phone Ordering mod is to make it easy for phone reps to place orders for customers so that features will be available for the customer. They will still be able to utilize the benefits of the web store, such as (promotions, order tracking, RMA, gift cards, etc). Sure, a few may not have a computer, but it simplifies the entire customer tracking and ordering processes to run it through the cart. Especially if using one of the various credit card gateways.

Our current cart allows us to place orders right through the site which saves a great deal of time by automation. Now that we are soon to have our X-Cart store live I'm looking forward to Carrie getting the mod completed. Without it makes order processing more difficult for us.

[BCSE]

Originally Posted by CC

6 weeks on from the start of the module, wondering how the progress was Carrie?

We are in high anticipation of this one...

Still in the works. I'm hoping by June right now. I have almost all of May and June open for this one.

Carrie

[Maree]

I'd be interested in this too.

I plan to use Quickbooks to enter direct orders until this mod is available. This requires back tracking to alter inventory levels in Xcart to keep stock levels accurate. I'd rather feed off website orders (phone/fax/whatever is not a web order) into XCart and export the lot to Quickbooks at End of month. My inventory levels in XCart would then be reliable.

XCart Gold 4.0.13
Fancy Cat, AOM & Neon Add-ons
Looking at EzyCheckout, Upsell, Remember Me.........

[cotc2001]

The way we are doing phone orders at the moment is just that we have a paper form which I enter the order and payment details in, then when they are off the phone just enter a dummy account in with their name for their email i.e guest@justhom.com , and enter the order as if I was them. then once all sorted the paper details get shredded and burnt.
If they order over the phone again i can just look up their details and login as them to repeat the proccess.
It's long winded and I wouldn't be wanting to do it if we were getting 100 phone orders a day but for the moment it's ok.

But still being the mod junkie that I am, im looking forward to the mod.

[naterscom]

Hey everyone!

I am currently asking x-cart for the following modification. You may wish to use some of the following aspects of the modification in the generic mod that BCSE is working on. Let me know if it helps, or if you have any ideas that might make the mod even stronger.

************************************************** *****
1. The admin will be able to manage (add/delete/edit) "Sales representative" user accounts in the way customer accounts are managed. For each sales representative the admin specify:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Username
- Password
- Commissions (%)
Other fields will not be shown in "sales representative" profiles.

2. Sales representatives will log in using the form in the customer front end. For sales representatives a new menu will be displayed in the right column below the "Authorization" menu in the customer front end. The menu will be titled "Sales Representative" and will include the following menu items:
- "Place an order for an existing customer"
- "Place an order for a new customer"

The menu will be displayed until the sales representative logs out using the button in "Authorization" menu.

3. "Place an order for an existing customer" will open a search customer page enabling the sales rep to search for a customer (either by the name or by the login) and log in as the selected customer. After the sales rep has logged in as a customer, "Sales Representative" menu will still be shown and will display the login name of the customer and an additional "Log out" button.

-------------------------------------------------
Sales Representative
-------------------------------------------------
Place order for an existing customer
Place order for a new customer

Logged as:
john_jones_2005
Log out [GO]
-------------------------------------------------

"Log out" button will log out the customer the sales rep selected, but will leave the sales rep logged in.

4. When the sales rep clicks "Place an order for a new customer" link, the store will look like a new customer (not registered) has entered the store. "Sales Representative" menu will still be displayed and will display "Log out" button and the fact that the sales rep is under an account of unregistered customer:
-------------------------------------------------
Sales Representative
-------------------------------------------------
Place order for an existing customer
Place order for a new customer

Logged as:
unregistered user
Log out [GO]
-------------------------------------------------

If in this mode the sales rep registers a new customer account (either on the registration page or during checkout), the customer will be logged in as the new customer and will act in the same way when he clicks on "Place an order for an existing customer" menu item.

5. The order details page will display whether the order was placed by the customer or by a sales representative. If the order was placed by a sales rep, the login name of the sales rep will be displayed with the first name and the last name.

6. When a sales rep places an order, the store will calculate his order commissions (using the percentage the admin defined for the sales rep) and will add them to the sales rep's commissions.

7. The admin will be able to specify a date range and see statistics displaying how many commissions sales reps owed for the specified dates.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Nate P.

[pengrus]

Nate:

That sounds great! We'd love to have it for our in-house customer support/sales rep to use this.

How much does it cost if we would like to buy it?

Thanks!

[naterscom]

Originally Posted by pengrus

Nate:

That sounds great! We'd love to have it for our in-house customer support/sales rep to use this.

How much does it cost if we would like to buy it?

Thanks!

Hello!

We are going to pay about $650 to x-cart for the custom mod. I'm guessing BCSE's mod will cost around $100 - $150 but we are going to pay a little more because we don't want to wait for it and we want to make it specific to our exact needs (as I imagine most decent sized companies would). Let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks,

Nate

[PDI]

Naterscom: You didn't mention it, but if I were you I'd make sure that the Sales Reps have some extra flexibility in entering the orders (manually putting in different prices, s/h amounts, discounts, etc.) so you can easily accomodate any special situations that come up in the course of writing orders.