Using ProductCart - Product Pricing as a Percentage of Current Order

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Product Pricing as a Percentage of Current Order

Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Using ProductCart
Forum Description: Running your store with ProductCart
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3481
Printed Date: 02-May-2024 at 5:27pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Product Pricing as a Percentage of Current Order

Posted By: alexL-icc
Subject: Product Pricing as a Percentage of Current Order
Date Posted: 01-March-2010 at 4:56pm

Hi all,

My name is Alex and I am a web developer for a server company called http://www.icc-usa.com - International Computer Concepts (ICC) , and we use ProductCart for our online store. We are currently running v3.51 of ProductCart, with BTO and Conflict Management upgrades.

My question is this: we would like to create a product (namely, warranty options) whose price is determined as a percentage of a customer's current BTO order price. For, example, one customer configures a server that costs him $1000. Another customer configures the same server and, because he has added extra hard drives and other hardware, it costs him $2000. ICC, our company, would like to charge the second customer more than the first for a parts replacement warranty because his order included more hardware from the BTO product.

Is there a way to do this - specifically to create a product whose price is determined as a percentage of a customer's BTO order? In the example above, this product - "Warranty - 1 year", would have a price of 10% of the BTO order. So customer 1 would have to pay $100 for "Warranty - 1 year" and customer 2 would have to pay $200 for "Warranty - 1 year".

I have searched the entire Wiki and support resources on your web site and have not been able to find a solution. Does anyone know of a way to resolve this problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Alex L.

Replies:

Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 01-March-2010 at 6:50pm

Hi Alex,

It would definitely require a customization, and a farely extensive on at that (so if you are considering upgrading to v4, you should definitely do that first, or even wait for v4.1), but it could be done, esp. vis a vis the way PC stores the details of an order in the db.

The gist of it would be that you would have a virtual price for this "product", but there are a lot of places this would have to be customized for to handle that.

Posted By: intour
Date Posted: 02-March-2010 at 4:34am

Hi Alex,

I have a suggestion for you but this rather depends on how you use the shipping.

The shipping can presently be set up to be a percentage of order value which sounds like what you are after. If you called it Warranty instead of shipping it may just work.

This of course leaves you a problem if you need to charge shipping and this could become even more of an option if you use the UPS tracking module.

If however, you are using shipping in its simplest form just to add a shipping cost then, as you have the BTO version, you could create a BTO item called shipping, add it to your product configuration and make it a cumpulsory option.

I haven't tested any of this but it may just offer you a solution.

Nigel

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http://www.innerview.co.uk - Innerview
Productcart Platinum Reseller
Web Design/Hosting/Virtual Tours

Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 02-March-2010 at 5:24am

Hi Nigel,
Another problem with using the shipping settings is that it is based on the value of all the items in the cart, not each individual product, so if there are other non-warranty items purchased they would be incorrectly charged a warranty fee.

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Editing ProductCart Code?

See http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/developers/editcode" rel="nofollow - WIKI Guidelines for Editing ProductCart's ASP Source Code

Posted By: intour
Date Posted: 02-March-2010 at 5:45am

Yes I agree with that Hamish.

It was just a suggestion that might possibly offer a solution but I recognise it is heavily dependent on how Alex has his products, shipping and warranties setup.

I always look for a simple solution there is one !

Nigel

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http://www.innerview.co.uk - Innerview
Productcart Platinum Reseller
Web Design/Hosting/Virtual Tours

Posted By: mattprice
Date Posted: 02-March-2010 at 7:22am

Hi Alex,

Bit it of a crude workaround but is there a way that you could force selection of a more expensive warranty option based upon the customer's hardware selection in their BTO config ? I use BTO but not the Conflict Management Option so I do not know whether this would work at all. It would'nt be % based but it might enable some basic rules to determine which warranty package they can walk away with before adding to basket ?

Matt

Posted By: alexL-icc
Date Posted: 04-March-2010 at 2:45pm

Hi all,

Thanks for all of your advice: you gave me some fresh ideas about how to resolve this problem. As I see it, there are three feasible solutions:

1. Hire a developer to write new code that would allow a product to have a price as a percentage of BTO order price.

2. Call warranty products something like "3 Year Warranty to cover $100 of hardware replacement", allow multiple quantities to be selected in the BTO configurator, and instruct the customer to select a quantity to correspond to their final BTO price (so if their server ends up costing $3000, they would select quantity 30 of the warrranty product).

3. Create two categories in the BTO configurator. One category would be called "Warranty Option" and another "Warranty Type". The first would be a radio-button menu that would allow the customer to choose the range of their 'Price as Customized' - these products would have a price of 0. The second category would be "Warranty Type" and would be a drop-down menu that would be linked by Conflict Management rules to the choice a customer makes in "Warranty Option" - these would be the real warranty options that a customer would have to pay for, their choices limited by the selection of their price range under "Warranty Option".

Ok, I'm sure you're thoroughly confused by my poor descriptions, sorry. Thanks for your help, and let me know if you have any more suggestions.

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Alex L.