Product shipping status

We often have orders with several items on them. We are currently not able to use productcart to track inventory because we are running multiple stores selling many of the same products under seperately licensed versions of productcart. Because of this we can not split the inventory up for each store and so, customers do not know our stock status when the order is placed.

It would be nice to have a way when shipping a partial order to tell a customer what is shipping now and what is backordered

or, when updating an order to "processed" to be able to tell them what is in stock and what will be on backorder and take longer to ship.

 

Actually, that would be real nice especially if you could keep all the customers and products in one database. But by design it is not something that could be easily accomplished, so I would just settle for being able to better communicate to our customer what is shipping right away and what is going to be on backorder.

katharina wrote:  What I really like is the option of making what was shipped and keep the remainder on backorder until shipped.  That way you would be able to assign more tracking numbers.  So far we keep extra print outs from back order in a folder, because it is just not available in product cart.

 

Exactly what I want as well!!

earlyimp wrote: Do you typically collect payment for the items shipped, or do you wait until all products have been shipped before charging the customer?

I think people need to look carefully at their merchant agreements for this.  Most of them that I have seen say something to the effect that you cannot charge a customer for a purchase until you are sure that the item will ship within 24 hours (and slight variations thereof).  That being said, it would be good to be able to bill for what you are shipping when you ship it...so if an order is split, it is billed twice.

What would be killer is for PC to notify the customer which products could ship that day and which ones are backordered, ask them if they want the items shipped together or as they are available, and then note that if they are shipped at different times, that additional shipping costs may be incurred.  Or make the additional shipping costs an option for store owners to add.

earlyimp wrote: Do you typically collect payment for the items shipped, or do you wait until all products have been shipped before charging the customer? We are thinking that the admin should be able to set a product-specific setting that says (add/edit product page): when back-ordered, this product typically ships within N days. N would be included in the email sent to the customer when the order is partially shipped and also shown in the storefront on the product details page (so customers see "This product typically ships within 6 days" if N = 6). Is this OK? Any additional ideas on this feature are certainly appreciated.

1.) I am a reseller of various high-dollar product lines (computers, specialized software, etc).  When a customer orders a custom configured computer on my web-site,  I in turn order the equipment from my distribution points.  This requires that I have the money in-hand to place the order as the distributors will not take the order until it is paid for and they have the money in-hand.  I have absolutely no choice but to charge the customer up front for purchases regardless of whether or not the product ships right away or has to be ordered by the distributor and takes 10 days to custom build the solution befor it ships.  I did however communicate this with my merchant processor up front when I established the account.

2.) "Backorder Days":  I think offering this option would be very good.  I can think of many applications for this.  Many times I get a report from my vendor that certain items are on backorder until some date in the future.  If you expanded on your idea a little to include a option for us to enter in a specific backorder date as well as the number of days.  This would let the customer know up front that they can still order the item but it will not be shipped until this specific date.

3.) Most Important for my store! -  We really, really need an additional shipping option that allows you to set flat rate shipping per product/per quantity/per SKU number.  With this, you would also need to have the ability to group SKU's into a 'shipping unit' and be able to assign a flat rate for that unit for each quantity increase.  Okay, what would a shipping unit be?  An example of a 'shipping unit' would be a computer system that has different options, each with their own SKU identifier,  for say the display, the amount of memory, the hard drive, installed software, etc.  In my case, regardless of which internal options (SKU's) are added to the configuration, the computer portion always ships at a flat rate of $39 per computer.  If the customer adds on a docking sation during the BTO phase of the order, then they will be charged an additional flat rate of $20 per docking station.  We get into variations when customers add on other accessories to the computer and docking configuration (combined $59 Flat shipping) or order just accessories without the computer system.  This is because the accessories are typically shipped by weight.  Please keep in mind these are not my shipping rules.  These are guidelines set by the computer manufacturer that distributors and resellers alike must adhere to.  This is also not a unique way of shipping as I have 4 different vendor/distributors that all have similar shipping requirements.  Based on this I do not think my company is the only one with this problem. 

Edited by cognecy - 19-March-2006 at 11:33am