Are there any plans to build in a way to handle backordered items?  Also, it would be nice to have a "Special Order" option for items not normally stocked.

FTHobbies

This will be part of ProductCart v3. We encourage you to provide more details on what features you would like to see as part of this new component of ProductCart.

Specifically, one of the big questions is the following:

• Assume there are 3 inventory statuses: in stock, back-ordered, out of stock
• Assume your store allows customers to place an order for back-ordered products.
• Assume an order is placed for 3 items: 2 are in stock and can ship immediately and 1 is in back-order.
• Will you ship 1 order or 2 separate orders?
• If the latter is true, do you agree that the store will bear the full cost of the second shipment and therefore the customer will only be shown shipping charges during checkout based on the total cost of shipping the 3 items in one shipment?

We are interested in hearing your thoughts on this question. And feel free to provide additional feedback on this feature.

Thanks for the opportunity to make the next version of PCart better!!

*** As far as the above post goes, it would be nice to let the customer choose:

     - ship in-stock items now

     - wait and ship all together

Most stores ship backordered items for free (the backordered item's value/weight should be part of the original shipping charge calculation).

Some other items of interest:

*** It would be nice to be able to show certain prices only to people that are logged into their account on the site.  Maybe a check box similar to "Active" or "Featured Product" that says "show price to logged in customers only."  We have some MAP (Manufacturer's Advertised Pricing) products where we have to list a certain price on the website although we sell it cheaper (this makes customers have to call us for the price we sell it at). 

We can bypass this by showing our price if the customer is logs in.  The tag on the product information page would say "log in to see price."  The website SoutheastRC.com uses this on their website.

*** Also it would be nice to have an option when adding a product to have it show up as a "Special Order" indicating that we do not normally stock the item but can get it.  It would need to show "usually ships within X days" where we define X.

*** The backorder option should show up on the product information page if the stock is zero.  The customer will know that the product is out-of-stock and will ship when we get it.  We do not display inventory amounts on our site so, if we have 3 in website inventory and a customer wants 4, the site should tell them that we have 3 that will ship now and the 4th will be on backorder.

*** A "Notify Me" box that shows up on out-of-stock/backorder items that allows people to put in their email address to be notified when it gets re-stocked would also be a welcome feature.  That would draw people back to the site when we adjust inventory at re-stocking.

Thanks for looking....any other thought PC users???

FTHOBBIES,

Thank you very much for your feedback. We strongly believe in considering our customers an integral part of the "product management" team. ProductCart is the result of many years of customer feedback turned into new features.

In reply to your posting: I believe that you are treating "out of stock" and "back-ordered" as the same "inventory status". However, we foresee store managers wishing to treat the three inventory statuses differently. Specifically, this is what we have in mind:

• Out of stock: the product is not available and cannot be purchased. This is the case when the inventory is 0, you have not re-ordered the product via the Supplier Management System (see below), and you have not set up the product to be automatically considered "back-ordered" when out of stock.
• Back-ordered: the product has been re-ordered and should arrive in N days (this is shown to the customer as "This product typically ships in N days"). ProductCart v3 will include an extensive Supplier Management system that will allow you to create Purchase Orders to be sent to suppliers right from ProductCart. A product would automatically be considered "back-ordered" by the system if it's out of stock, but it has been re-ordered (a purchase order has been created that includes the product). In addition, you could individually set a product to always be treated as "back-ordered" when it goes out of stock.
• In-stock: the product is available. If a customer tries to order a quantity that is higher than the quantity in stock, currently ProductCart shows a message indicating that the amount exceeds the current inventory level. We will change that message based on how the product is setup: if it's out of stock, the customer will only be able to order the units in stock; if it's back-ordered, the customer will be notified of how many units are in back-order.

Does this sound OK?
Any additional thoughts?

I personally would like any out of stock items we have to show up with a "backorder" button displayed so the customer can order it but knows the status.  I think the button should say backorder, not backordered....it lets the customer be in the driver's seat.

Could this be a global change as far as what you wrote above "In addition, you could individually set a product to always be treated as "back-ordered" when it goes out of stock."  I would like to make all of our current products have that option at once.

earlyimp, any other thoughts on my Some other items of interest section above?

FTHobbies

You might want to look thru the 'code snippets' available on our Developer's Corner, one of which can be used to show content only to customers that are logged in:

http://www.earlyimpact.com/productcart/support/developers.asp#snippets - http://www.earlyimpact.com/productcart/support/developers.as p#snippets

Please keep in mind that we cannot offer assistance with the implementation of code snippets from this site.