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  • Mark Derman 3 posts 23 karma points
    May 17, 2012 @ 15:12
    Mark Derman
    0

    uCommerce Qs - Razor, inventory, docs, accounting, backorders

    Hi

    I’m putting together  an online nursery for a client that will be 60% knowledgebase\magazine, 20% store and 20% custom app and am looking at what to use together with Umbraco.

    So far uCommerce is looking great! It seems really tailored to developers looking to customise both front-end and back-end of a store.

     

    Hope you can help with my Q’s please.

     

     

    1. Razor

    - Any chance you’re going to release a version of uCommerce on Umbraco 4.7.x with the UI ported to Razor, or approximately when do you plan to release the version on Umbraco 5.x? I need to change the category and product page layouts to integrate with the rest of the site but I guess it will be easy to create new Razor based macros for this and embed + modify the current XSLT ones.

     

    2. Handling inventory for multi warehouse \ store

     

    I see I can track stock using an InventoryOnHand Product attribute at the Product or Product Variant level. In my client’s scenario however, we plan to ship from 2 different cities and need to track stock in each city where we deliver from. Also the products in the stock\catalogue for each city will be 70% re-use and 30% unique.

    My current idea is to have a Catalog for each city (Cape Town and Joburg) and an enum Product variant called City, + track InventoryOnHand (also a variant) for each product. This will make the store UI a bit more complicated checking to see if inventory exists for the current city & product...

    Is there a better way of doing this with multi-store \ Enterprise?

     

    3. Documentation

     

    Are you planning to have a more comprehensive source of documentation at any stage in the future?

     

    4. Accounting system integration

    I need to roadmap how to streamline admin\accounting workflow for my client

    - It looks like a basic order export section in the admin UI will be a snap to create by using the API to extract relevant order info.

    - In the ideal world a xero.com 1-way sync of customers and orders would be what we would want. I would possibly write this, but are there any plans on this front on your side? Would uConnector help for this? When do you plan to release it?

    Backorders

    Any suggestions for implementing this? I guess I could mark products with a flag that they can be back-ordered if inventory=0, and have a new “Back order” order status, but this will be a cludge if mixed with other order items that need to be shipped immediately.

    Many thanks,

    Mark

     

     

  • Søren Spelling Lund 1797 posts 2786 karma points
    May 22, 2012 @ 10:25
    Søren Spelling Lund
    0

    1) Razor

    We will release a Razor based store for Umbraco 5, but probably not for Umbraco 4. The Umbraco 4 version depends on how much traction Umbraco 5 gets after this year's Codegarden.

    2) Handling inventory for multi warehouse \ store

    You could just add two separate inventory fields and check the relevant one depending on which warehouse will deal with delivery. At the moment there's not an inventory catalog notion available in uCommerce. You'll need to do a pipeline task to decrease inventory based on your business logic; very straightforward to implement.

    3) Documentation

    We're expanding documentation continually. It's basically a neverending project, so yes, we do plan on having more comprehensive docs :)

    Anything in particular you're looking for? Docs are prioritized based on partner feedback so don't hold back.

    API Reference and Article available from the uCommerce site

    4) Accounting system integration

    uConnector would indeed help with this, but you'd still have to get your hands dirty writing the actual integration. uConnector is a formalized way of handling integration, sort of like the payment framework in uCommerce, it doesn't do anything without providers plugged in to handle the details.

    Umbraco 5 came around a bit sooner than (we) expected, which put uConnector on hold until we complete uCommerce 3 + the new demo store. I expect uConnector work will start back up in the fall.

    You might find this article useful for imports Bulk Import From Third Party Systems Using The uCommerce API.

    5) Backorders

    The main issue with this will be payment as I expect you'll want to charge the customer when the first batch is shipping and then again when the last items are shipping. Whether this is possible is basically down to the payment gateway supporting split payment.

    You could either split the order in two when the customer checks out and create separate payments for each.

    Or you can add a status field on individual order lines to indicate wehther they are backordered or not.

    If you're not working with credit card payments or the payment gateway in question is flexible on acquires I would go with separate orders to avoid messing around with the order flow too much.

    Hope this helps.

  • Mark Derman 3 posts 23 karma points
    May 22, 2012 @ 11:05
    Mark Derman
    0

    Hi Soren

    Many thanks for the comprehensive reply.

    Looking forward to doing this project.

    Cheers,

    Mark

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