Backend processing recommendations

[sparkfun]

I am looking for recomendations for software and/or contributions that will help automate the order fulfillment process as much as possible.

 

I realize there are small Batch Processing contributions that help with printing invoices, but my company ships all over the world using FedEx and USPS. So here are my problem points - I am completely open to all ideas!

 

1) We need to take all the new orders for the day and generate the various FedEx labels (ground and express), and USPS labels (prio, express, global prio, global express) including customs forms (blah).

 

2) We need to print packlist/invoice (same thing for us) that contains the order info plus it contains tracking #s from the above FedEx / USPS labels. Once these labels get printed, an email needs to get shot out informing the cust of the # and status update. The order status should then be updated to 'Shipped'.

 

3) We need to be able to handle split backorders. So we ship the stuff in stock, and backorder the things that are not.

 

I currently use precisionweb to run my site ( >_< I know ), and it's been great. But we now have a revamp using osC that looks and works great. It's the backend of the new osc site that I need help discovering automation.

 

My first inclination is Ship Logic. The sales person was less than helpful (almost rude) - including an estimated $1000 cost for altering our current osc setup + $500 dev package that my developer would have to buy from Ship Logic + $0.33 per order (501 to 750 orders per month). It sounds like it is the holy grail of automation and may be worth it.

 

So has anyone else heard of other resources that can help with this problem? Please let me know about shipping automation software as well as a conglomeration of contributions ( :blink: ) that may help out.

 

Thanks!

-Nathan

[twhite]

You might want to check out http://www.stoneedge.com/ I have been using it for about 2 weeks and it is a lifesaver. During the Christmas holidays we got flooded with orders and we get orders from Amazon and other sources as well. You can use FedEx Ship Manager, UPS World Ship & Endicia which does USPS labels.

 

The only thing I think that is needed is a way to get the tracking numbers & status uploaded back to Oscommerce. They have a solution where this can be uploaded to their site but there is a fee.

 

A programmer here can possibly find a way to get the status and tracking uploaded into Oscommerce since StoneEdge can sync inventory between it and all the shopping carts.

 

The only cons I see are that it is a little costly if you are a small business just starting, but I think it is worth it if you are a growing business and a cheap expense.

[olimits7]

twhite,

 

I've been researching stoneedge to add it to my website, but you say that it can't update order status back to oscommerce that stinks. So it can't sync up with the orders status that's in the oscommerce admin screen?? How about sending status emails to the customers is that done through stoneedge?

 

Are you able to update product listings using Stoneedge?

 

I'm looking for a software that I can barcode scan a product, and it will assign that product to the oldest order that I have waiting for that specific product. Which will then print out the invoice and label. Is this possible with Stoneedge?

 

I know your not a sales rep for stoneedge, but just would like to get your feedback on the software.

 

Sorry for all the questions just curious.

 

Thank you,

 

olimits7

[twhite]

No I'm not a sales rep but I don't mind answering what ever questions I can.

 

Basically with stone edge you can export all of your products from oscommerce and they can be imported into stone edge. This is fairly simple - all that is need is the data feed script for froogle and some simple modifications adding the other fields you would like to export such as weight or say big image and small image.

 

Now the problem - yet one that can be fixed with some programming - is that any changes in stone edge can not be uploaded into oscommerce or sync except for the quantity. They offer custom programming and this is a feature I am interested as well so the thing is paying someone to program it or doing it oneself.

 

Now you can change a product in oscommerce such as the product description and when the file is exported and imported into stone edge the data will change or sync in stone edge.

 

Here is how the software works

 

Lets say you sell 2 products - White Shirts & Black Pants. Lets say you have 10 white shirts in stock and 10 Black pants. Now you have one order in Amazon that you import and it calls for 10 white shirs and 5 Black pants. When you view the order the stock will automatically be subtracted and the order filled. Here is where you can use bar codes. They have a feature for packing orders. You can scan or type in the order number. It will bring up the order. Then you can scan the barcode for each item that you are packing. If the item is not in the order it will let you know. So basically this will help you to make sure you pack all the items and that they are the correct.

 

You can also use barcodes for seaching for orders and the orders will be sorted by date. There are numerous ways to search orders - by date received or expected to ship, order number, upc, barcode, name, address, ship method, etc... You can also sort orders in numeros ways such as approved and orders without tracking numbers.

 

One of the main reasons I like it is if you have a merchant account with authorize.net, but there are several other payment methods as well, you don't have to go the website and key in all the order information. Also if you are issuing refunds you can do that as well from your computer. This is great for Point of Sale systems. Also great for the POS system is that you can give actual shipping charges from UPS as well.

 

Also with the printing you can print an invoice, packing slip and pull sheet which has all the products needed for orders.

 

I may not have answered your questions but feel free to ask them or any others you have again.

[olimits7]

Thank you twhite that was a great post. You answered a lot of my questions.

 

So if I want to upload any changes to products, or the order status section of the customer account I will need custom programming for this, correct? I wonder how much this will cost to have done? I'm on a tight budget, but I would like my customers to be able to see an updated order status when they log into their account.

 

I talked to a stoneedge representative today, and I asked them about how stoneedge integrates with Authorize.net. He told me when I import the orders that I will be able to approve the orders from stoneedge and then my customers credit card will get charged.

 

I thought that once a customer submits their order from the website the credit card is automatically charged through Authorize.net. This confused me so I called customer support at Authorize.net and the guy told me if I have the AIM script (Advanced Integration Method) installed that the credit card is charged automatically.

 

I don't understand then how in stoneedge you can approve orders. You probably have a better grasp on this since you are actually using both services. Any insight?

 

If you are approving orders through stoneedge can you still use CVV or any other fraud verification services that Authorize.net offers when you approve?

 

I was going to use the UPC from the barcode to scan the products to each order. This is great that if the product is not in the order it won't let you scan it. I'm sure that will cath a lot of mistakes.

:)

 

I was thinking about using the SKU, UPC contribution so I will be able to type in the barcode numbers. Then hopefully if I buy the stoneedge software it will be able to import that field.

 

Overall, how was your experience integrating Oscommerce and Stoneedge? Was it hard?

 

Thank you, again.

 

olimits7

[olimits7]

I meant to ask about integrating Authorize.net, oscommerce, and Stoneedge?? Was it difficult??

 

I was going to edit the post but there is no edit button on this forum.

 

Thank you,

 

olimits7

[twhite]

With the Barcode, this is what I did. I did as you said and added a field in my products table for Barcodes. Whenever I add a new product or edit a past I put the barcode data in so that I can have the option to export it.

 

See with Stone Edge every product must have a unique UPC code. So when you import the UPC is the unique field and the program knows to update/sync all the other data in Stone Edge except for the UPC. If it is a new UPC then it adds it and all the other information.

 

Authorize.net was very easy to setup in the program. All that is needed is your Authorize.net Login Name & Password and that's it. Now for Oscommerce I had to do a little editing. I used Beyond Compare to view their Authorize.net.php file with mine. There are about 5 or 6 changes need. Basically what happens when you import orders from Oscommerce to Stone Edge is that in the import script you have the option to import pending, shipped, processing, all or whatever order status you desinate in the script. You also have the option for the script to change the order status to whatever you want. So technically you can have the script change all your pending orders to shipped on your website but they may not really be shipped.

 

Now what the Authorize.net script does is it saves the credit card information in your tables but you have the option to make this encrypted. Also you have the option to delete this information after an import into Stone Edge.

 

In your modules section under Authorize.net you should have the option for Authorize Only & Authorize and Capture. I assume that if you just set it to Authorize Only that you can then run the credit card later after you import the data into Stone Edge. You might need to double check that, but that is what I believe it to be.

 

I Authorize and Capture and only use the Authorize.net for Manual Orders and for issuing credit to customers.

 

There is a built in feature for MaxMind to check orders and I have fraudscreen and my orders are given a fraud score. What Stone Edge does is the same if you manually typed in all the information in the virtual terminal.

 

Personally I think the software is great because it is a great time saver and organizer. The part with scanning products to eliminate errors is great. You can do purchase orders and you can set your stock by say if you order items by the case and some come 4 to a case and others 12 you can tell the software that and it will import the right stock. You can also have the barcodes found on the cases scanned. So products can have a barcode and then have a case barcode as well.

 

If you sell on multiple channels like Amazon or other sources it is great as well. During Christmas we got flooded with Amazon Orders. You have to send the information back to Amazon afterwards and this was time consuming. They have a script that will do all this automatically - But this cost extra! For us this was great because I did make a script that would export the data but I still had to use the OSC contrib manual orders to enter in the data. This was so time consuming. Then there is so much room for error.

 

You can have multiple custom email templates that will put just about everything from an order automatically - like you can put Dear <<username>> and it will put the customers name. So generic but personal emails can be made.

 

The only downside I see is that it does not tranfer all the data between itself and Oscommerce - like real-time order status and if you change a product in Stone Edge it will make that change in OSC. But knowing that these things can be done is a plus. I like you am on a budget and as I grow hope to have these things done. I know Stone Edge will let multiple people pay for certain features. So if this stuff will cost $3000. 6 people who want this can get together and pay $500 each for their coders to script it.

 

The learning curve is fairly simple and they have a real good online manul that answers almost everything. Then they have a forum like this one as well that gets great support from not only other users but you will see many post by the makers as well. It took me about a week to get the hang of everything and the customer support is covered for I think 30 or 45 days.

[olimits7]

Hey Todd.

 

Thanks again for the detailed post, I'm learning so much on how everything ties together. Your post are helping me out a lot, hopefully when it comes time for me to set everything up I will have a smooth set up with no errors.

 

That's great that StoneEdge let's us pool are money together to get certain features that we want. Maybe we can get a group of people together that want to be able to upload product data, order status, and order changes (for expample if a customer calls and buys another 2 widgets instead of just 1) back up to Oscommerce. That would be awesome.

 

I never heard of "Beyond Compare" I looked it up and it looks like a very cool software. I can't wait to try it out.

 

Do you usually import all status order types (pending, shipped, processing) into StoneEdge? The script you're talking about is the script StoneEdge provides to you for the Oscommerce import, right?

 

So you do have the ability to upload the order status on the website (Oscommerce) from StoneEdge? Or do you mean that all the orders from Oscommerce can be changed to pending when they are imported into StoneEdge?

 

I've heard of MaxMind and I know there is a contribution here on the oscommerce website for it. But I'm a little confused how it works with Authorize.net & StoneEdge.

 

To be able to use MaxMind you have to pay a monthly fee for the service, right? When MaxMind gives you a fraud score is that information also imported into StoneEdge along with the customers IP address?

 

Doesn't Authorize.net have fraud screening capabilities? I thought I would have enough protection just using Authorize.net, but I guess not.

 

Yeah, I was checking out there online help section. That has a ton of useful information which is making me lean towards getting StoneEdge. I like when companies outline all the steps necessary to get to the end result. I was also looking at Dydacomp's M.O.M. software, but from reading online it doesn't compare to StoneEdge.

 

I forgot to ask this before but I'm sure the StoneEdge is capable of doing this. Can I export all of my orders to an excel or csv file? The reason I want to do this is so I can email my suppliers the number of products I need to order to fill my customers orders.

 

How do you rate StoneEdge's Technical Support?? I'm sure I'll be calling them everyday to get everything running smoothly. :)

 

Thank you, again. I really appreciate your help all this stuff can get pretty complicated.

 

olimits7

[twhite]

Sorry I didn't say what beyond compare was. I have found it to be very helpful when I upgrade contributions.

 

Now with the import - it is provided by Stone Edge. You make a few changes that are easily documented in the code to tell it which files to import and so on. I have been using it in a test store/database (you can have multiple stores in Stone Edge) to import orders. I imported all the orders - pending, processing and so forth. If a new orders come in only the new orders are imported. You have the option to set the status of an order as well in Stone Edge. So you can easily mark an order or individual products status. So lets say you have an order for 1 apple, 1 orange and 1 banana and you have everything except the orange - you can set the apple and banana to processing or shipped and the orange to backordered or canceled. This is why I think it would be great to have this same status sent back to Oscommerce. Like I said before Stone Edge has this system that they sell where this is done but I would prefer it to be through OSC. Take a look at http://www.stoneedge.com/track_your_order.htm

 

Now the order status update I will explain. This only happens once and it only happens at the time you import orders from OSC to Stone Edge. It can be set to whatever you want but like I said it is only done once. So you can set the import script to change all orders imported from pending to shipped and you can have a notification sent to customers, but that's all it will do. No tracking information will be put. You couldn't upload any anyway because technically the package would not have been shipped yet. I am thinking of having it change status to processing or Order processing which will show the customer you are working on their order. This is the area where I think is the only down side again because having data sync between the two would make this the complete program - but like I said hopefully there is a cheap way of getting this done.

 

The Maxmind thing. I know it works from the import of IP addresses but I haven't done much testing on it. Basically it will import the order IP and then you press a button and it will give it a score. I currently use the contribution version for OSC and it works pretty well. I know you get 20 free a day and then there is the payment option as well. Check out the contribution here and read the documentation. It has helped me catch about 4 or 5 scams. I also use the authorize.net fraud screen which gives each credit card charge a fraud score. I forgot the price but it is a couple of cents per transaction I believe. Tell you the truth it hasn't helped much but I haven't had any chargebacks from fraud using both. So I will take back some saying it doesn't help. I have seen it weed out one or two but it also has denied some people because they were making a large purchase online and they normally don't shop online. You can change the sensitivity settings for it but there is still some room for errors. I believe a keen eye along with one of these.

 

Authorize.net does have basic fraud screening which is if you only ship to the billing address but if you ship to other addresses for gifts and so forth then you are on your own. Basically you have more to prove with the chargebacks.

 

I haven't seen anything for exporting orders other then a quickbooks plugin. Now I'm sure something can be done for this if there isn't a way since everything is in a Microsoft Access Database.

 

BUT - concerning suppliers I know Stone Edge has the ability to send orders to drop shippers. I belive it can do faxes as well. I am not sure how it all works because I really don't use this feature but I am sure the documentation will show it. As well it has a Purchase order feature as well which I haven't used yet either but from brief looking it seems to be pretty good.

 

I know there are a lot of other features which when I get time I will play around with more - like batch printing and order updating. I have used the enter orders manual and it is great and has great speed and search capabilities. I had been using the MOE Toe manual order Contrib which is also great but you can only put orders in as fast as the connection. There are rules you can set for approving orders from import and you can set up discounts and coupons and different order reports.

 

Tech support is a 5 out of 5. I have bugged the hell out of them on several things. I was having one issue with my Amazon setup and we must have exchanged 10 emails a piece in one day. They generally respond depending on the question and I am sure also there work load from 10 min to an hour. Sometimes of course it may take longer but you will get a response within a day. I haven't used the phone yet but I know they called me when I was first getting set up.

 

No problem answering the questions. I know it is hard to get an understanding for programs without a demo and I have bought my share of programs that didn't do what I wanted them to do... so ask away

[olimits7]

Hey Todd, thanks again for a great post.

 

I have a great outline of what I need to take care of to get my website up and running.

 

I'm going to try and ask them how much they will charge for the custom programming to be able to upload order status, product updates, and order changes back to oscommerce. I'll let you know what they tell me.

 

If it costs a lot maybe we can try to find other people that want the same features and pool our money together so we can get it a cheaper price.

 

I'm going to try and add the Maxmind and MOE Toe contributions to my website, they seem like they will come in handy.

 

Thanks again,

 

olimits7

[olimits7]

Todd,

 

Do your customers use the currency converter on your osCommerce site? I was just thinking that if a customer changes the currency from USD to EURO then places an order under the EURO currency, does Authorize.net convert it back to USD?

 

I called Authorize.net and asked them about this, and they said all orders have to be in USD currency. That kind of stinks because if someone places the order in EURO, Authorize.net is going to think its in USD currency and charge the order in USD currency.

 

Do you handle international orders with the currency converter? How do you work around this issue?

 

-------------------------

 

I asked Stoneedge about how much it would cost to upload product changes back up to osCommerce, and they just gave me a workaround to that problem. They just said a lot of their customers make the changes through osCommerce then just import the new products to Stoneedge.

 

They also said that Stoneedge can upload the order status back up to osCommerce, and it could also upload the inventory quantity back up to osCommerce.

 

I'll probably just use there workaround for the products until maybe one day they come out with the ability to upload products back up to osCommerce.

 

Thank you, again.

 

olimits7

[twhite]

Hey olimits7,

 

No I don't use the currency converter in Oscommerce. I do accept international orders but I only accept US dollars.

 

I have used the inventory upload and it works great. Stone Edge can upload order stats - But - it can only do this once and this is done at the time of importing orders from Oscommerce to Stone Edge. Like I mentioned earlier this can cause problems if you tell a customer there order has shipped and it really hasn't. The only way - currently - to get real time order status updating is to get them to do some custom scripting which they told me they have done before so pricing shouldn't be to bad. When I say real time I mean - You import your orders into Stone Edge and you have the script change the status from pending to processing. You process the order in Stone Edge and change the status to Shipped - There custom scripting will then update your Oscommerce store to now shipped. Without custom coding it will remain processing on your Oscommerce store until you update it manually.

 

Currenlty I use the work around with updating products information. It would be great to do this in Stone Edge because it is faster then an internet connection.

 

You can import your products in two ways from Oscommerce. The first is that Stone Edge will use the script that you get when you purchase and import your products into itself. This works really great and I tested it with some products with attributes and they were imported as well - so this is a great time saver. You can also import orders through an excel text file. This works great if you have added custom fields for example like a barcode field in your oscommerce store or other custom fields. Then you can import this data easliy. I actually have tested both methods and found it was best for me to first import through the script and then use the text file to update the other fields I wanted. I just used a modifed version of the froogle data feed contrib. to generate the fields.

 

Sorry I can't really give any advice on the Authorize.net payment conversion. Stone Edge does accept these other payment methods Versigin PayFlow Pro, USA ePay, PC Charge, ECHO, Skip Jack, Yahoo & Protx - so maybe they can do what you need. I take it you are not in the states which is why you use the convertor? - to accept US orders?

 

Let me know how things are working out and if you need any other suggestions or help.

[mesetzer]

Just a quick note here on updating order statuses -

 

The Stone Edge Order Status System is the fee-based web service that we provide merchants who need a "Where's My Order" status page for both web orders (for carts that don't feature a login / order status tracking system) and manual/phone orders (so you don't need to have sales reps enter orders on your website, and the customer can still track their order status).

 

Quick primer on the Order Status System - as you work with orders in Order Manager, a number of events might happen (such as adding a tracking number or backordering an item) that would cause the status to change. The possible statuses are devised from a list of labels the merchant sets up, though the program has a default set of statuses that are appropriate in most cases. As the event fires, a status update is triggered that updates the order status or item status back to the Order Status System in real time. If you are not using OSS, you can still have those statuses sent to your shopping cart, and this is supported in the latest release of Order Manager (4.200).

 

The way the current import script and Order Manager release update statuses back to osCommerce is by matching the name of a status set up in OM with your statuses in osCommerce. Ergo if you have a status "Shipped" in osCommerce and an event in Order Manager that changes the status of an order to shipped, the status update event fires and contats the osCommerce store where the order originated. The script searches for "Shipped" in your list of statuses, and changes the order status to match. If it's not found, the order is not changed, so you'll need to make sure your list of statuses in Order Manager match the ones in osCommerce (same spelling, language, etc).

 

The code for updating status is part of the same script we provide for importing orders, inventory, and real-time quantity on hand updates, and can easily be adapted for contributions that provide extra fields or tables for storing tracking numbers and carrier information - we have done so in the past for a variety of contributions, but they are not "standard" features to my knowledge in MS2.

 

Hope that's clear enough. If you have any questions, send me an e-mail or PM and I'll do my best to answer them.

 

Mark Setzer

Stone Edge Technologies, Inc.

http://www.stoneedge.com