Why is there no "Backorder" order status?

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 8:57 am

I'm just kind of curious why one doesn't exist in the default install?

It's easy enough to add one, so it's no biggie. But I am curious since I would think it's a pretty standard situation when selling physical product.

Road Rider · Post by **Road Rider** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:10 pm

Joe:

Did you ever get an answer to this?

Has any one come up with a solution to show "expected ship date" or "expected arrival date"?

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:28 pm

Nope.

I added several more including two for backorder. Now that I have the hang of how Able expects them to be used, they are extremely useful.

Road Rider · Post by **Road Rider** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:42 pm

???? What are extremely useful?

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 1:00 pm

Hmmm somebody's gonna owe me some more Pepsi!

I was going to make a good article on it but I'll spill the beans early, just for you.

Ever notice on the dashboard, you have all those order totals next to each order status in the system?

Ever notice those order totals are clickable?

So, if you set up a bunch of different order statuses, you can use the dashboard to *very* quickly jump between different selected groups of orders. No filters, no advanced filters...just click and the orders list appears automatically filtered for those orders in that status.

I have 11 different order statuses in my system now. I use them to classify my orders based on their current state within the order process.

For instance, I have a "Verify" status for when an order needs further charge verification. I have a "Response" status for when I am waiting on the customer to respond to my question about their order. Once a response is received or the charge is verified, I change the status to the next step.

I also have a "Fraud" one, an "Ordered" to indicate the items are ordered from the distributor, and the usual shipped and backordered ones.

Using it this way, I've done something quite ingenius in it's simplicity. Anything with a status of "Unshipped" or "Problem" is an order that still requires my initial attention. That's because those two statuses are default statuses managed by AC7 when an order is paid or there was a problem with the payment.

So now I can easily see what orders I still need to do something to, without fishing through list after list on orders screen.

Each day, the first thing I do is check each "Problem" order and process to a new status. Then I check secondary statuses like "Verify" or "Response" and do those. Finally, I check "Unshipped" and start entering orders with the distributor.

So I ended up with a 3-tier way of managing orders that always keeps me informed on where I stand with order processing.

Road Rider · Post by **Road Rider** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 3:09 pm

Ah I see, wow that would be super useful. How does a guy like me implement the Joe upgrade pack version 2.2.1?

While that is not what I was driving at I would love to implement that.

What I am driving at is a notification on the store side for customers. If you are tracking product inventory the customer can see how many of an item you have in stock, if the number is 0 and you allow backorders then the customer can add the product to their cart.

Where the inventory quantity zero is shown to the customer I need to add a field which would say "estimated ship date = xx/xx/xxxx" or "estimated arrival date = xx/xx/xxxx"

Seems like a pretty simple and common practice to notify customers that a backorder item will be available on date X, this way they are making a fully informed purchase.

Maybe it is not that simple and there in lies the "rub".

This is something that I have to accomplish before I "turn the store on", this and the "comments" that I have asked about in a different post. Both of these require some digging into and pulling info from the database.

Do you know or does anyone know how to accomplish these 2 things? I am at a point that if I must I guess I would be willing to pay for the help, not that I am cheap but I would prefer to figure it out by myself (with some help) so that I learn something. Paying somebody, while it maybe the reality in this case, I feel is the easy way out.

If anybody is a cyclist I would definitely barter for the help (bike goodies for free for some helpie).

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:19 pm

If you're not using one of the fields on the ac_products screen like summary or more details, it would be easy to hard-code it.

If not, well then some real programming comes into play.

There's a "Custom Fields" table in the database - I'm dying to know if it's wired into the classes but I can't find any information anywhere about it.

I need the exact same thing you do. I'll probably write something soon, it's pretty needed.

Plus I need templates for scripted order notes - going to write that too.

Plus........ugh.

Road Rider · Post by **Road Rider** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:54 am

Well.. If it makes life simple I am not using more details.....?

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:11 am

My only hesitation with using the "More Details" field is that it completely eliminates your ability to use that field for anything else down-the-road.

You sure you're ok with that?

I did some digging this morning and figured out a *really* slick way of using product templates to accomplish the same thing. Since I do my updates through code, this will be the route I go because it's easier for me given my 20,000+ product database.

But if you were going to manually update each ETA field, using the More Details field would be slightly easier than product templates - one less screen to click into for changes to the field. Maybe not a big deal for 50 products, but 3,000 products would be a pain.

It's up to you.

The consultant part of me is kicking in and saying not to use the More Details field. At some point in the future, you may elect to list products where the more details field would be immensely beneficial if not required. You won't be able to use it...it's holding your ETA date.

There is a downside to using product templates: You will have to manually assign the template to each product - there's no way to mass-assign product templates in AC7 without writing a program to do it.
What's cool is it wouldn't matter if you're already using product templates for your store. You'd just need to add the additional merchant fields to your existing templates and all your products would automatically inherit the new fields.

I could write a complete solution - one that lets you assign the product template to all your products (by category or whatever) and supports more than just one field. But that's alot more effort and I would need to charge for the work. Certainly do-able though.

Road Rider · Post by **Road Rider** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:49 am

I am looking for the best solution possible. I agree on the more details side, I would prefer to not use that field if possible.

What sort of charge would we be talking about? And I think it is important that we get the details right so feel free to email me.

webpro@bikeauthority.com

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:11 am

Sent you an email. I agree, details are critical - My O.C.D. will make sure the details are covered

mkeith1 · Post by **mkeith1** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 10:20 am

Joe, when you created that backorder status, did you create an automatic email to the customer for when you changed that status.

Able Commerce: if that's a possibility to include. Could there be an option for an automatic email which went out every couple of days to keep the customer up to date that an item on their order still hasn't shipped. Currently when using version 5.5, i have to go and physically send an email to to each customer to keep them advised. For me that's a lot of emails to send.

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 10:52 am

Mike, I wish it could be done. My original plan was to have automatic emails fired off when a status was changed to a particular status code.

But AC7 email triggers don't work that way as far as I can tell. There's only a trigger when a status code is changed, not when the status is changed to a particular status code.

I have several statuses I use for internal tracking - I didn't want emails firing left-and-right spamming the customer as the order moves through my internal procedures.

I've contemplated writing some code to fire a template on certain status changes - wouldn't be all that hard to do. It's like # 228 on my to-do currently

mkeith1 · Post by **mkeith1** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:04 am

So, maybe that's something that could be done. I know when i order something from, for example, Tiger direct, I get a status update on my order every couple of days if the item hasn't shipped, or is on backorder. It's probably being sent to other people who have that have orders for other products which haven't shipped yet either.

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:17 am

Yeah some tweaking to the order summary page code would do it, it's not all that hard. There's only one place I change the order status so that helps.

I just need to sit down and figure which statuses should do what. I can't do the TigerDirect thing because I don't know how to schedule IIS pages to fire at regular intervals. That would be nice, although every 48 hours seems a bit much.