Reports Issue and Feature Request

[aaronfrankel]

First let me say that over all we really like the AlbeCommerce cart. However, I just wanted to drop a quick note about something I noticed today. The cart's reporting abilities are kind of wonky and really lacking. Today while trying to prepare a sales tax report, the cart reports taxes regardless of status. Not really big on paying the state sale tax on orders that we never collected on. I had to go into "orders" (If I dealt with SQL yes I could have done it that way, but I don't) list all sales for last month by status of completed and go through them one by one looking for sales tax. Rather time consuming as I am sure you can imagine.

If I am missing something please let me know.

In addition, here is a feature I have used in several other carts and found very useful: The ability to dump all orders to a CSV file or even choose a date range and order status type then dump all corresponding. Then at least you can open it in excel and prepare and sort whatever kind of reports you need relative to orders.

[calvis]

What do you use for an accounting system? Able should not take the place of an accounting system.

But I agree that reports module can be greatly improved upon.

If I am missing something please let me know.

[aaronfrankel]

What do you use for an accounting system? Able should not take the place of an accounting system.

But I agree that reports module can be greatly improved upon.

If I am missing something please let me know.

We are a case study/beta user for a middleware developed by a company called eVision Systems. The middleware integrates AbleCommerce with Microsoft RMS POS and Quickbooks. Transactions are synced down from the Able Cart and into RMS to update inventory. Then synced from RMS to Quckbooks. This happens on the trigger of the order being listed as completed. When a sale is completed in one of our retail stores this triggers an update to the inventory in the Able Cart. Products are synced from RMS to the Able Cart on save. They are also synced from the Able Cart to RMS on save. The middleware is not syncing right now because of some work being done on the way the integration handles matrix items (items with variants). The sales tax information was needed quickly and could not wait for someone to sit down and transpose the orders into Quickbooks or RMS. Plus no reason to do this when the sync will resume again shortly.

I was asked by our AbleCommerce sales rep to post the issue of the reports not being accurate for the devs to checkout. It is not an issue of what accounting system we are using (and yes the cart alone should not be anyone's lone accounting system). It is an issue of the reports that are being generated by the cart not being accurate or providing erroneous/misleading information.

As for the CSV request. A CSV dump is a really nice and quick way to collect and work with data from the cart, relative to the cart, for account and marketing purposes.

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello,

It is an issue of the reports that are being generated by the cart not being accurate or providing erroneous/misleading information.

None of the reports have had any 'reports' of being inaccurate, however if you believe you've found a bug be sure to open a case. Report totals are affected by how your order statuses are setup, be sure that only the statuses which you want are included in the report before assuming this is a bug.

[aaronfrankel]

Ok thanks. So, a little more clarification so I can figure out whether or not this is a bug or whether or not I am missing something.

The statuses are the default statuses. Do they require further setup?

be sure that only the statuses which you want are included in the report before assuming this is a bug

I see no way to create filters or choose what status are shown in the reports.

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello,

Please see the following information on order status:

http://help.ablecommerce.com/mergedProj ... atuses.htm

You'll want to review your statuses for the following:

6. The Include in Reports option should be checked if orders with this status are to be included in any of the AbleCommerce reports.

The default statuses are neither correct or incorrect, they are just the default and will vary depending on your business logic.

[aaronfrankel]

The reports are still really lacking beyond giving a simple snap shot, but the information Mike listed above did solve the problem of errors in the reports.

[aaronfrankel]

Orders with a status of Canceled are still showing up in the sales tax report. I double checked and yes "Include in Reports" is unchecked. Am I missing something else?