Manual Checkout and Sales Tracking

[Matteleur]

G’day,

I’ve just purchased eMember and eStore for a client. Great looking plug-ins, and great support.

I’m just having a bit of a problem, and I think I might be missing something.

Our scenario is that we’re using eMember to restrict access to various bits of website content – I haven’t done a heap of testing yet, but this seems to be working just fine. Then, separately from that, we’re using eStore to manage digital downloads, which are available under the same terms for both Members and non-Members.

I’m running eMember 6.0.8 and eStore 4.9.4 on a fresh install of WP 3.0.5. I’ve also installed Configure SMTP 3.0.1.

My difficulties so far are with eStore. Perhaps I can just describe each issue, and see if you can set me straight.

I should mention that I’ve not yet tested using PayPal (I’ll set up a PayPal sandbox for that in the next day or two) – I’ve just been looking at Manual Payments so far.

1. Purchase confirmation emails

When I confirm a Manual purchase, an email goes to the customer email address as well as to the vendor email address. Unfortunately, both emails contain the customer version – I thought they should be different?

2. Sales records

I haven’t been able to find any sales records for the many test purchase I’ve done. I understand the sales should be held in eStore’s Manage Customers, but it seems I have no Customers (and therefore no Sales). I have tried both while logged in as a Member and while not logged in. I can say that when I’m logged in as a Member, my Member details do come up on the Purchase form.

3. Order numbering

Should my eStore sales have order numbers or invoice numbers associated with them? I can’t find any kind of reference, and of course we’d want out Manual payments to be identified with some kind of reference.

4. Manual payment processing

It seems to me that when we receive a Manual payment we’ll have to go into eStore’s Admin Functions and manually construct a payment confirmation email containing the download details – there doesn’t seem to be any kind of record of the payment-pending purchase that we can drive the payment notification off. Is this correct?

5. Shop setup – Products & Categories

I understand that there’s no database for products or categories, and that I need to construct each Category/Product Page manually. This is not a huge deal, as our number of items is quite low and I am looking for a lightweight solution, but I just thought I should check my understanding before going ahead and manually building out all the product content.

I think that’s all for now – thanks for the great products, and for your time in addressing my questions.

Kind regards,

Matthew

3.

[amin007]

1) Does it really make a difference? All that email does is notify you (the admin) about the products that was purchased. It also serves as a receipt for the customer. Do you have a requirement of what you want to send to the admin?

2) Please go to ‘WP eStore Settings -> Payment Gateway Settings -> Manual Checkout Settings’. Now, see what options it has and what you want it to do. Particularly pay attention to the “Automatically Update Customer & Products Database” field. There is a bit of help text below every field which will explain what that option does.

3) Every sale will have a unique transaction number attached to them. Once you sort out number 2 above you will see the sales in the manage customers menu and find the transaction numbers.

4) This issue is related to the fact that you haven’t explored the manual checkout settings options. Please see point 2 above.

5) There is a database for products and categories (this is where the details get saved when you add them in the admin side). You can choose to display the product however you want to. There is a range of shortcodes available that lets you place products and categories on pages or posts. This page has a list of all the available shortcodes:

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/wp-estore-shortcodes-and-functions-reference-460

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