Product Images

 

Product images are not stored in a database. Rather, each item is associated with one or more image files stored on the web server. It is common practice to use the accounting system item code as part of the product image file name.

 

The product picture is a control that can be placed in any page.

 

Product pictures are linked to the product detail page. You can optionally choose to hide or show the following item information below the picture:

• Item Short Description
• List Price
• Selling Price
• Stock Status (In Stock or Back Ordered)
• Stock Level (Quantity Available)

 

Item Price Calculator

The ICINITI Store Item Price Calculator is a plug-in software component that implements the business rules for calculating discounted pricing for a known customer. The component performs exactly the same calculation method as employed within the accounting system, using uses customer information, item and price table data obtained directly from the core accounting system tables. The calculated price will include cystomer discount level, price list, volume discount level and contract pricing as well.

This eliminates pricing errors and the need to maintain duplicate price files for your web site. Price changes made in the accounting system are promptly reflected on your web site!

 

Custom Price Calculators

The price calculator is a plugin module, and allows custom price calculations to reflect your unique business requirement. For example, you may wish to override the customer’s discount level when they have reached a specific dollar volume of purchase on the web within the previous 12 months, thereby extending an additional discount. This is an example of a customization that cannot be handled natively within the accounting system.

If your application requires this kind of customization, contact sales@icniti.com for more information and pricing.

 

Multi-level category structure

Accounting system inventory databases usually provide one, or at most two levels of categorization. The ICINITI Store Catalog allows you to create an unlimited number of categories and sub-categories. Items can belong to more than one category.

 

The Administration Tools provide a convenient “drag-and-drop” interface that allows you to rearrange categories easily. You can query items in the inventory tables to add items to a category, and you can create a report of items that do not appear in any category at all.

Product categories can be presented to your web customers using an expandable “tree” (like Windows File Explorer), pull-down menus, or clickable category icons.

 

Featured Items

Featured items are displayed prominently on the home page and in the right margin of other pages in the site.

A collection of up to 4 items (configurable) is randomly selected from the complete list of featured items. An administration tool is used to mark a featured item, and to remove items from the Featured List.

 

 

Specials

Many accounting systems allow inventory items to be marked with an “On Sale” price. In cases where this feature is not available in the accounting system, the SPECIALS table can be used. This table contains a record for each on-sale item, including the sale price, along with the start and end dates of the sale. Some accounting systems do not sort sale items by date, so that listing all on-sale items requires a complete scan of the database. This can be quite time consuming if the catalog has a large number of items. The SPECIALS table sorts items by date, so that a listing of all sale items can be obtained quickly.

 

Extended Item Descriptions

The accounting system inventory files normally include a very short item description. Extended descriptions including one or more paragraphs of text can be stored in the Extended Item Descriptions Table. This additional information is typically displayed when a user opens an item detail screen.

 

Related Items

The Related Items table contains one or more records associating an inventory item with other items such as accessories. The Related Items table supports cross selling opportunities.

 

Similar Purchases

The Product Detail page can include a list of items most frequently purchased along with the selected item. This feature is commonly used by web sites selling products such as books, movies or music: "Customers who purchased this item also purchased these…"

Item Features

The Item Features table contains optional feature records for items in the inventory file. A feature is a single line of text, and the bulleted feature list is normally only displayed on the item detail screen. The feature list is rarely used if extended item descriptions are available.

Customer Reviews

Selling opportunities for some products such as books or software benefit from the availability of testimonial reviews. The Item Reviews table contains short paragraph reviews that can be submitted by previous customers.

This feature is not part of the standard product configuration, but can be customized for any application

 

Also Available…(Size/Color Grid)

Many products, especially in the apparel industry, can be purchased in a variety of sizes, colors and so forth. ICINITI Store features integrated components that can dynamically display all of the variations of an item, You can display the variations in any of three different ways:

• as a drop down list of all available size/color combinations
• as an array of pictures showing all size/color combinations
• as an order entry grid, allowing the user to quickly add several size/color selections to their shopping cart with a single mouse click.

ICINITI Store integrates with Sage Accpac inventory item segment tables in order to enumerate item variations. For more information, see “Section 7.2 Product Detail View”

 

Catalog Searching Features

ICINITI Store solutions allow buyers to search a catalog by keyword, or by multi-level category drilldown. It is a simple matter to provide additional views of the catalog items – searching by manufacturer for example. Any combination of item attributes in the database can be used to create a view of the catalog.

Word Search

“Word Search” queries the Sage Accpac inventory item table for item descriptions containing one or more keywords.

Keywords can be optionally combined with OR and AND.

The matching items are display in a list, on one or more pages.

The word search component is a plugin module, allowing customized searches to be implemented easily.

Search by Category

 

A drill down search is performed using a multi-level category table. For example, a computer catalog might contain categories like “Systems”, “Printers”, “Monitors”. Categories can have sub-categories such as: “Printers->Laser Printers” or “Printers->Ink Jet Printers” and so forth. A drill search is a step by step process descending deeper into a category tree at each step. At the lowest level of the category, where no sub-categories are found, a list of items within the sub-category is automatically displayed.

As described earlier, one of the features of the drill search is the ability to associate Category Featured Items, as each new sub-category is opened. At each step, the buyer can choose a new sub-category, or click any of the featured items to open a detail screen.

 

 

Personal Catalog

The personal catalog is a list of those items purchased by a customer within the last year. It provides a convenient way for customers to locate those items which they purchase on a regular basis.

No effort is required to set up and maintain the personal catalog. The Personal Catalog list is dynamically generated from the customer’s order history.

Sale Items

Most accounting systems provide a mechanism within the core inventory and price files to mark an item with a sale price. The mechanism varies from one system to another. If the accounting system does not provide its own mechanism, the catalog provides a sale item table that can be used for this purpose. In a typical application, sale items are presented on the home page of a site, or by a prominently featured link that is visible at any screen.

 

Restricted Item Searching

Typically, item search results are restricted so that a customer will only see items appearing in their default price list. Items that are marked as INACTIVE are excluded from catalog search results.

Optionally, you can choose to ignore items for which the “ALLOWONWEB” flag is not set in the Sage Accpac item record. This feature must be specifically enabled otherwise the ALLOWONWEB value is ignored when searching the catalog.

 

Item Views

The ICINITI Store application provides two fundamental views of items in the catalog: item lists, and item details.

Item List View

An item list is always the direct result of a catalog search operation as described above. Whether obtained by a drill search or a search by manufacturer or keyword, the resulting list is normally displayed as an array of product pictures.

 

Product Description

The item short description is obtained from the Sage Accpac Item table. This can be easily customized to draw the description from the Sage Accpac price table, thereby allowing product description to match the customer’s price list.

Page Scrolling

A long list of items is divided into a number of pages. The customer can select the number of items per page (default is usually 6 items per page).

Product Detail View

The Product Detail screen provides in-depth information about a product of interest. This screen is normally accessed from the Item List as described in the previous section.

The detail screen typically contains any of the following types of product information:

·         Item Title (or brief description)

·         Item Picture

·         Extended Description

·         Quantity Available

·         Quantity Price Breaks

·         Customer Specific Quantity Price

·         Available variations (e.g. sizes and colors)

·         Related Items

·         Extended item features and specificationss

·         Customer reviews

The detail screen always contains one or more action buttons. The most important of these is used to add the item to the “Shopping Cart”.

Multiple Units of Measure

The Item Unit of Measure List is a control that allows the user to select from any available unit of measure when ordering an item.

You can optionally restrict units of measure if some units that may exist in your inventory tables should not be visible on the web site. This option is available as a customization only. In the basic software package, all configured units of measure are available on the web site.

Extended Description

An unlimited amount of descriptive text can be stored per item. The administration tools provides a WYSIWYG HTML editor in a browser window that you can use to create or edit this information.

Quantity Price Breaks

If item price lists offer discounts based on volume, you can display a table showing the price breaks on the product detail page.

Available Variations

If a product is available in multiple sizes, colors etc, then each of these variations can be listed on the product detail page. You can choose to configure them in a drop down list, as an array of product pictures, or in a Grid (see below).

Size/Color List

Size/Color Grid

The Size/Color grid allows your customer to enter order quantities into any of the fields in the grid, and to update the order with a single button click.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Customer Reviews and Ratings

You can add a “Rate this item” link to your product detail page, allowing your customers to comment on a product and/or to give it a 1 to 5 star rating.

You must use the administration tools to preview customer comments before they will appear on the web site.

 

The Shopping Cart

The shopping cart is a container in which items are saved and subsequently purchased. As in a real shopping experience, you must fill your shopping cart with items then proceed to the checkout in order to complete a purchase. A shopping cart entry contains the following information:

·         item catalog code and brief description

·         a quantity

·         a unit of sale (for example, “each”, or “box”, or “carton”)

·         optional comment text per line

·         optional comment text per order

·         unlimited user defined fields per order and per line

·         The shopping cart component implements functions to add, remove, or update entries in the collection.

       

The Drag and Drop Shopping Cart

When the Drag and Drop feature is enabled, customers can drag and drop item pictures on to the Drag/Drop shopping cart component.

 

When a customer drops an item picture on to the shopping cart component, it is added to the current order and the component view changes as shown.

 

 

Shopping Cart Detail Screen

This screen is normally opened in response to clicking a “View Cart” button that is prominent on every screen. The detail screen displays all of the line items in the shopping cart, the quantity ordered, the unit price and extended price.

The buyer can remove items from the shopping cart, or adjust the quantity of any item.

 

 

 

Saving the Shopping Cart

You can optionally configure ICINITI Store to allow a customer to save the contents of their shopping cart, allowing them to continue their order at a later time.

By default, the contents of a customer’s shopping cart are discarded when they close their Internet browser.

The Checkout Process

When a buyer has added all items of interest into the shopping cart, the order process begins by clicking a “Checkout” button that is prominently displayed on every screen. The process involves a series of individual steps through which the buyer enters or confirms the following information:

• Billing name and address
• Shipping address and contact name (may be selected from a list of previously stored addresses)
• Shipping method – selected from a list of available carriers and service options
• Payment method – may be credit card, or on account (purchase order number)

Tax Calculations

Tax calculations are normally performed in calculating the order totals, after the customer has confirmed their shipping address.

The ICINITI Store Tax Calculator is a plug-in software component that implements the business rules for calculating tax. The tax calculator must perform calculations using the same method employed by the accounting system. The most commonly employed ICINITI Store Tax Calculator uses customer tax groups, item tax classes and supports up to five tax jurisdictions. The underlying data values are read directly from the accounting system tables.

Tax calculations are not performed until a customer has entered a shipping address for an order. Tax calculations for new customers are performed using the tax group and tax status values obtained from a “template” customer number selected from the A/R customer table based on the ship-to address. If you are required to collect taxes in multiple jurisdictions, simply set up an Sage Accpac customer number with appropriate tax group code and tax status for each jurisdiction (e.g state or province.)

Shipping Calculations

ICINITI Store supports any number of configurable shipping methods that may be defined in the accounting system.

The ICINITI Store Shipping Calculator is a plug-in component that implements the business rules for calculating shipping charges.

The shipping rate component is a selection list of available shipping methods, each showing the calculated shipping cost for all items in the shopping cart.

Zone and Rate Table Calculator

The most commonly employed Shipping Calculator uses a system of Zip Code based zone tables and shipping rate tables. The calculation is performed using a table lookup method, using the destination zone and the total weight of the order (the weight is calculated using data obtained directly from the accounting system inventory tables).

A Zone number is derived using the destination address. The zone number and weight of the order are used to select a record from the shipping rate table for the selected carrier.

The ICINITI Store Shipping Calculator module is compatible with shipping rate and zone files that can be downloaded from UPS, Federal Express and the US Postal Service.

Real Time Shipping Quotes

UPS and US Postal Service offer real time shipping quotation services. ICINITI Store provides integration to these services so you need not worry about setting up and maintaining zone and rate tables. The only disadvantage is that if these services become temporarily unavailable, shipping charges cannot be quoted to your customers when they place their order.

Customer Shipping Calculators

Because the shipping calculator is a plugin module, it is relatively easy to customize to meet special business requirements. Contact sales@iciniti.com if you have special shipping requirements.

Online Credit Card Processing

ICINITI Store supports on-line credit card processing for orders placed by new customers and customers without account terms. Merchants in the UK can process debit card transactions as well, using the CyberSource Payment Gateway service.

Purchase Orders

Account Customers may provide a purchase order number, indicating that payment will be made by check or other means at a later time. Web Customers do not have the opportunity to purchase using a purchase order.

Credit Card Authorization

The ICINITI Store application supports on-line credit card authorization using one of the following payment gateway services:

• CyberSource (UK, USA, Canada)
• Dialect (Australia and New Zealand)
• E-xact Transactions (Canada, USA)
• MWeb SafeShop (South Africa)
• Verisign (USA, Australia)

In order to use any of these services, the web merchant must establish a merchant account with their bank, and verify that their bank is part of the same network supported by the payment processor. If you are unfamiliar with on-line credit card processing, we recommend that you visit any of the payment gateway service web sites for helpful information.

ICINITI Store is fully integrated with the ICINITI Credit Card application for Sage Accpac. Credit card orders authorized at the web site can be easily settled when the order is shipped and invoiced without the need to re-key credit card numbers. ICINITI Credit Card will even make the A/R receipt entry marking the invoice as paid.

Saving the Order

Saving an order is a two step process in the ICINITI Store application. First, the order header and line item information are saved in local database tables. Once the order has been saved in the local tables, and the credit card authorization has been completed, another table is updated to indicate that this order should be copied into the accounting system. A separately running background process copies the orders into the accounting system.

Notification Messages

The ICINITI Store application sends email notification messages at various stages of order processing. The text of the email message is easily changed using a template file.

Order Confirmation

When an order is captured, the ICINITI Store application normally sends a confirmation email message to the purchaser. The format of this message is defined by in a template file that is easily customizable.

Shipping Confirmation

A separate background process can be configured to generate an email notification message when an order is shipped. The basic application supports a Shipping Log screen, from which a clerk within the vendor’s shipping department can enter the carrier and waybill information when a shipment is complete. This screen then automatically triggers a shipping notification email message to the customer.

In a customized application, the function of the Shipping Log screen can be replaced by implementing a specific interface to the seller’s existing logistics software.

Order Tracking

The ICINITI Store application can integrate with web tracking services offered by some carriers such as UPS and Federal Express.

This feature is normally implemented as a customization, depending on the shipping services that your web site uses.

 

Customer Account Features

Customer account features allow registered account customers to view account information, order history, unpaid invoices, and to make payments against open invoices using a credit card.

View Account Status Information

Account customers are able to view certain account status information read directly from the core accounting system tables. This information typically includes:

• Date and amount of last payment received
• Amount and due date of last invoice
• Total account balance outstanding
• Available credit limit

View Order History

Order history is a list of orders within a specified period of time (for example, the last 120 days) displayed most recent first.

Account customers can view all of their orders, regardless of how the order was placed.

Web customers can only view orders placed via the web interface.

View Order Details

The order history screen described above usually offers a link from any listed order to the Order Details screen. This screen shows all of the summary information as well as individual line item information as read from the core accounting system tables.

 

Account Status Screen

Account status shows a summary of outstanding balance, credit limit and most recent transaction for Account Customers only.

 

 

Pay Invoices On Line

ICINITI Store allows account customers to view open invoices and authorize payment by credit card (requires ICINITI Credit Card). Customers enter their credit card number information on the web site and indicate the invoice(s) they wish to pay. ICINITI Store will then perform an authorization transaction for each invoice placing a hold on the credit card account for the invoice amount. Using ICINITI Credit Card, you can download these authorizations from the web site, capture the authorized amounts and make A/R receipt entries automatically.

 

Customer Locator Screen

The customer locator screen is accessible to sales persons only. This screen is used to locate a customer record by a number of criteria, including the customer name, phone number or order number.

A list of matching customer names is displayed, from which the salesperson can make a selection. The sales person can then perform account inquiries, or place orders for the selected customer.

 

Customized "Look and Feel"

ICINITI Store is implemented on the Microsoft ASP.NET platform and is comprised of a collection of ASP.NET web pages. Each page consists of a user interface file (a file containing HTML markup that will be familiar to experienced web page designers), and a "code-behind" file (a software module written in a .NET programming language) that provides the dynamic content rendered by the user interface.

Much of the integrated functionality of ICINITI Store is implemented in the form of ASP.NET Web User Controls. Like ASP.NET pages, a User Control is also constructed from a user interface file and a "code-behind" file.

Because the HTML markup code and the software code are maintained in separate files, it is much easier to modify the HTML markup (the part that controls the look) without affecting the code (the part that makes the site work).

You can customize the look of ICINITI Store by modifying the pre-configured pages, or you can create entirely new pages into which you simply add User Controls.

For more information on how to customize the "Look and Feel" of ICINITI Store, visit Customizing ICINITI Store

Remote Hosting Option

You can choose to host your web site at a remote hosting location. You can choose from a range of hosting options, depending on the level of support you require.

The Remote Hosting Option is software that replicates core tables from your Sage Accpac accounting system to the web site on a nightly schedule.

You can reduce the amount of data replicated by restricting order and invoice history to a limited number of days or months.

Although replication is normally scheduled as a nightly process, more frequent schedules can be configured to meet your special business needs.