Mail Order Manager ® Modules | Mail Order Manager® Web Storefronts and E-Commerce Sites with AbleCommerce®, a SiteLINK™ Alternative.

The following table shows the main menu selections of a store's online merchant administration. Each icon below links to additional details of the menu item. Also included are features for the Merchant Administrator and features specific to the Application Service Provider.

Categories and Products

Now you can manage not only your store but every page in your website. Build your entire website quickly and easily with a simple copy and paste into AbleCommerce^®â€^®s new WYSIWYG editor. Then, easily apply the look and feel of your site using consistent, easy to maintain, headers, footers, and navigation. Create any number of webpages and links that can be automatically incorporated into the navigational structure of your store. This means you can include your website pages in searches, product listings, and directories.

After adding your inventory, you can easily search the database for accessory products that are related to your main product. If the accessory products are attached, the product name will appear with a link to these other related products.

Add your product inventory with UNLIMITED levels of hierarchical categorization. The copy feature allows quick creation of similar products. Inventory control can be enabled to keep track of stock on hand and reorder levels. Merchants can receive automatic notification by email when it's time to reorder products. Also includes Batch Edit for single page editing of large numbers of products with search capabilities and individual field selections.

Merchants can specify UNLIMITED attributes for each product (eg. SIZE, COLOR, TYPE) and UNLIMITED options (eg. Red, White, Blue) for each attribute . Options can be configured to calculate price, weight, and SKU for a specific combination of options. Inventory management is integrated and product can be tracked per option combination or by the base.

Add unlimited categories, subcategories, and products. You can easily maintain a small or large catalog with the ability to view your items by category or by product name, double-click editing, automatic sorting, and instant copy features. In version 5.2, it will be much easier to maintain a large store with a new search form that allows you to find products, categories, webpages, and links.

International Features

Each store can specify a base currency as well as any number of additional currencies. Prices displayed on retail pages will be converted into all configured currencies using provided exchange rates.

AbleCommerce^® uses an exchange rate to calculate the amounts for secondary currencies. The exchange rate is entered when a currency is added or edited. To calculate the amount, the price of the product is multiplied by the Exchange Rate provided.

Ship orders to destinations all over the world using the custom AbleCommerce^® shipping feature. The new 5.0 version features complete integration with UPS OnlineÂ^® Tools, USPSÂ^®, FedXÂ^®, and CanadaPost shipping services.

Customers, Vendors, and Affiliates

Membership groups allow for any number of pricing levels when combined with discounts or specials. Merchants can maintain their own groups and the users they contain.

Merchants can configure and maintain customers of their store. Customers are automatically created at purchase, but can additionally be created by the Merchant through the Users interface. Passwords, contact information, and group information can all be updated by the merchant.

Affiliates allow you to provide others with financial incentives to drive traffic and sales to your store. All products in your catalog can have an associated vendor. You can then report on products as sold by vendor. You can also notify vendors when their products are ordered for drop-ship capabilities.

Discounts, Promotions, and Specials

Quantity discounts are discounts that are applied when a certain number of the same product is purchased. Applying quantity discounts is a great way to motivate customers to buy, which will in turn increase your sales. Now in version 5.2 you can apply discounts to any category, sub-category, and product, allowing merchants to easily manage many different types of discounts.

In AbleCommerce^®, merchants have the ability to define groups and to manage the members of these groups. These groups can be used together with discounts to make special membership pricing rules for a specific group (or groups) of customers. In addition, discounts can be applied per product or globally across the entire store.

New in 5.0, Basket Coupons allow you to provide discounts on basket totals using your defined coupon codes. Product specials can be used to offer discounted pricing based on time periods you define. Version 5.2 allows you to promote your product further by adding a link to any product page so your shoppers can email their friends about your products.

ESD - Electronic Software Delivery

The sophisticated capabilities include an email manager, license manager, and file upload manager. It will automate tasks such as product installation readme's, download limits and time-outs, and emailing of software license keys.

Licensing agreements, terms of service, product disclaimers, and the like can be defined using the Agreements interface. If an agreement is assigned to a digital good, a shopper must accept the agreement before they can continue.

AbleCommerce^® can also distribute license keys for software applications. This process is known as fulfillment. You can also configure fulfillment to be handled automatically or manually. AbleCommerce^® has a simple interface (provided by a â€œlicensing agentâ€�) for entering license keys into the database. Keys are then distributed to purchases and removed from the license inventory.

Using the Readmes menu, you can define blocks of text or brief documents that provide valuable information about the digital goods you are selling. Information that might be placed here includes system requirements, installation instructions, and the like. Any document defined here can be associated to a digital good for display and download. By default, these associated documents are displayed as links on the basket and order screens.

Envelopes are a kind of wrapper for your email. Just like envelopes used for standard mail, they are used to specify address and delivery information. They can also provide an introduction (header) and a closing (footer) for your messages.

Email Contents lets you define the body text of your email messages. Content is generally specific to an action or product. For instance, you might have one block of content that you send when someone purchases a digital good and a different block of content sent when you validate their download. Or perhaps you have different blocks of content for each of your digital goods. With the Email Contents manager, you can define as many blocks of content as you like. Then from the ESD email screens you can select the content to send for each scenario.

Website File and Image Manager

File Manager (New in 5.0)

The file manager allows you to view the contents of your store directory. You can add and delete directories as well as add, edit, upload, and delete your files and images.

Site Map (New in 5.0)

Generate a static site map of every page in your store for search engine submission. Creates standard html pages with self-reinforcing links, leveraging the best search engine optimization (SEO) technologies.

Style Sheets (New in 5.0)

Manage the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) available to your store. Most wizards use CSS to control the look and feel, including fonts, colors, etc.

Themes (New in 5.0)

Manage the themes available for your wizard pages. Themes contain information that is shared by all wizards that use the same theme, like headers, footers, etc. For example, you could have a theme for each of the holiday seasons and apply it to all your store pages in less than a minute.

Wizards (New in 5.2)

Each page in your store has a wizard which allows you to easily change the objects that are being displayed. Turn on headers and footers, change the theme, or choose a new cascading style sheet. Some wizard pages allow you to even change the next page that is called, or choose what types of items are to be displayed and how.

Product Kitting

Kitting allows multiple products to be sold together in a package. Multiple components can be attached to each kit that allow very flexible configurations and customer options. Some examples of product kitting are gift baskets, computer systems, and items with add-ons or accessories.

A "kit" is composed of individual products that are grouped together and sold as a single item. Every kit begins with a master product, which is the container for the kit. A kit also has member products which are called the kit "components".

Components can be configured with different settings that change how (and if) member products are displayed.

Member products in the kit can make the price and weight go up or down with modifiers. The result is a product that may have a range of price and weight depending on which member products are included in the kit purchase. When editing a kit the ranges of price and weight are displayed, enabling merchants to hit target ranges.

Inventory for a kit is handled somewhat differently than a regular product. Each master product has a quantity in inventory. However, the quantity of a kit is also determined by the available quantity of the member products. If you have required member products (in a hidden component) that are out of stock, customers will not be able to purchase the kit. If you have optional items that are out of stock, customers will not be able to purchase the kit with these optional items selected.

Kitting offers an advantage over cross-selling. Related items can be upsold from the same product screen as the master product. Customers will be able to add all related products to their basket at the same time, without the need to view each individual product screen.

Overall, kitting is a very powerful tool. Products can be combined in an unlimited number of configurations. Merchants have more control over inventory and display of kit products. Customers can buy what they need all in one place. Kitting offers convenience that can help increase sales.

Order Processing and Administration

Order Editing (New in 5.0)

Once an order is processed, the order can be modified to accommodate any changes needed by the customer. Shipping and Billing addresses can be modified and the ordered products can be deleted, modified, or added. Partial or complete payments can be credited to the purchasers account through real-time credit card processing, the manual POS terminal, or when payment arrives at a later date.

Order Shipments (New in 5.0)

Orders can be split into multiple shipments. The merchant can easily select any items that are not available to ship and a new shipment is created. Any number of new shipments configurations can be created.

Order Searching (New in 5.0)

All new orders will be have an unpaid balance, unless a real-time payment processor is being used and funds were automatically collected. If a real-time payment processor is used, new orders will be credited with the payment amount and have a zero balance. The search orders interface allows you to select orders depending on it's invoice number, date, order balance, shipment status, or customer information.

Shipping and Tracking

A shipping tracking number can be entered into the Shipment Tracking Number text-box. The tracking number that you enter will be available for the customer if they view their account from your store. If you want to include a packing slip with the customers order, click on Print Packing Slip located on the Order Details page.

Order Notes (New in 5.0)

You can add notes to keep track of details about any order. The notes are recorded with a date and time and username of the person entering the note. Notes are for internal administration use only and can be deleted at any time.

Payment Processing

Most likely your store will accept credit cards for payment. In order to safely transmit credit card information over the internet, you will need to be set up with a real-time payment processor. A real-time payment processor enables you to authorize and process credit cards in a real-time and secure environment. When a customer enters their credit card information, the real-time processor will automatically verify funds and depending on the transaction type that you select, may or may not automatically capture the funds.

Payment processors are fully extendable and new modules can be installed in minutes.

Payment Methods

The payment methods that you select will automatically show up at the check out page. When customers checkout and they reach the page to select how they are going to pay, the payment methods that you selected will appear in the Payment Methods drop-down box.

New in 5.0, create new payment methods easily with the new payment method configuration menu. Setup your own payment rules and validation methods. Offer any payment methods, such as purchase orders, to only selected groups.

Product Batching

The Product Batch feature can be used by stores with large product catalogs or where updates occur frequently. You can upload multiple products at once with a text file or customize a multiple product editing form.

The Batch Edit feature allows you to edit multiple products at once. Products are filtered with search criteria and presented with editable fields of your choosing.

The Batch Insert page allows you to add multiple products at once. Product listings are provided as delimited data.

The Batch Update page allows you to update multiple products at once. Product listings are provided as delimited data. Products are updated based on the field of your choosing.

Reports

Keep track of who, what, where, and when customers are buying. Built-in reports include sales history, popular products, taxes, shipping, and more.

All AbleCommerce^® Reports include direct links to the editing of any item. This allows the merchant to easily make marketing decisions and quickly make changes to products, pricing, shipping, taxes, etc.

Built-in web activity logging can be enabled to keep track of user hits and browser statistics. Includes support for three popular log formats (common, combined, and extended). Reports can be generated and downloaded by merchants for use with log analysis software. Automatic archiving features can automatically maintain log size.

Integrated Shipping Services

AbleCommerce^® Custom Shipping Methods

AbleCommerce^® provides three types of shipping calculations: Flat Fee, Matrix by Cost, and Matrix by Weight. You can have any number of shipping methods and each can be of a different type.

CanadaPost (New in 5.0)

Use CanadaPost's Sell OnLine module to generate accurate shipping rates for shipments originating in Canada.

UPS OnLineÂ^® Tools

With UPS OnLineÂ^® Tools, customers can get real-time shipping rates based on their shipping addresses and order weights. Customers can also view UPS tracking information for their packages right from your store website!

USPSÂ^® (New in 5.0)

Use the integrated United States Postal Service module to generate real-time shipping charges for shipments originating with the United States.

FedExÂ^® (New in 5.0)

The integrated FedExÂ^® module can generate real-time shipping rates for your packages.

Shipping Tracking

Merchants will enjoy the added flexibility of order fulfillment with the ability to add a shipping tracking number. Your customers will enjoy being able to view their shipment information right from your website.

Store Features

You can enter all words that you feel describe your store and the products that it sells. Some Internet search engines index these words to use for searching. The words that you enter may be used by Internet search engines and could increase your chances of appearing in their search results.

In the Description field, enter in a phrase or short paragraph that describes your store and the products. Some Internet search engines display this description when your site appears their search results.

Global Settings

From the Store Settings page you can specify global settings for your store. These include localization, inventory, date format, time format, units for weight, and email settings.

Manage Regions

You can add, edit, or delete countries and their states / provinces. You can also customize the address format for each country.

Import and Export Data

This integrated utility allows the merchant to do advanced functions like importing data from an XML file or build a quick store using the sample data provided. In addition, you can export your store data to create backups.

Email Features

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Emails can be sent for a variety of events that occur within AbleCommerce^®. Simply define the message details and what event triggers the email, and AbleCommerce^® will do the rest!

Sending Custom Emails (New in 5.0)

Use the user search interface to easily create on-the-fly mailing lists. Use the simple 3 step wizard to send your customized email messages to members of predefined groups or individual users.

Email Server Configuration (Enhanced in 5.0)

Easily configure your email server gateway with support for three common email servers:

Persits AspEmail (free with IIS, for a remote email server)
Microsoft CDonts (free with IIS, for a local email server)
Persits AspEmail Premium (paid third-party software)

Taxes

Depending on where your store is located, you may be required to collect sales tax. AbleCommerce^® enables you to configure taxes for specific areas (Washington State Sales Tax) and specific products (Tobacco Tax).

The optional CERTITAX Service integrates seamlessly and transparently with AbleCommerce^® to accurately calculate sales taxes and verify shipping and/or billing addresses. Sales taxes are calculated for all applicable jurisdictions...and the maintenance of tax laws, rates, jurisdiction boundaries, and tax exemptions are done for you automatically! Billing and shipping addresses are validated, corrected as necessary, and zip+4 is added to help ensure smooth billing and fulfillment.

CyberSource tax calculation service provides real-time tax calculation for orders originating worldwide. CyberSource enhances built-in Taxware software, allowing businesses selling online and via call centers to avoid the risk and complexity of managing online tax calculation. Optional service that is available from www.cybersource.com.

Taxes can be applied to a country, a state / province, or a postal code. Product specific taxes (e.g. Tobacco Tax) are also supported. At checkout, the customer is automatically notified of any applied taxes based on either their shipping or billing address.

Shipping from Multiple Warehouses

Configure the Warehouse (ship from) locations for your products. When you add a product into inventory, you can select the ship from location. Warehouses can in turn be assigned to specific shipping methods for maximum flexibility in calculating fees. Integrated shipping gateways automatically calculate charges based on ship from and ship to addresses.

When shipping is calculated, the ship from addresses are used to determine the available methods and rates. If an order contains products shipped from different warehouses, the order will be broken into multiple shipments grouped by the ship from location. Each shipment will be charged shipping fees separately. In this scenario, it is possible for different shipping methods to be used for each shipment.

End User Benefits

Shopping basket functions include built-in checksum verification for credit cards, support for secure real-time payments, and multiple shipments per order. Payment options and real-time gateways can be extended and customized. Email order notifications may be automatically sent to the customer, merchant, and / or another contact.

AbleCommerce^® will work with cookies or without. A cookie enables the program to recognize the user and retrieve any existing information on the customer. Cookies are safe and are provided as a convenience to the customer during the checkout process.

Your customers have the ability to automatically view their order history. They can also view specific order details with information like shipping tracking numbers and fulfillment status.

Simple turn-page navigation, uses a relational (hierarchical) categorization of products, order a single item or many at a time, discounts for bulk quantity ordering, stores customer information in the database, international transactions and shipping, customer order verification by email, and a printable invoice.

AbleCommerce^® supports secure transactions via industry standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). SSL support can be applied at a global level or individual store level.

Merchant Benefits

Entire Merchant Administration runs with a standard browser. There is a vast variety of features to choose from, and simple interfaces to use them. If you don't know HTML, then use the built-in WYSIWYG editor to edit your website and store pages. If you want to have the flexibility and control of a developer, use the source code view to change the code any way you choose.

Create a sophisticated looking store in minutes by starting with the built-in, richly enhanced, store templates. The new Website Manager is a powerful tool that allows you to upload files and images, quickly modify store colors layout, style sheets, and create custom wizards options. Common items, such as headers, footers, navigation bars, etc. are pre-designed and ready for you to easily change and maintain.

Join us in a great marketing opportunity and get a free listing in the exclusive TopSites.com directory service for AbleCommerce^® stores. The Topsites.com banner exchange program is a great way to start bringing some more traffic to your site.

Service Provider Benefits

Integrate New Gateways (New in 5.0)

Now you can easily add new gateways for payment processors, email servers, and shipping service providers. Just reference the Object used for your new custom gateway and even specify if merchants are allowed to use the new gateway.

Localized COM objects (New in 5.0)

Development made easy with the ability to modify the common library objects per installation. Now you can customize each AbleCommerce^® installation on the server without any affects to other customers. Also new in 5.0, is the Developer's (COM source code) version. This option is available to allow modifying of the COM objects for in-depth customization of the software.

Database Support

We supply a default database depending on the version of AbleCommerce^® installed. Supported databases are MS-SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MS-Access for development purposes. Each database may contain a single store or many stores depending on how you choose to manage your store groups.

Built-in Import and Export Utilities (New in 5.0)

Easily move stores from one place to another with the new import and export utilities built into the store administration. Your merchants can create instant store backups at any time they desire. Use the utility to create copies of stores and import just the data you want to use.

Upgrade Existing 3.x and 4.x Stores (New in 5.2)

A new export utility will allow you to create an importable file of existing 3.x or 4.x stores. This is a separate utility which can be run to create a data export file which can be used to import into the newest version.

Documentation

AbleCommerce^®'s administration has help buttons for immediate reference to the area you are currently using. A full set of documentation in HTML and PDF format is available for system administrators. Also included, a separate Merchant Administration Guide and a 500+ page Programmer's Reference Guide.

Flexible Development Language

An assortment of completely working store templates are provided for you to begin selling quickly and easily. A variety of templates and code samples are provided for easy customization of your store's look and feel. A detailed programmer reference is included.

Multiple Domains and SSL (Enhanced in 5.0)

You can have a unique domain name for a single store, group of stores, or all or your stores. Likewise, a secure certificate may be shared by all stores, different groups of stores, or a single store may have its own while the other stores share the secure domain used as the installation domain.

Security

There are two levels of online administration access. Each installation will have a system administrator and each store can have a merchant administrator. The system administrator will have the ability to make global operating changes and maintain the user database. The merchant administrator will have the ability to add inventory and customize their store's design. All administration is accomplished with a web browser.