Power Sellers Unite

Moonshine_Framing_Penzanc · Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 3 Location: West Cornwall, UK

Wondering if anyone can help with this.
I have a website, but not a cart/store.
So all online orders are received both by paypal IPN (to save logging on to paypal repeatedly) and by paypal notification. I need to upgrade this system soon, as its a bit cumbersome, and business is increasing on the website.

Im looking for a user friendly add on app so that my shop counter staff can log in and use it in a similar manner to the ebay selling manager (eg. print the order, print a packing slip, mark it as shipped etc).

I have IPN enabled, and web hosting with php and optional mysql.

at the moment all the IPN is doing is acknoweldging the customers orders and parsing the order details to the workshops (our product is custom made)

any suggestions - or could you tell me exactly what i should ask my developer to quote me for. Unfortunately I know what i need, but i dont know how to ask for it.

I do not want to change the whole site to a "cart".

EleganzaJewels · Joined: 20 Jul 2006 Posts: 519

Hi! I peeked at your site, nice layout!

Looks like you already have the Paypal shopping cart set up on your site (go to one of your online store pages, click view source, scroll down, you'll see the paypal cart html there).

You can do everything you need to do right on Paypal - print the packing slip, track shipping status, etc. I followed through on a cart, and it looks like you need to upgrade to Paypal Pro. $20 a month and well worth it - you can accept credit cards directly, and your customers will never know they are paying to your paypal account!

Not sure if you are close enough to your office staff to allow them into your Paypal account, though. Not a problem, Paypal has a multi-user acess program, look under your profile tab. You can authorize other users to have limited access to your account, for example to take care of shipping, and you as the owner of the account have complete control over how much access those users have. Fab for $20 a month!!

Hope that helps!

Moonshine_Framing_Penzanc · Joined: 19 Aug 2006 Posts: 3 Location: West Cornwall, UK

thanks- the shop staff are fine on multi user access, as i set that to a different level of user access, although timeouts are a problem when logged into paypal site.
we really need to trap it all into a database, and need a decent, user friendly front end for that.
we have a network in the business (shop= the retail store, and workshop = shop , lol I just realised the difference in the US and UK understandings of the words) and i want to ebanle the sales shop staff to print the papaerwork, pack and ship, and the workshop staff to receive a job list from it (mostly for custom cut picture mounts -or "mats".
Its looking like im gouing to have to get some siort of custom program.

EleganzaJewels · Joined: 20 Jul 2006 Posts: 519

Ah HAH, Moonshine, too funny about the different dialects and "shop" LOL!

Keep us posted on what you come up with, I hope to graduate someday to the point where I need that kind of customized interface!!

Best of luck!

Linda

airborne82 · Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Posts: 108

Do you already have software that you use in your retail store?

If so, why not just have web orders from paypal fed into the system you have in your retail location?

Paypal does have a callback feature.. which will send the data for every transaction to your website.. ( this is where you would need a programmer ).. to take the data and put it in a database on your website.. and then have a simple webpage that your employees can use to view the orders..

or even better, have the programmer write a script that will feed the data to your local system

( we had our system setup this way).