Advanced Order Management Module
Hosted Ecommerce Service Module Help Document
This module is available as Optional Add On Module at one time charges of US $125.00 *
on hosting plans as available at ecommercehosted.com
* Template changes charges additional if ordered on a Live Store.
Introduction
Advanced Order Management (AOM) add-on module provides your online store with a
powerful and complete order management tool which enhances the default order management
functionality available by default . The main advantages of employing this highly versatile module, which is available on one time additional charges of US $125.00, include the following:
• The module enables customizing your e-Commerce store system order processing procedures in order to meet your business needs.
• It introduces the means to make miscellaneous modifications to orders placed in your online store, resulting in ability to provide more responsive customer service.
• It provides the means for cloning and splitting existing orders and creating new ones.
• Functionality of the following on modules is expanded due to tight integration with AOM add-on module if active/available add-on your store:
Product Options, Wholesale Trading, Promotion Tools, Gift Certificates, Advanced Security,
Real-time Shipping Quotes Package.
This manual will guide you through Advanced Order Management (AOM) add-on module setup
procedures and use schemes. The manual also covers various aspects of using AOM module in
conjunction with other add-on modules also (which may or may not be present on your store depending upon the plan that your store is based on).
Feature Overview
Advanced Order Management (AOM) add-on module brings an extensive set of
improvements to your shopping system. The scope of features varies depending on the list of add-on modules installed on your online store.
Redefining order life cycle
• Customize order statuses to make your store operations more flexible • Create and handle your business-specific order statuses
Managing order details
• Change customer's personal and contact information • Edit billing/shipping address of an order
• Change delivery method of an order • Change payment method of an order • Add new products to an order • Remove products from an order • Edit product prices within an order
• Update quantities and options of products ordered
• Apply gift certificates and promotional discounts to an order • Cancel gift certificates and promotional discounts
• Clone an order • Split an order
Activating the Module
Just like other Modules, this module also can only be Activated Or Deactivated but cannot be Installed or Uninstalled by store admin as the same is controlled by the service provider who chooses which
modules to be made available on your store depending upon your plan or order. All the modules are managed from “Modules” section in Admin.
The following add-on modules have interrelated functionality and are fully compatible with AOM add-on module:
•
Product Options add-on, version 2.24 and above,•
Wholesale Trading add-on, version 2.23 and above,•
Promotion Tools add-on, version 2.26 and above,•
Gift Certificates add-on, version 2.11 and above,•
Advanced Security add-on, version 2.8 and above, and•
Real-time Shipping Quotes Package (which includes UPS, USPS, Intershipper, Canada Post and Australia Post add-on modules).To manage the Advanced Order Management (AOM) add-on module select the 'Modules' section in the ' Settings' menu of the Administrator Zone. The list of currently installed modules will appear and all modules by default would be in ACTIVE state unless deactivated by Store Admin for any reason whatsoever. Pl note that activating or deactivating the modules could have impact on the design on some sections depending on which templates are impacted by a given module. Unless there's a reason please do not deactivate a module once store has gone live with a given set of active modules. To deactivate the module, make sure that the 'Active' check box against the module title is unchecked and click on the 'Update' button. Entire reconfiguration could take some time so please wait for process to
Using the Module
After the module is installed on your store and you have activated the AOM module from the Modules
section of Admin interface , click on the 'AOM' module link to enter the advanced order management
page (Figure 1 below).
Figure 1: Advanced Order Management Page
The page contains links to the 'Order life cycles' configuration page (described in 'Managing Order Life Cycles' section of this document) and the sections affected by the introduction of AOM module, namely
Do not send order status change notifications during the "clone order" procedure: select
this check box to reduce the number of unnecessary notifications.
Enable status inheritance: select this check box for the child order statuses to inherit all the
properties from their parent order statuses. If the option is selected and an order receives one of the child order statuses, the same actions take place as if the order received the parent order status.
Store Credit Card info in order history: leave this check box empty in order not to copy credit card
information into the order history.
When an order is modified e-mail order details to: select a department where you want a
notification about order modification to be sent.
Understanding the Store Order Life Cycles
Every customer's order placed through the online shopping system goes through a life cycle comprised of several order statuses.
When a visitor places an item into his shopping cart, a 'Tempora ry' order is created to accommodate the contents of his cart. Orders with the 'Tempora ry' (or just 'T') status do not appear in the
Administrator zone in the order list. Temporary orders are stored for the default period of 2 hours, and if their status does not change during that period, they expire from the database. Keeping shopping cart contents for a certain period of time allows store customers to return to the store after some time and complete their orders without having to repeat product selection process again.
Note: temporary orders are stored within the browser session only. This means that if a
customer closes the browser window, her order will be deleted from the database.
After a customer selects shipment and payment methods and completes corresponding information, the order acquires an' Incomplete' (or 'I') status. Typically an order remains in this status until a customer presses the ' Submit order' button, at which time an order using an offline payment method is assigned
the 'Queued' status and the invoice is displayed to the customer. Orders with interactive payment methods selected remain in ' Incomplete' status while being processed by the payment gateway and then acquire an order status according to results received from the payment gateway (either 'Processed' for successful transactions or 'Failed' for unsuccessful ones).
'Queued' orders are the orders that require attention from the store administrator. These can be the orders using offline shipping methods or the orders found to be suspicious by the fraud protection service. Once the order details are reviewed by the administrator, and the necessary actions are taken, the administrator would typically change the order status to either 'Processed' or 'Declined'.
'
'Complete' orders are the orders that have been paid for and shipped out and thus do not require further attention. Shopping Cart system treats such orders just like the 'Processed' orders, except for that they do not appear in the list of recent orders available in the 'Orders' section of the 'Management' menu. 'Failed' orders remain in the database for book-keeping records. They do not affect stock amounts (if you have the Inventory Tracking module enabled), neither do they take up gift certificates (introduced by the Gift Certificates module), bonus points or discount coupons (introduced by the Promotion Tools module).
Note: Only 'Queued' and 'Processed' orders appear in the 'Recent orders' list.
Described above is a standard order life cycle of a typical Shopping cart based online store. You can adjust it according to your business needs by defining and utilizing additional order statuses, which are the subsidiary statuses of the predefined (primary) statuses discussed above.
Defining order life cycles
In order to review and customize the list of available order statuses, select 'Order life cycles' section in the ' Settings' menu. This section contains a list of existing order statuses (Figure 2 below ) sorted according to their 'Pos.' values. You can change a name, corresponding notes and a position value of any available status or sub-status. Make the necessary modifications and click on the 'Update' button to
save them.
To add a new subsidiary status, scroll down to the end of the list of statuses and locate the form for new status addition (Figure 3). Type in the status name and corresponding notes, choose a status code from the list of unassigned codes and the parent status, and specify the 'Pos.' number of the status. 'Pos.' values define the order of sub-statuses of a given status - the lower the number, the closer to the top of the list the subsidiary status will appear. Review the details you have provided and click on the 'Add' button to create the sub-status. It will now appear in the list of statues and immediately become available throughout your shopping cart system.
Figure 3
Notes: Primary statuses with sub-statuses defined have a square bracket mark to the left from
their codes. Subsidiary statuses are located underneath their respective primary statuses and are denoted by colored background. You can hide sub-statuses of a certain primary status by clicking on the '[-]' mark next to the status code and expand the list of sub-statuses by clicking on the '[+]' mark.
To delete a sub-status or several statuses at once, place check marks in the corresponding fields in the right-side column, click on the 'Delete selected' button and confirm the deletion in the confirmation window. Only unused subsidiary statuses can be deleted, primary statuses and sub-statuses in use (marked with a red asterisk) cannot be deleted (Figure 4). To delete all unused subsidiary statuses at once, place a check mark in the box at the top of the right-side column and click on the 'Delete selected' button.
Configuring order status notifications
The AOM module provides a possibility to setup e-mail notifications of order status changes. You can
choose to notify customers and/or the store administrator when order statuses change to a particular value ('Failed', 'Declined', 'Processed', 'Queued' or other, see the section 'Understanding the Store Order Life Cycles' of this document for more details).
In the 'Order life cycles' page of the 'Settings' menu – cf Figure 1 – locate the order status which requires e-mail notifications and place check marks in the corresponding 'E-mail Admin' and/or 'E-mail Customer' fields to enable administrator and customer notifications, respectively; then click on the 'Update' button
to save your settings (Figure 4). To disable certain status change notifications, clear the corresponding check boxes and click on the ' Update' button.
Figure 4: Configuring E-mail notifications
Customizing order status notification messages
Using the template editor one can customize the text of the order status notification e-mail messages. Choose the 'Template editor' section from the 'Look & Feel' menu and switch to the 'Advanced templates' tab. Template files pertinent to order status change e-mail notifications are located in the 'E-mail
templates' section within the 'modules /AOM /status_changed /' and
'modules /AOM /status_changed_admin /' sub folders. However, please be informed that editing tremplates requires high skill sets of HTML, CSS, JS. One should be very well accustomed with writing HTML on notepad and not doing HTML with some tool. In order to avoid the possibility of any template being ruined due to manual error we disable any editing of templates on live store by others.
Managing Orders
This section of the manual describes the changes to the 'Orders' section in the Administrator Zone introduced by the module. One change you will notice immediately is the modified 'Search orders' form (Figure 5) with an updated 'Search period' parameter and the following search option fields:
•
Order ID, which allows you to search for the exact order by order number•
Order total range, which allows you to narrow your search to orders with order totals withinthe specified range,
•
Order status, which allows you to search for orders in a certain stage of the order life cycle,•
Search period, which allows you to narrow your search to the desired period, say currentmonth,
•
E-mail, which allows you to search for all orders of specific customers, if you know their e-mailaddresses,
•
Customer info, which allows you to search orders by the customer's name and other details inhis profile, including billing and shipping details,
•
Product name, which allows you to search orders by the names and SKU's of productsordered, and
•
Delivery method, which allows you to search through orders which use the specified delivery method.This modified search form allows you to search through orders with regular and custom order statuses (custom statuses are defined in the 'Order life cycles' section of the 'Setting' menu, see Section 'Defining order life cycles' of this manual for details).
Figure 5: Modified order search form with sample search parameters
The form also contains a link that takes you to a new order creation page (see Section 'Creating a New Order' of this manual for further details on this feature). Once you click on the 'Search' button, the
search displays the list of orders matching your search criteria. Click on the order number or the corresponding 'details >>' link to review order details.
Reviewing Order Details
In the list of orders click on the order number or the corresponding 'details >>' link to review order
details. With the AOM module installed and activated, 'Order details' page acquires extensive order
Note that the 'Admin notes' field has been introduced in the 'Order Info' tab for added convenience of order processing. The contents of this field is never revealed to customers.
Changing Order Details
The 'Edit order' tab enables you to modify every aspect of an order, including billing and shipping information, customer information and the list of products ordered. Order editing is performed in several elementary steps, each represented by a separate page. 'Ordered products', 'Customer information' and 'Order totals' are the basic pages, which allow you to edit the corresponding aspects of an order. Extra 'Gift Certificates' and ' Discount Coupon' pages are added by the Gift Certificatesand Promotion Tools add on modules respectively. When you finish editing an order, you will review the modifications
and submit your changes using the 'Review and Save Order' tab.
Editing the list of products ordered
Switch to the 'Ordered products' page (Figure 7) to add or remove products from an order, update product quantities and prices. To change the product price or the quantity of product items, modify the corresponding fields underneath the product name in the right column and click on the 'Update' button.
Note: Price change performed in the process of editing an order does not affect the price of the
product in the store catalog.
To remove a product from an order, place a check mark next to the product name in the right column and click on the 'Delete selected' button. You can remove several products simultaneously.
To add a product or several products, click on the 'Add products' button. The 'Search product' form
Figure 7: Order Products page
Splitting an order
In certain cases it can be useful to split an order into two and process the two orders separately. To split an order, open the ' Ordered products' page, then in the left column place checkmarks against the products you want to split into a separate order and click on the 'Split selected into new order'
Figure 8: Splitting and Order
Note: The 'Split selected into new order' button is disabled if there is only one product title
Changing customer information
Open the 'Customer information' page to change the customer's e-mail, membership, billing and/or shipping information (Figure 9). Make the necessary changes in the right-side column and click on the 'Update' button.
Note: Customer's membership change and other modifications performed in the 'Customer information' page do not affect the customer's profile records and are only relevant in the scope of the order being edited.
Changing order totals
Open the 'Order totals' page (Figure 10) to change order payment method, shipping method and costs and other relevant information (the list of editable fields depends on the set of add-on modules installed on your Online shopping system).
Make the necessary changes in the right-hand column. You can choose a semi-automatic way of completing the information by clicking on the 'Calculate' button to let the shopping system recalculate shipping rates, bonus points and other calculable data for you. Alternatively you can modify all the fields manually and click on the 'Update' button to save your current order settings.
Completing order modifications
Once you make a modification to an order, 'Review and Save Order' tab appears automatically in the 'Order details' section. When you have finished editing an order, switch to the 'Review and Save Order' tab (Figure 11), review the modified order details and then click on the 'Save changes' button to
completely replace the original order details with the modified order details or click on the 'Undo
changes' button to discard order modifications.
Note: Your changes do not take effect on an order until you click on the 'Save changes' button.
After you have saved your modifications to the order, the details of those modifications become available in the 'Order history' tab.
Note: the 'Save changes' button does not appear unless you specify all the necessary
information: the product(s) being ordered, payment and shipping methods.
Reviewing Order History
Choose 'Order history' tab to review the history of order modifications (Figure 12). Order history records reflect order status changes, notes updates and all other modifications displayed in reverse
chronological order. You can see the date and time the corresponding change took place and the login of the administrator who made it.
Cloning an Order
To clone an order, access the order details page, choose the 'Edit order' tab and click on the 'Clone
order' button on the right-hand side of the page (Figure 8). A copy of an order is created with a new
order number, and you are redirected to the details page of that order. You can then change order information and process the cloned order in a regular way.
Creating a New Order
Using AOM add-on you can create new orders and input every order detail manually. This feature is
especially useful if your store accepts telephone ordering or other forms of offline order placement along with online sales, and you would like to use the same powerful mechanism to manage all kinds of orders at your online store. To create an order, select the 'Create order' section from the 'Management' menu. Alternatively you can click on the 'create a new order' link in the 'Search orders' form.
The new order is assigned its own unique order number and you are redirected to the 'Ordered products' page of the order (Figure 13). Complete the required order information in the 'Ordered products',
'Customer information' and 'Order totals' pages.
Figure 13: Creating an Order
Figure 14: Finalizing Order Creation
Note: the 'Save changes' button does not appear unless you specify all the necessary
You can then choose the 'Order info' tab to process the order in a regular way and use the 'Order history' tab (Figure 15) to view order history.
Integration with Other Add-on Modules
This section describes how various add-on modules adjust the functionality of the AOM module.
Note: See Section 'Activating the Module' of this manual for version requirements on the
corresponding add-on modules.
Product Options
With the Product Optionsadd-on module installed and activated, you can not only modify the list of products ordered, but also change product option selection. In the 'Ordered products' page of 'Edit order' or 'Create order' tab specify the necessary product options and click on the 'Update' button to update the current order properties (Figure 16).
This will also update the product price according to the option(s) selected. If you need to change the price of the selected product variant, modify the 'Base p rice' parameter and click on the 'Update' button again – the product option price will be recalculated automatically according to the option price rules.
Note: The change in the base price of a product performed in the process of editing an order does not affect the price of the product in the store catalog.
Wholesale Trading
Having the Wholesale Trading add-on module installed and activated enables you to review and modify global purchase discounts on all orders. AOM module correctly handles wholesale prices. In the 'Ordered products' page of the 'Edit order' tab, specify the quantity of a product and click on the 'Update' button. If new quantity meets the wholesale pricing requirements, the wholesale price is displayed for the product and the total is calculated using the wholesale price (Figure 18).
Note: The interface of the 'Ordered products' page disregards purchase limits set on products
using the functionality of the Wholesale Trading module.
Global purchase discount can be edited in the 'Order totals' page of the 'Edit order' tab (Figure 19). Click on the 'Calculate' button to automatically calculate the discount according to existing global discount rules and the customer's membership information, and save it in the current order details. Alternatively, you can manually provide its value in the 'Global discount' field and click on the 'Update' button to save the modified global discount.
Promotion Tools
The functionality of the Promotion Tools module has effect on several aspects of order management introduced by the AOM module. With the Promotion Tools module installed and activated, a 'Discount coupon' page (Figure 20) appears among other pages in the 'Edit order' tab. Using this page you can apply a discount coupon to an order or replace a coupon with another one. Type the coupon code or part of the code in the 'Discount coupon' field, and click on the 'Search' button to see the list of coupons matching your search criteria. Leave the 'Discount coupon' field empty to list all available coupons. Choose the coupon to be used and click on the 'Apply coupon' button to apply the coupon to the
current order details.
Figure 20: 'Discount coupon' page
Figure 21: Discount coupon reflected in the 'Ordered products' page
The 'Order totals' page obtains an additional 'Discount' field, which can be used to apply unaccounted discounts to orders or adjust order totals (Figure 23). Click on the 'Update' button to save your changes
to current order details.
Gift Certificates
Order management procedures introduced by AOM module allow more flexible management of gift
certificates, the basic functionality of which is brought by the Gift Certificates module.
With the Gift Certificatesmodule installed and activated, a 'Gift Certificates' page (Figure 24) appears among other pages in the 'Edit order' tab. Using this page you can view and change the list of gift certificates purchased with the order, review a gift certificate used to pay for the order or apply another gift certificate.
First you need to locate a gift certificate. Type the full gift certificate code or a part of it in the 'Gift Certificate ID' field, and click on the 'Search' button. Leave the field blank to see the complete list of available gift certificates. Choose the gift certificate to be used and click on the 'Add to order' button to
include it in the order, or click on the 'Use for order payment' button to pay for the order with this gift
certificate. The specified gift certificate is added to the corresponding section (Figure 25) and order subtotal is updated automatically.
Please note that you can use only one gift certificate to pay for the order. To remove the gift certificate applied to the order, click on the 'Delete' button next to it.
To remove one or several purchased gift certificates, place checkmarks against their codes and click on the 'Delete' button at the bottom of the 'Purchased Gift Certificates' section.
Gift certificates, both applied and purchased, are reflected in the 'Order totals' page (Figure 26). Gift Certificates purchased are displayed in the list of products pertinent to the order. A gift certificate used to pay for the order is reflected in the editable 'Paid with GC' field. If you need to change the amount to be paid with the gift certificate, type in the new value and click on the 'Update' button to save your custom changes to the current order details.
Real-time Shipping Quotes Package
The AOM module's order management algorithms correctly handle real-time shipping quotes provided by the following add-on modules:
• Australia Post • Canada Post • Intershipper • UPS • USPS
Advanced Security
The AOM module doesn't impair the functionality of the Advanced Security module. In order to access credit card information pertinent to an order, in the 'Order Info' page the store administrator must type in the master password and click on the 'Submit' button (Figure 27). However, in compliance with PCI-DSS It is now recommended that all payment processing is handed over to third party services and not store any CC numbers onsite as it complicates getting PCI-DSS clearances. So ignore all details about storing CC numbers.
Customer Zone
The features introduced by AOM add-on module have been designed for the purpose of administering
your online store and do not affect the Customer Zone of your store. However, if the store's order statuses have been customized, the 'Search orders' form in the 'Order history' page of the customer's account section allows to specify custom sub-statuses as a search criteria, and the actual order statuses are reflected in the search results (Figure 28).
Figure 28: 'Order history' page
Terms and Definitions
Administrator: a 'super-user' of the online store system who is privileged to configure the entire store and manage products, customers and orders;
Administrator zone: an administrator back office where the store Admin can configure, control and
monitor store operations, enable or configure various features of the store;
Current order details: order details being edited, which appear in the 'Current' column while editing
the order details. When order modifications are saved, current order details are saved into the original order details and cannot be changed back;
Customer zone: an area at the online store where store customers can manage their profiles and
review their orders;
Original order details: the full details of an order as they appear in the 'Order Info' page and in the 'Original' column while editing the order details;
Primary order status: predefined order status available in every shopping cart system;
Subsidiary order status, sub-status: additional order status defined as a subsidiary of one of the
predefined primary statuses. Subsidiary order statuses are introduced by the AOM add-on module and
are not available if the module is disabled or not installed;
User: anyone who visits the online store.
Layout templates
When the AOM add-on module is activated, some of the layout templates are patched or not used at all.
Instead of the old ones, new templates from the modules/ directory are used. Please pay attention when you are customizing your store design and functionality
WERE USED ARE NOW USED
Common templates for Admin and Customer Zones common/order_status.tpl common/invoice.tpl common/print_invoice.tpl modules/AOM/common/order_status.tpl modules/AOM/order_info.tpl modules/AOM/order_info.tpl Templates used in Admin Zone only common/select_status.tpl order/search_form.tpl order/order.tpl modules/AOM/common/select_status.tpl modules/AOM/search_form.tpl modules/AOM/order.tpl
