Importing Transactions in to Sage 50 Accounts

Posted by: Genevieve Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Let me preface this by saying, I am by no means an expert in Sage 50 Accounts. However, we’ve had a few enquiries on how to use our Sage preformated export from Order Export. It is pretty straightforward to take the transaction details from this csv and upload directly to Sage 50 Accounts.

In Sage 50 Accounts, go to File -> Import to open the Import Wizard
We recommend you backup your data before proceeding
Select Audit Trail Transactions from the list and click Next
Select csv format, choose your csv file from the Browse popup window and ensure there is no tick next to First row contains heading checkbox and click Next
Map the columns in your csv file to the correct Sage Field (you can save this mapping for next time) and click Next
Review the import and then click Finish

You’re done!

Posted in Administering Magento | No Comments »

UPS Negotiated Rates in Magento

Posted by: Karen Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Setting up XML Rates

In Magento there are 2 choices around displaying UPS Rates:

CGI – No requirement for user details, just displays standard rates. EASY but rubbish
XML – Need a login, password XML Access Key. Can display negotiated rates. HARD but accurate

Basically the CGI is good for playing around, but when you go live you want the XML rates. There is a lot more going on, and if your store is outside the States then you can’t live without.

To get setup for XML Rates is not straightforward. You need to go to their Developer Kit page, register, login, and request an access key.

With a bit of luck at some point you will get an email containing you XML Access Key. So in total you should have a UPS Login, Password, and Access Key.

In Magento enter your UPS login details.

Make sure you highlight all the allowed methods you need – this is a common mistake and if you don’t select some you won’t see any rates.

If you aren’t running SSL you might also want to switch to developer mode in the UPS shipping config, then switch to live afterwards.

All being well you should now see rates on the frontend in Magento.

Negotiated Rates

So now you have XML Rates. But what about those rates you obtained from your UPS representative, how do you display them? Well, for some sites you don’t want to display the negotiated rates, as you don’t want to pass the savings onto your customer. But for others keeping the shipping costs as low as possible is a key part of your competitiveness in the market, and you need those negotiated rates.

In theory you should be able to just switch on negotiated rates in admin and add in your shipper number you obtained from your rep.

But, and here is the catch, we have seen a number of customers that do this and negotiated rates are not returned.

It turns out that in order to switch on Negotiated Rates you must be authenticated on the UPS site. This can be done manually by ringing UPS, or via the My UPS, under ‘Maintain Your UPS Account’.

Bingo!

Posted in Shipping in Magento | No Comments »

Product Matrix Tooltip Feature

Posted by: Tom Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Product Matrix is one of our most popular extensions, it is constantly evolving and we are always trying to find new ways of improving it. Recently a client of ours mentioned that he would like to display a Tooltip next to his delivery methods giving customers more information about the delivery method. We thought this was a great idea and decided to add the feature to Product Matrix.

I was lucky enough to get the job of implementing the Tooltip feature, as a fairly new member of the team I was excited to be working on Product Matrix.

When the Tooltip is active it will appear next to the delivery methods for which you have specified a Tooltip caption. The Tooltip caption can be set up in your Product Matrix CSV file, simply enter your Tooltip caption under the notes column. Any delivery method with a star in the notes column will not have a Tooltip displayed to your customers at checkout.

You can take a look at Product Matrix by going to webshopapps.com

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Tracking with Royal Mail

Posted by: Josh Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Anyone using Royal Mail tracking links lately will have noticed that when they click on the link, it redircts to a generic tracking page and doesn’t carry accross the tracking number which isn’t great for your customers.

This is because Royal Mail have quietly changed the tracking link and format you need to use. The new link is below in the correct format for our Generic Tracker extension:

http://track2.royalmail.com/portal/rm/track?trackNumber=#TRACKNUM#

If you’ve not had a chance to take a look at our tracker yet, now is a prime time. It’s just £35 and makes tracking a lot easier for your customers by adding a tracking link to the shipment email and in the customers my account area for any carrier you want to use that supports tracking links with embedded tracking numbers.

http://www.webshopapps.com/generic-tracker-magento.html

Posted in Administering Magento, Shipping in Magento | Comments Off

VAT in the EU using Magento

Posted by: Genevieve Monday, October 24th, 2011

VAT – what’s the deal?

WebShopApps is based in the UK and we sell extensions all over the world, so like many eCommerce businesses, we have had to get our head around VAT rules.

Our understanding is that:

VAT is charged at your local VAT rate to all non-VAT registered customers based in the EU
For VAT registered business customers outside of your country in the EU, VAT is NOT charged ( they instead pay it themselves at their local rate)
For customers outside of the EU, no VAT is charged

More information on the UK VAT rules are available from HM Revenue & Customs

If you already have your tax rules setup for the EU (1 & 3 above), you can skip the next section and jump down to ‘what about VAT registered business customers?’

How has WebShopApps set up VAT in Magento?

First we have created product classes in Sales>Tax >Product Tax Class – we simply use Taxable Goods but you may need to have VAT standard, VAT reduced rate and Zero rated if you have products at different tax rates
We then set up tax rates in Sales>Tax> Manage Tax Zones and Rates. We have one entry for every EU country with a rate of 20% and a rate for Jersey and the Channel islands of 0% (based on postcodes). We’ve exported our tax rates , which you can import under Sales>Tax>Import/Export tax rates to save some time.
Next we created a tax rule in Sales> Tax>Manage Tax Rules that applies to our product tax class (created in step 1), our standard customer groups and includes all of the tax rates (created in step 2)
In our catalog we then select the Product tax class on our goods

Now we will be charging the correct amount of VAT to customers in EU countries and no VAT to customers outside of the EU.

What about VAT registered business customers?

Effectively, you have a group of customer that shouldn’t be taxed, no matter what they buy. So you need to set that at the customer tax class level.

Create a new customer tax class under Sales>Tax>Customer Tax Classes, ours is called EU Business Customers
Don’t apply any tax rules to this group, as they aren’t charged any tax
Create a new Customer Group under Customers>Manage Customer Groups, again ours is called EU Business Customers, and assign your tax class in step 1 to it
If you haven’t already, add the VAT number field to your checkout under System>Configuration> Customers>Customer Configuration> Name and Address Option > Show Tax/VAT number

Now when a customer checkouts and enters a VAT number you can verify it using the VIES service and if it’s valid, add them to the customer group you created in step 3, oh, and don’t forget to refund the VAT they got charged on their first order.
If, like us, you have hundreds of customers and many new ones each day, this manual processing quickly becomes a headache.

How can we help?

That’s why we wrote EU VAT Checker extension.
It will:

Check a customer’s VAT number during registration, at the checkout or from the admin panel for admin orders. This is done through the VIES web service, run by the EU.
Automatically add them to the correct customer group, so they only need to be validated once (for registered customers)
Remove the VAT from their order

It has lots of other features and configuration options so you can control, for example, what happens when the web service is down and whether to verify the syntax first. It’s a great little extension and comes with our full recommendation because we use it ourselves!

Posted in Administering Magento, Developing with Magento | No Comments »

Meet Magento UK 2011

Posted by: farai Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

So we were only just about starting to get over the excitement from the San Francisco Innovate conference but its not over yet because another exciting event is around the corner and right in our backyard which is Meet Magento UK.

After such a great event in San Francisco and the opportunity to mingle with the powerhouses of Magento and other key players in the US, we look forward to the opportunity to meet some of the U.K and Europe key players at this first ever U.K meet-up.

The event, taking place on Wednesday, October 26 at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London will be bringing the best of the United Kingdom and Europe E-commerce ecosystem together.

The conference will showcase the latest news about Magento, educational lectures for merchants and developers and an exhibition area where you can come speak to us and other experienced e-commerce experts.

As a Trusted Extension provider for Magento, mainly within the shipping space, we will be showcasing some of our products and available to chat and discuss how we could provide the missing pieces to your Magento puzzles.

So if you want to meet WebShopApps and find out a bit more about what we do or how we can work together then come chat to us at the conference. We will be at booth number 6 so don’t hesitate to come say hello.

We are proud to be a Gold sponsor of the event and cant wait to attend, meet everyone and be part of all the action in London.

If you would like to schedule a meeting with the Director, Karen Baker on the 25^th or 26^th then contact us.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

The future of Magento in the new X.com world

Posted by: Karen Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Remember that blog I wrote a while back raising some of the concerns when eBay acquired Magento? Time to revisit.

I certainly wasn’t the only one asking ‘are they Apple or Microsoft’?

X.Commerce Innovate 2011 has been and gone. So what’s changed in Magento World? Here are my own thoughts:

Magento isn’t going anywhere fast. This is a big part of X.com
Community, community, community. It’s a fact, we have more connections to merchants than X.com can make directly. So by supporting developers/design agencies they are in turn supporting merchants. Hallelujah!
The App Store will only get bigger and hopefully smarter. This will relieve developers to do what they do best – develop
X.com realise that developers may be able to do things better than them. Wow, this is a real Apple moment. Amazing!
Magento Go is being re-shuffled to support extensions. WebShopApps are the amongst the first to release a Trusted Extension
There will be more opportunities opening up to both merchants and developers. It’s exciting times for all

The overriding sense I got from Innovate 2011 was that Magento/X.com haven’t become arrogant, they are not complacent, and they know that hard work is ahead. You can also see this amongst the design agencies large and small, the extension developers and the individual designers. I could almost spot Magento people walking around as they seemed so friendly and down-to-earth.

And, in my opinion this is one of the truly great things about Magento. It brings together people from all walks of life, this isn’t just for techies or just for corporate bods. You can be niche, you can big or small, and you can make a difference.

The common factor amongst everyone at the #preinnovate tweetup was the sheer passion for Magento, and that we all truly love our jobs. That’s a great feeling, and we are privileged to be a part of this journey.

Having personally worked both in large companies and startups my advice to eBay is definitely to listen to the philosophy of a startup, do not hemorrhage money and become an unwieldy machine. Do not sit on your perch looking down at the masses. Follow the example of Magento, get involved, stay agile, muck in, understand, learn and evolve. Then together we will be successful.

Apple or Microsoft? They seem to be making progress

Posted in Developing with Magento | No Comments »

WebShopApps goes Gold

Posted by: Karen Monday, September 26th, 2011

Busy times for WebShopApps. We re-brand with a new website and embark on our first significant marketing campaign since launch.

Today we proudly announce ourselves as Gold Industry Partners of Magento. We are Gold Sponsors of both X.Commerce Innovate and Meet Magento UK. I’m shattered

Thank You

Its easy to say those 2 words, but trust me I sincerely mean it. Thanks to all our clients for supporting us, for downloading Matrixrate, for purchasing our extensions, for suggesting ways we can refine our code. This company truly only survives by having your custom.

I particularly need to thank Rob Butler for pestering me to write him extensions, and Neil Atwood for giving me the encouragement and confidence to go for it.

Neil, you have free extensions for your site for life, stop offering me money for them

Thanks also need to go to the Unleaded Group/Jarod Clark over in Denver for just believing in our company and trusting us in meetings to be an authority in shipping. You showed me what we could achieve and I hope we continue to serve your needs well.

Thanks also to Magento, without whom this company would never have existed.

Without wishing to make an Oscar speech I must give a nod to my colleagues. Josh, Farai, Gen & Tom I really appreciate your intelligence, patience and support.

Where did WebShopApps come from?

I thought this would be a bit of an opportunity to show you how we came to be. Plus also to prove that maybe if you work hard, keep your head down, believe in something, and listen to your customers then good things can happen.

Sept 2008

I was contacted after posting on forums about shipping issues with Magento and my workarounds. After a few discussions Matrixrate was born. This gave the ability to publish multiple shipping rates based on destination & either weight, price or qty.

I used the name Auctionmaid. Why I hear you ask? Well I owned the domain and wanted to save some money. No other reason. The site is still there today and hopefully the values I had then still apply now.

Nov 2008 – July 2009

A steady stream of requests came in, for shipping and non-shipping extension work. I refuse at first, a full-time job in London and 2 very young children makes it hard. But I relent because, well it’s just fun! I write Dropship for a client for 140USD. Took me about 2 months in my spare time. Mug I hear you say

July 2009 – Jan 2010

I pack in my job to develop Magento extensions full-time. It was Magento or London, Magento won. WebShopApps.com is born.

Taking payments via paypal donation links is breaking down – I throw together a magento website in a day to temporarily help whilst I wait for a ‘proper one’ . It stays for 5 months.

Feb 2010

Take on my first 3 employees. Move into offices in Leigh-on-Sea. We now have a growing client base and regular repeat customers. We have no infrastructure, at first we are using a mobile internet connection because of a lack of phone line.

The ‘jigsaw’ website goes live. This was produced by David Oliver who is a fantastically professional guy with a real eye for design. The idea behind the site was to be a little bit cheeky, keep it personal, like a boutique clothes shop.

May 2010 – July 2010

I up sticks and head to Australia for a while to train Genevieve in Magento. Genevieve is a former colleague from my London days and one of the best all-round engineers and developers I know. Over time she takes over much of the non-shipping side of WebShopApps. Josh learns a lot of Magento whilst I’m away – he had to!

April 2010 – Feb 2011

We build up our extension set, getting good coverage right across shipping in Magento. We expand up to 8 staff and cope with the growing pains of a small business. Lots of long days and nights.

Feb – Sept 2011

We attend Magento Imagine. Shortly afterwards I reduce the staff back to 5 and really concentrate on building knowledge within the team. A tough decision but this pays off and we start moving fast again.

Sept 2011

We launch the new website and brand. I have to give a massive shout to the design team, these guys did this really because they love our products and they wanted to help us. Designing is an art, and I have the most amazing respect for our design team.

They have chosen to remain anonymous (and mysterious). Respect.

Where Now

Let’s see. I have a plan….

Posted in Company News | 5 Comments »

Installing Community Extensions via Command Line (SSH)

Posted by: Karen Sunday, August 28th, 2011

I never really liked the idea of having to change permissions of my magento install to add on new extensions.

So here is how to do via SSH. Obviously this only works if you have SSH access to your website.

Firstly, navigate to base magento directory

./mage mage-setup
./mage -V
./mage list-channels
./mage install connect20.magentocommerce.com/community/
  e.g. ./mage install connect20.magentocommerce.com/community/ IG_LightBox

Finally do a chown -R on your directories to whatever your’s is, otherwise they will have root:root

I was running this on magento 1.6 using version 2.0 of magento connect to get the extension info.

Superb!

Posted in Administering Magento | No Comments »

Fedex Shipping in Magento 1.6

Posted by: Karen Thursday, August 25th, 2011

What’s Going On Then?

Magento have implemented Fedex Web Services in the 1.6 release. Up until this release they were using the Fedex ‘DC’ API which is due to be retired in early 2012. So what’s the impact on you?

You can’t just put in your Fedex number and get rates
You may need to install Soap on your web server to use Fedex
You may be forced to run tests on the Fedex ‘test’ environment before you can get access to the ‘live’ Fedex rates
It’s no longer possible to display Home and Ground rates simultaneously. This is not supported by the Web Services API
Not on 1.6? You could find you need to patch your site early 2012
In the Magento Fedex configuration you are now asked for an Account Id, Meter Number, Key, and Password. All of these are required to retrieve rates

Installing SOAP

SOAP is a protocol used by web services to communicate. It runs over http and in this instance is used as the communication mechanism between Magento and Fedex.

SOAP is often installed on a web server by default, if in doubt ask your hosting provider. I wrote a blog around installation for those doing themselves.

How do I get a Fedex Web Service Login?

Sign up at the Fedex Developer Resource Center – this will give you a account id and meter number
Obtain a Developer Account Number,Test Key, Meter Number
You will be emailed a Test Password to use

Okay, let’s Get Rates!

Open Magento Admin Fedex Shipping Methods
Enter Account ID, Meter Number, Key and Password
Set Sandbox Mode to Yes
Decide whether to show Residential or Commercial Rates
Configure rest of settings as desired
Go get rates and test
Once you have completed testing then you can go get your Production Login, test and go live

What Else?

Being constrained to only show residential or commercial rates can cause problems. Residential rates tend to be more expensive, so you may lose sales if you set to this. Plus showing Home Delivery is not great when dealing with commercial customers, they may get confused.

How Can WebShopApps Help?

We offer a couple of extensions in this space which can assist you with your Fedex rate management.

The Residential Selector extension will show a residential/commercial dropdown on the cart shipping quote and during account/address setup, thus allowing your customers to select their address type.

Our USA Dimensional Shipping extension which has been around since 2010 is a mature intelligent implementation of Fedex WebServices. Amongst other things it supports:

Dimensional Weight
Packaging awkward sized items separately
Displaying Home Delivery as Ground

Both extensions also have our fantastic logging capability which allows you to see whats going on under the hood. So if you get no rates back from Fedex you can see why, and not just see the evil red error message!

Posted in Shipping in Magento | 2 Comments »