Thread: Preorder Items

Has anyone else worked on a preorder modification? The bigwigs have been hounding me about it for quite awhile and I keep "forgetting" to give them an update. I realize this post should really be in the customization section, but I don't know where it would fit in the categories given.

Pre-Orders and Special Orders are similar. You are esentially accepting an order for an item that will not ship in a timely fashion. It raises a few issues:

1. What do you do with other items on the order that *do* ship immediately?
2. How do you handle payments? Is the item going to ship within the Auth time allowed by your credit card processor (typically 14 to 30 days)?
3. Or do you need to simply collect (possibly invalid) payment information (not creating an Auth), then perform the charge when the item ships?

Currently, AspDotNetStorefront doesn't support multiple partial captures on a single order, so Question 1 is problematic. You can capture the non-pre-order items today, but that essentially marks the entire order as "shipped".

Question 3 is even more problematic, as your want your store to be PCI Compliant, but stashing credit card numbers on your site invokes lots of compliance rules you must deal with, somethimes involving hardware purchases (firewall, proxy computer, etc).

Originally Posted by ASPDNSF Staff - Jon

What do you do with other items on the order that *do* ship immediately?

The current plan is to add on some new pages that all pre-orders will be handled from, using their own instance of the ShoppingCart object. Pre-order items will not show up as part of the normal cart.

Originally Posted by ASPDNSF Staff - Jon

How do you handle payments? Is the item going to ship within the Auth time allowed by your credit card processor (typically 14 to 30 days)?

Since our pre-orders are potentially months in advance, we'll have to do manual processing.

Originally Posted by ASPDNSF Staff - Jon

Or do you need to simply collect (possibly invalid) payment information (not creating an Auth), then perform the charge when the item ships?

Yes; this is the current plan. And the complexities don't stop there There have been discussions about breaking up pre-orders into smaller shipments if parts of the order are taking longer than normal. So, we'd have to break out child orders from the original pre-order. When that happens they'll also be paying more in shipping which ought to be a real blast to work out.

Originally Posted by ASPDNSF Staff - Jon

Currently, AspDotNetStorefront doesn't support multiple partial captures on a single order, so Question 1 is problematic. You can capture the non-pre-order items today, but that essentially marks the entire order as "shipped".

Question 3 is even more problematic, as your want your store to be PCI Compliant, but stashing credit card numbers on your site invokes lots of compliance rules you must deal with, somethimes involving hardware purchases (firewall, proxy computer, etc).

Security is one area where we really don't mess around. Our servers are prettymuch rock solid as far as that goes. I have informed the bigwigs that we will be following the PCI and PABP guidelines for the storage of sensitive information, so that will be factored in as well.

Overall, I want to modify the storefront core code as little as possible. I've already been forced to modify it far more than I would like thanks to the tax system we use. I've already thought through how I can do things now, but wanted to discuss it here more before I start acting on it.

Was there ever a solution to this? It seems like the thread just died without any resolution.

Many businesses (like mine) absolutely require the ability to accept preorders, and that is a genuine software requirement. I think reasonable assumptions can be made about all of the above questions - such as 1) the ability to split the order into "items shipping now" and "items shipping later" (based on stock availability), and 2) the items shipping later will not be charged until shipped.

As we continue to grow, we may have to upgrade to another package if this software won't support these requirements.

Thanks
Warren

www.Bobbleheads.com

ASPDNS is like many of the e-commerce systems: no concept of A/R.
Back in the good old days I wrote a system that basically allowed my customers to make visual decisions on orders and never loose a backorder, collect correct amount of money with a shipping audit trail.
To make all what you want, the object needs to be ITEM, not ORDER.
Foretunately, we're at the programming point where much of the activities can be made drag-and-drop while displaying business rules the dashboard is obeying.

I am writing a pre-order package right now for a client. I was hoping that someone has already tackled this feature, but I don't see any. If someone has this feature built already, please let me know so I don't waste my time.

The way I'm doing it is to use the "Gift Certificate" item to pre-order. Customers buy Gift Certificate now as pre-order, and use the gift certificate to redeem the order later.

The messy part is the shipping. I need to collect the correct amount for shipping now, so I need to have correct product weight.

1. All pre-order items in table Orders_ShoppingCart will be marked with FreeShipping = 2 (No shipping necessary).
2. All single pre-order Orders will be marked as Shipped.

The shipping selection is done when they first purchase so this becomes an issue.

I wrote a web-service for landing pages, so I can create orders programmatically. And I'll use the shipping method, and gift card to redeem the purchase.

That should work. Please let me know if you see some flaw in my logic. Off I go.