Switch between a quote request and pricing mode ?

Hi There

Hikashop is quite amazing and I am looking forward to upgrading so I can consider affiliates for the finished shop system. I just have one outstanding functionality that I am wondering if possible in Hikashop.

I would LOVE to be able to select from the front end (ie user can select) a quotation request mode. So normally the shop shows pricing to standard customers, but some customers want to just be able to select items to put in the cart but have the request 'Quote me'. ie products in 'standard mode' display prices. when 'quote mode' is selected all prices are replaced with 'Quote me' or equivalent.

This could be from a menu selection (in my case Commercial customers only want quotes, Leisure customer want to see prices) or some other way to toggle.

I look forward to any suggestions as this would be the cherry on the cake for me !

Thank you for your resposne. I probably didnt explain why all that well

The website front end has an option for two types of customers. (we are a marine safety company)

1. Commercial
2. Leisure

Commercial customers always want a quote, they know the type of product they want but are not interested in pricing until quote stage. They usually buy items in bulk or a lot at a time, so want a nice price

Leisure customers buy in small amounts, for their one boat (in our case) so the price they see is the price they pay invariably, and only want rrp prices (to be honest we usually pass their queries onto retailers anyway.

So the main page of the site gives an option for the customer to choose their industry type, then it takes them onto the details and shop. two quite different customers with different requirements.

Hope that makes more sense

I already use the 'Free' option when a price is £0.00 it says 'Quote me' instead, which is very cool We never do online automatic payment processing so this is perfect for me.

To answer your question, no the commercial customers dont have an account. (at least on our current site I am trying to replace) they just click on a commercial link in a menu and then see the product range, without prices so they can add to the cart and click a cart button to send the request to us.

I am looking forward to using the business edition so that I can introduce a third set of users, which are dealers. Which are in two categories (dealer_cat_1 and delaer_cat_1) who have a discounted amount across the range for each of the categories. This will be good as its not something we have at the moment. Dealer will obviosuly have to login to see their prices so will have two groups assigned to them.

The dealers are the reason I cant just assign a £0.00 price to the commercial products. I want to be able to (with the business edition) discount off the rrp.

Just this one little option would kick ass on any other shopping cart. I have seen many posts in virtuemart, redshop, ewic etc wanting this type of system but noone has yet made it work.

I am presuming it would have to be a global variable of some kind that is controlled via menu to be on or off for site quote mode or something.

If the price was reasonable I would be willing to pay for this adaption but I also think it would make Hikishop invincible!

Thats what I was afraid of. Can do that with redshop, virtuemart etc but duplicating products, with the pictures, descriptions, characteristics etc. is a very painful process and can introduce mistakes, and with a lot of products is just not practical. Its like reinventing the wheel.

It is a shame that there is no global quote system/mode switch.

Back to the drawing board. This is the killer for me as our current rather naff system does this well, just the rest it does rubbish lol

but does it have the same product codes. I see a nightmare ahead with two sets of the same products. Unfortunately I was hoping joomla and hikashop would be a better solution for them than what they have I cant show them a more difficult way

thanks for your thoughts anyway Nicolas

Back to the subject, I am wondering how much it would cost me to have the modifications done to have a quote mode toggle from the website ?

Has this feature been included i have a couple of projects where the client wants a complete product listing but only want the clients to assemble a quote, or purchase order as they cannot process online payments with their business model restrictions

My guide to setting up a Quote Request version of HikaShop

1. Install HikaShop in your site
2. System --> Main
a. Main -->
b. Address --> Enter your Address Details
c. Currency --> i set this up as my local region as a precaution
d. Taxes --> i set this up as my local region as a precaution
e. Product --> 3 things in here
1. Dimensions display 'NO'
2. Weight Display 'NO'
3. Display 'add to cart' button for free products 'YES'
f. Cart Details --> i set this up as my local region as a precaution
g. Order --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
h. Files --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
i. Images --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
j. Email --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
k. Advanced Settings --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
3. Checkout
a. Checkout Work Flow
1. Quote Details
2. Your Address
b. Advanced checkout workflow edition 'YES'
c. Force SSL on checkout 'NO'
d. Display checkout progress bar 'Checkout Progress with End'
e. Show delete icons during checkout 'YES'
f. Force a menu on the checkout 'NONE'
g. etc
i. Shipping & Payment --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
j. Login & Registration --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
4. Display
a. General Display Options --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
b. CSS --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
c. Modules main default options --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
d. Default parameters for products
1. Display 'Add to cart' button 'YES'
2. Display 'Add to wishlist' button 'NO'
3. Display price 'NO'
4. Display product code 'NO'
e. Default parameters for categories --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
f. Default parameters for DIVs --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
5. Features --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
6. Plugins --> i set this up as i required for my business/clients needs
7. Languages
a. Edit the defulat one loaded for your language (English (United Kingdom))
1. My Overrides are;
;price
FREE_PRICE="Request Quote"

;product
ADD_TO_CART="Add to quote"

;cart
CART_PRODUCT_TOTAL_PRICE=""
CART_EMPTY="The quote is empty"
HIKASHOP_FINAL_TOTAL=""
PROCEED_TO_CHECKOUT="Proceed to quote request"
REFRESH_CART="Refresh quote"
PRODUCT_SUCCESSFULLY_ADDED_TO_CART="Product successfully added to the quote"

;checkout
HIKASHOP_CHECKOUT_CART="Quote Details"
HIKASHOP_CHECKOUT_ADDRESS="Your Address"
HIKASHOP_CHECKOUT_END="Send Quote"
THANK_YOU_FOR_PURCHASE="Thank you for your quote request."

;checkout - payment
HIKASHOP_PAYMENT_METHOD_CHOSEN=""

8. Payment Method Selected
a. HikaShop collect on delivery payment plugin
1. Name --> Request quote
2. Description --> You can pay when your quote is emailed to you.
The rest i have left alone as stock


I Hope this helps others out there, this is how i set it up there are other ways i am sure but this is my method, and it makes it pretty easy.

Let me know if i have missed any steps and i will add what i have missed, oh a quick step to make it even faster is to remove Quote details from your Workflow, but my client wants them to be able to check what they are requesting in the quote before sending.

I have a question though now...
Once you have added items to your cart i get a summary of the items this is what i want, but they are showing a total value of o, i would like to turn this off on the emails that are sent.

Ideally i would like to remove the total column from the form thus removing it from the displayed quote and the email...
Does anyone have any ideas?

Hi,

To remove the total value from the email, you can edit the mails "order creation notification" and "order status notification" via the menu System > Emails in order to remove the part regarding the total value (in the tfoot part of the table).
You can do the same thing in the order view "order / show" via the menu Display > Views.

Still fighting with this, can i suggest a feature enhancement...

being able to see the emails in table format where you can select columns and features and turn things on and off. as raw code its really painful to modify, i cannot drag it into a package like dreamweaver to check what its looks like.

Its great but really hard to modify the look and feel of the emails being sent to the customer and staff.