Purchase orders (no payment at checkout)

-- url of the page with the problem -- : www.hotpicksusa.com
-- HikaShop version -- : 2.3.5
-- Joomla version -- : 2.5.28
-- PHP version -- : 5.2.17
-- Browser(s) name and version -- : All
-- Error-message(debug-mod must be tuned on) -- : No error message

Hello,

We are currently in the process of re-creating our store with permissions model for Customers (default), Stores and Distributors, using different pricing tiers for each group. This should work great.

What we are wondering is, if there is an ability for the 2 advanced groups (Stores and Distributors) to have a "payment type" or some other solution which allows those groups to submit orders without specifying payment type or shipping method. These customers have a need to place an order that can change product quantity, payment type and shipping method once they contact us after placing the order.

We are aware this creates some small difficulty managing inventory and such, but we already have that issue because we sell large volumes of very small items anyways. Perhaps it could be reconciled by the "purchase order" not removing inventory until we "approve" the order on the back end, where we would input the payment method and shipping method in the admin?

If something like this is possible, we would be interested in knowing!

Thank you,

Michael

Hi,

You can indeed create a "purchase order" payment method, set the order status on "created" this way the order will just be placed. Then after the customer contact you, you can edit the order in backend to apply a different payment and shipping method, edit quantity, etc...

For the stock management, you can enable the option "Update the product stock on confirmed status" (Configuration > Main > Product), thanks to this option when an order is just placed, not paid, so still have the "created" status, the product stock will not be decremented.

To allow the customer to pay after you edit the order, you will have to enable the option "Payment of orders not paid immediately " in Configuration > Main > Order.

Hi, I am excited by the ability to do this but I need a lot more detail to completely understand before doing this.

My first concern when reading this, is does this mean every customer will have the same ordering method as below? 95% of our orders will be the general customer (not stores or distributors) and what I think will happen is we will then need to "process" the payment method on every single order manually? This isn't necessarily bad, but I do need to know if this will be the case.

> set the order status on "created" this way the order will just be placed.

We currently have "Default order status" to "created". Right now, we are only using Pay Pal Standard (we will be changing to Pro for the gateway soon) , so no payments are taken unless the customer goes off site and uses paypal to actually pay. I have been meaning to ask, does this mean all the orders where people create them, but do not go to paypal and pay, are still in the cart as created and must be manually deleted if they do not pay? I am thinking this is a good thing if we switch to Pro because it will let us capture the payment info even if we must process it manually.

> Then after the customer contact you, you can edit the order in backend to apply a different payment and shipping method, edit quantity, etc...

That leads to my first additional question. Some distributors pay us thousands of dollars via Wire Transfer and we won't use the cart for payment at all. So how would we log payment for the order? Just have it's stats changed manually to confirmed in the admin? I guess it doesn't really matter if the cart process payment at all, right? So the bigger question is if they want to pay by "Wire/Bank Transfer", we don't want regular customers seeing this option, but it does need to be there for stores/distributors. It would actually be good to have a few different methods if possible, else just a simpler one of "other".

> For the stock management, you can enable the option "Update the product stock on confirmed status" (Configuration > Main > Product), thanks to this option when an order is just placed, not paid, so still have the "created" status, the product stock will not be decremented.

This is excellent! So there is just my additional question above about this how we have it set currently. Are there a bunch of "created orders not paid for in our system? Are we able to just delete these since customers won't pay for them ever?

> To allow the customer to pay after you edit the order, you will have to enable the option "Payment of orders not paid immediately " in Configuration > Main > Order.

This I need to understand further. Can you explain in more detail how this works? Is this assuming you've already captured the payment information?

Hi,

1. You can set different payment methods, this way customers paying with another method than "purchase order" will be "processed" automatically, so you will just have to manage the orders with the "purchase order" payment method.

2. Indeed, the orders created and not paid stay as pending in HikaShop. They are not deleted. So you can deleted/manage them as you want.

3. Yes you can simply change the order status to "confirmed" for the wired payments. To hide the wire payment method to "common" customers, you can set restrictions on the payment method to allow only specific groups to see it, so in your case restrict the payment method "wire transfer" to stores/distributors user groups only.

4. To see all the unpaid orders, you can filter them in the orders listing, or use the mass action for deeper editions.

5. If a customer create an order but don't pay it directly, thanks to this option when reaching his control panel (need a specific HikaShop menu created in frontend), then go to his orders he will be able to pay them from this interface.