Trade setup feedback

[Jules]

Firstly, I just wanted to say thanks to you clever, and lovely people. I have been building my new site for the past week or so and have found this forum a source of great wisdom and you’re all so friendly too!

My first real hurdle is the trade/wholesale set up. As far as I can tell there are two solutions – private discount or private categories, either one set to the trade users accounts.

I think that the private category will be best suited to me as trade orders are not taken from the same stock as retail orders so this will keep my retail stock levels correct, also not all retail products will be available trade to begin with. However, I was just wondering if anyone had any problems with this solution. I am concerned that as the retail catalogue/products can be viewed that this could be confusing for trade customers. I also still haven’t yet worked out how to make it obvious to trade accounts where the trade catalogue is, once they’ve signed in.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Also, is it possible to stop loyalty points for specific users (in this case trade accounts).

Finally, I would like the trade orders to use different shipping than retail orders. I currently have 4 shipping options for retail sales, is it possible to have 2 different shipping options for trade sales and the trade customer cannot see/choose the retail shipping options.

Hope I haven’t asked too much in my first post.

Thanks,
Jules

[petad]

Welcome Jules. Not had experience of this, but there are several BP users here who will be able to advise.

Regards

Pete

[mikeyred]

Hi Jules,

There is a bit of info on http://www.bluepark.co.uk/forums/sho...scount-dilemna but the best i found was a combination of both. Use private cats with the products assigned and then individual discounts assigned to each customer.

Fo the trade side I have repeated all my SKU's with an addin of TR to represent trade and re-described all the lines as per their carton size and revamped the prices accordingly. This means you have to manually addjust the stock on these products but on the direct sales agents, they are buying in a private cat from assigned products on the main site so this way the stock levels are correct for both parties.

With the bespoke discounts you are able to select for each company/customer in their own private cat what is discounted and if there is some products that you have negotiated a bespoke price, you can exclude those from the discounted range - this I did with Virgin as I am hoping (not happened yet) that the staff may delve in and take advantage of the other products that I placed in their cat that they all have access to I can't see Virgin buying any babygrows but perhaps their staff may

Using this method allows a hell of a lot versatility and covers most requirements - your normal customers will not be able to see the products when assigned in a private cat, however, you will when signed into your admin CP, which got me going at the begining I must admit, thinking that the products where on public view - to see what the public see and to satisfy your nerves, sign out of the admin CP and you will see that anything within the private cat will not be seen.

Loyalty points is a global thing at the moment, hence I am unable to use it because of my private accounts but Rich has it on his agenda and will re look at this after he has done some more important updates. I would really like it to be by Cat at the very least but he is going to look into it so we may have that in the near future....

Shipping.... this one is easy, just set up say "wholesale1" "trade1" or the like.... associate it with a price code (trade/wholesale should have different codes) when your trade/wholesae customer uses check out they will only see the associated postage related to that category. I have to have quite a few as with Virgin and global, I have negotiated the postage prices as well...... but the combinations are endless with in reason

Any more info give us a shout or pm..... blimey! now I'm off for a cuppa!!

[Jules]

Mike,
Thanks for taking the time to give me your thoughts, it's very reassuring to hear that you find the system so flexible. I'm slowly understanding the different aspects which are open to me, I even solved my 'will trade customers get confused with retail things on the site' late yesterday when I realised I could just set trade pages to a slightly different template - so simple but it took me a few cuppas and a fair few biscuits to work it out!

Thanks again,
Jules

[Jules]

Mike,
I'm sorry to come back to you with this - I'm still not solving the shipping issue. I can't see how to associate a method of shipping with a price code. I can associate it with a shipping code but no option in the shipping editor to associate with a price code. If you have a spare moment (I know, sorry) please can you shine a light.

Thanks once again,
Jules

[Rich]

He will have meant the shipping code - set the shipping code of the product and enable that code in the shipping method.

[mikeyred]

ooops! knew I should have had the cuppa first!

[Jules]

Thanks gents, shipping is now sorted and everything else is coming together - hope you have a good weekend.
Jules

[Rich]

Loyalty points is a global thing at the moment, hence I am unable to use it because of my private accounts but Rich has it on his agenda and will re look at this after he has done some more important updates. I would really like it to be by Cat at the very least but he is going to look into it so we may have that in the near future....

This is now possible via the new User Groups feature, and within individual user accounts.