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When do you know you have a new order?
Simple, you will receive an eMail notice from the shopping cart system that will notify you immediately after someone orders from your web site. Check your eMail often, you never know when your next order will come in. As you check your eMail, just look for the following message inside the subject line of this "new order eMail notification" the shopping cart system sends you:
Now, this eMail notification contains valuable information as it relates to your new order, such as ... the name of your new customer; company name (if applicable); their eMail address; their mailing address; fax, work and home telephone numbers; "Comments & Special Delivery Instructions:"; the order I.D.; the order date; type of payment selected; the charge status; where they heard about you; the name of the product or service they purchased at your web site; the dollar amount involved plus any applicable sales tax and shipping charges ... then, at the very bottom, your contact information (i.e., how the customer can get a hold of you). By the way, this information can be modified under the YOUR ACCOUNT header and then, clicking on CONTACT PROFILE. There, you can update your contact information so your customers have the right telephone, eMail and mailing address on you in the event they need to contact you about their order. Now, at the same time you received this new order eMail notification, your customer was also sent an eMail, specifically an eMail receipt for their purchase. Now, here's where you go to work. They've bought product from you, and now they're expecting you to fulfill their order in a timely manner. What kind of orders can you receive?
Simple, login to your shopping cart account with us and click on the main menu header called "Orders" on the left-hand side of your screen. Doing that will open a window in the main body of your account which will display all your new and old orders in to date. Now, what's the first thing you should do when checking your orders? Well the first thing you should do is to determine the "paid status" of all your new orders. Why is this? Because you want to be sure you got paid successfully from each and every customer who bought from you before you deliver the products they ordered! Even if you sell digital products (like eBooks, eReports and downloadable software) ... you should still check your orders to be sure the shopping cart system is charging your customers' credit cards correctly. Every once in awhile, someone's order needs a little bit of hand-holding. To check the "paid status" of your orders, simply look under the "Order Status" column on the "Regular Orders" main screen. Once you determine the paid status of an order, you can procede to fulfill the client's order. Order Status Definitions ...
Product Fulfillment Notes: If the "Accepted" order was for a digital product (i.e., eBook, downloadable software, eClass, eReport, seminar registration, coaching package or other digital product scheduled to be delivered electronically) then that digital product was most likely already delivered at the time the client made their purchase. If the "Accepted" order was for a physical product (i.e., paper-back book, tape/CD program, something you have to snail-mail physically, etc.) it's safe to say you can start accumulating the product and packaging materials. Word of Caution: In some cases, it is not always recommended that you ship product(s) or otherwise grant services solely upon the receipt of an eMail notification that you have an order. Whereas, it might be a good idea to wait a few days before shipping physical product. Make sure the money arrives in your bank account successfully. You make the call though, it's your business.
... it means you must log into your shopping cart account, collect the new customer's credit card and billing information and process (i.e., charge) the customer's credit card by hand (outside the shopping cart system) and inside your online virtual terminal, provided to you by your merchant account provider, or by some other credit card processing means. Now, what is an online virtual terminal? An online virtual terminal is a web-based credit card processing system only you have access to when you applied for a merchant account and gateway system. This virtual terminal allows you to process credit card orders by hand. If you need a merchant account and a gateway system to hook up to your shopping cart so you can process orders in real-time, be careful, not all merchant accounts are the same. Be sure if you're applying for a merchant account for the first time that the merchant account is compatible with your shopping cart. We have a list of acceptable merchant account gateway systems we work with. Be sure to refer to this list when shopping for a merchant account if you don't have yet. Typically, you will see this eMail response when you don't have a Merchant Account hooked up to your shopping cart account to process orders online in real-time. Once you hook up your merchant account to your shopping cart, you really won't see this type of new order eMail notification any more.
Either way, you'll want to charge their credit card by hand inside your online virtual terminal and preferably with the customer on the telephone just in case anything goes wrong, the customer is right there to answer any questions you might have to help process this order successfully. One last note on declined orders, be sure to tell the customer you are only going to charge them once and that they should not see a "double charge" on their credit card for what they purchased.
If your shopping cart should continue to deliver this message repeatedly, contact our customer support center for assistance. We can look into the matter at our end to better assist you. Describe the "Regular Orders" Page ...
Our shopping cart system makes it easy for you to collect orders online through your web site, and store a variety of information on your new customers here on the "Regular Orders" page of the shopping cart system. C'mon, let's take a look around the "Regular Orders" page so you can become familiar with what you have access to when it comes to managing your new online orders. Describe the "Order Details" Page ...
Our shopping cart system makes it easy for you to collect a lot of information about your customer and their order within the "Order Details" page of the shopping cart system. C'mon, let's take a look around the "Order Details" page so you can become familiar with what you have access to when it comes to managing the details of your new online orders.
Easy, click on the Orders header, then on Regular Orders. Then, click on the link that says "Print Shipping Labels" at the bottom of your orders and follow the directions. Our system gives you a number of options for printing out your shipping labels. To print your labels all you'll need to do is follow a few simple steps.
You can quickly and conveniently print a Packing Slip or Packing Invoice by clicking on the Print Packing Slip or Print Invoice link at the top of the client's "order details" page. A new window will open up allowing you to print the document. When you're done printing a client's Packing Slip or Print Invoice, simply close the window so you can print another client's Packing Slip or regular Client Invoice. How do you search for new, old and archived orders?
You can easily search new, old and archived orders with our convenient search tool. You can search by order I.D., name, company name, eMail address, credit card number, state/province, from date, to date, unarchived orders, archived orders, all orders, just today's orders, only the last 7 days worth of orders, even 30 days worth of orders ... and, you can choose to display 25, 50, 75, 100 or 150 orders on a single page for quick and easy viewing. Once you see the order you're looking for, simply click on the order to view that order's details. Now, every so often, the system will automatically archive all orders past a certain date. This is a good thing, as it clears room for new orders to be viewed from the main "regular orders" screen. To search for past or archived orders, simply scroll down check the "Archived [ ]" box and select "All Orders" under "Order Option", then click the search button. Instantly, the system will generate the results your looking for. Simply click on the order you're inquiring about to view its order details.
You can retrieve and manage your recurring orders by clicking on the "Recurring Orders" link. This is where you can retrieve or search for those customers you charge on a recurring basis with our system. Under this section, you'll be able to look up Customer Name information, Product description, Date of Last Charge, Date of Next Charge, Recurring Price, Remaining Cycle Counts, Failed Attempts, Event Status, Event Action and Charge Status. This is all good information and helps you to keep track of your recurring orders.
Yes, sales reports are available! Our system can provide you any number of sales statistics, such as:
Simply, it's a short-cut link that opens a new browser window to your online virtual terminal. When you have an order that either was declined or simply needed to be processed offline, quickly and conveniently, click on the Gateway Login link. A new browser window will pop up and you'll then be able to access your online virtual terminal to process the order in a snap. Should you have any problem charging your customer's card through your virtual terminal, you know then you need to contact the customer for their assistance. Perhaps, they simply need to provide you their new billing address or in some cases, a new credit card altogether.
If you ever suspect that you've received a suspicious order, or an excessive amount of orders from the same place or person, and you feel that these transactions may be fraudulent in nature, you can click on the name of the person who ordered and BLOCK THEIR IP address which would prevent them from ordering (from that location) from you again. Typically, this can happen when somebody has got a hold of (for example) five people's credits and they're placing orders with those cards from the same computer. That computer has an I.P. address associated with it. If you block that I.P. they can't place any more orders; at least from that computer. An additional note, you might like to place the following message above or beneath your Order Form page that says,
This at least let's the future perpetrator know, you're on top of things and if you were to call and verify an order by telephone, and the response you got was not positive (i.e., "No, I never ordered that product ...") Then, you know to cancel and void the order immediately (through your merchant account's virtual terminal) just in time (before that same time every day) your merchant account reaches in to grab those unsettled orders that need processing. Make sure you void the transactions that need voiding out so they don't get charged and you don't have any future headaches to take care of. To prevent any future charge backs, refunds and/or added grief to your online business. Keep your merchant account record clean. Watch your orders and be sure each one that comes in is clean and real. Note, if this hasn't happened to you before, that's great. But, in the course of doing business online, it's only wise to safeguard your business against unforeseen acts of this nature. Useful tips for managing your Orders ...
After your orders have been processed (i.e., credit cards charged successfully, labels printed, product shipped, etc.), it's a good idea to ARCHIVE them (i.e., clear the screen for new orders). Keeping the Orders area clean and up-to-date, helps to maintain a smooth operating business online every time.
It's also a good idea to Export all your orders every week (or at least a minimum of every 30 days); if anything for this one reason: to store a record of your clients' credit card information on file in your computer. Our system purges (or removes) client credit card information every 30 days. For whatever reason, if your client (i.e., customer) wanted to utilize your services offline, you would have their credit card information to charge with their authorization. And, in some rare cases, you would also have their credit card information available to you (offline) to refund an order (through your virtual terminal), if the occasion ever presented itself. What is often overlooked but would be handy to know?
Every product (ordered) is tracked by the product ID generated when you originally created the product description inside the Add Products section of the shopping cart system. If you have a product that a customer ordered, and later you changed the price of that product in the Manage Products area, the "change in price" would also change systematically for the customer who bought that product before you changed the price. This is important to know when printing invoices. You wouldn't want to print an invoice with a product price different from what the customer actually paid for; especially if you lowered the price. Yikes, they might perceive they paid too much!!! Talk about confusion on the part of the customer. If you want to raise the price on a particular product, or make any major changes in the name of the product, it's best to simply create a new product with a new description and a new price. That way, it doesn't alter any information in the Orders area or on the details page of a customer's order.
Every order is tracked not only by an Order ID, but also by the customer's eMail address. Which means, if a customer were to submit more than one order (i.e., for someone else) with the same eMail address they originally used on the first order, the second order would overwrite any information in the customer details record like name, address, telephone number, etc. Not good! This often occurs when people are registering other people for products, seminar registrations and tele-seminar slots from your web page. Why is this important, well, the customer thinks they're doing others a favor by purchasing product for them or registering their names for them using their credit card and using the **same eMail address** for the order receipt. Not good! Our system tracks ever email address carefully and keeps very tight records per eMail address. So, to prevent overwriting the customer details of any record (per eMail address), encourage your customers (from your web page's ordering instructions) to order only for themselves and if they do order for others, that they use the **other people's eMail address(es) for the receipt** and not the person placing (multiple) orders. The person placing the orders can choose to contact the other person and have them forward a copy of the eMail receipt to them for their records. Make it known to those who order through your shopping cart or who register for seminar/tele-seminar events, "One eMail address per customer/registrant!" |
Regular
Orders —
These represent individual, one-time credit card transactions where
customers places a single order through your shopping cart for a
product (or products), services, coaching sessions and/or seminar/tele-seminar
registrations you sell from your web site. Note, these are single-transaction
orders where the customer is only charged once.
Accepted — If the order
says "Accepted" in the "Charge Status" column,
this means the order was processed completely online and without
any error. A good thing! The money you charged your customer through
our shopping cart system was successfully collected and will be
deposited in your bank account within 3-5 business days from the
date the transaction took place. 
Declined — If an order
is declined, you should contact the customer right away to inform
them that their credit card was declined and would they like you
to try charging the same credit card again or would they like to
try a different card instead.
How
do you print shipping labels?
How
do you print a Packing Slip or Packing Invoice to insert in the
product package you're shipping to the customer?
Are
Sales Reports available?
Sales By Date
— (Daily, Weekly, Monthly)
Gateway
Login - What's That? 
IP
Block List - What's This? 
ARCHIVING ORDERS ...
EXPORTING ORDERS ... | Home
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| Manage Clients | Autoresponders
| Broadcast | Affiliates Ad Tracker | Custom Forms | Pop-Ups | Cart Setup | Your Account | Earn Cash | Support |
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