Join me in my mission to improve Store!
Store is in need of a major overhaul. It is not currently a widely used product because of its limited functionality. Improvements to Store have been low on the priority list for WhippleHill, but it is important to realize that Store, when enhanced, could serve as a revenue stream for many schools. By ignoring improvements to Store, WhippleHill is forcing schools to look elsewhere for better options - not good.
Current issues with Store:
Individual store categories cannot be managed by different people, i.e., the school cannot administer and manage separate store transactions for school items (books, athletic uniforms, course fees/materials) versus parent operated items (spirit wear). Similarly, different school levels cannot manage their own items independently (Upper School store items vs. Middle School store items).
For schools using a payment gateway, all store items come through the gateway as store, so there is no way for business offices to reconcile to which accounts money should go.
Inventory does not work - there is a place to enter overall inventory, but there is no way to track inventory of individual sizes or colors, for example.
Options are limited to Product Sizes and Colors. It would be nice to have the ability to customize these options for say, a grade level t-shirt.
All store items must be published to the public site in order to be used. There is no ability to add a store catalog to a resource board, for example, and automatically capture info for authenticated users at checkout.
Shipping fees are limited to two options by total cost, i.e., regular shipping fee and extended shipping fee which is applied if the cost is greater than X dollars. Would be nice to have a greater range of options here, including cost by weight for larger/heavier items.
There is no way to customize the checkout screen. We cannot add extra fields, nor can we include customized instructions informing customers what information we need. For example, if the item is to be picked up by a student, there should be a place to enter the pick up name.
Notifications are limited to purchase type (check, credit, student account, or pay at pick up), but not the category type. With new upgrades coming to event registration, we would like more robust notification options.
Because store is still bridged to Podium, options to customize the look (i.e., product images and logos) do not exist.
Ideas to improve Store:
- Improve category functionality:
- Allow management of stores by category type.
- Rather than having a store manager that manages all store items, offer content access by category type
- Offer more robust notifications by category as opposed to payment type.
- Allow for category type to appear on gateway reconciliation reports, so business offices can designate in which accounts to apply funds.
- Improve inventory control. Ultimately, inventory should be tied in to POS (point of sale) operations system - perhaps this can be accomplished utilizing new Blackbaud resources.
- Improve check out:
- Allow for extra or custom fields, similar to event registration.
- Allow intro text as well as the ability to customize headers/instructions for each section, similar to giving.
Add Store Catalog as a content type option for Resource Boards.
Jump off the Podium bridge!
Vote for this post so we can try to get it moved up on the priority list.
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Guest
- Jul 22 2015
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- +46
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School store inventory
Merged I would like the store to keep track of inventory and then make a product unavailable when sold out. Currently if an item sells out, people can continue to purchase it unless it is manually unpublished.
7
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School Store not updating inventory levels
Merged I would like for the School Store to update the Master Inventory automatically.0
Related ideas
I would like to add to this list that we also need the ability to assemble and distribute pre-ordered products in a more efficient way. Ideally, we would print an order form for each student that placed an order, gather the products, and attach this order form to the bag of products. Unfortunately, none of the printed order forms print the student's name any place even though student name is a required field during the ordering process. Therefore, there is no easy way to match up orders with the student. The name on the credit/debit card used to pay for the order prints on the order form, but this is nearly always the parents name and requires significant lookup time to identify the correct student. Many parents have different last names. Many parents have multiple students, so looking at the products ordered and trying to match this with the correct class schedule for the correct student is laborious. I agree with all the ideas to improve store, but this item with the name seems like such an easy thing to fix now.
Billing and Payment form in checkout should allow user to input student information. Currently, it only allows for the purchaser's information for billing purposes.
School store shopping cart "Continue Shopping" button is broken. The user has to either click the back button in their browser or proceed to checkout to close out the cart window and continue shopping
Just paid our annual fee to WIX because the Store module is still so inadequate. Is there any movement on this module?
Checking in again to express how much I hope this can be fixed. We pay a lot for Blackbaud, and it's so aggravating that the store module is completely unusable, without the inventory tracking. As it stands now, we can only use it for pre-orders, not for items on the shelves. Please address this!
Has there been any movement on this at all? Inventory management is mission-critical to a store. I manage our store and the amount of time I have to spend on sloppy workarounds due to the lack of this feature this is disheartening. Any updates you can share?
Inventory tracking is a must. If we only have 30 items on hand, I would like the product to show as "not available" after the 30th item is sold.
Addressing inventory would be a great start. It would be nice to have the option of tracking inventory by size for things like t-shirts, sweaters, jackets and such. There is no current way to do this outside of making each size a different item in the category, but this makes it more cumbersome for the visitor to the store and increased the potential for mistakes when placing an order.
Linking the inventory to web store purchases so that each sale decrements the inventory would be a huge time saver. Currently, all web orders must be reviewed daily and the store inventories must be updated one by one. This is time consuming and increases the opportunity for errors. It also limits the accuracy of available inventory to visitors of the school web store.
Finally, the point of sale solution mentioned would be an awesome addition, especially if it were to integrate with a mobile pay system.
A few more nice to have features ...
- support for PROMO CODES for discounts.
- at check out include ability to add a donation (amount + gift target) to the order.
Please add different tax options.
It would also be cool if we could add i "Square" as a payment type in the school store.
Also if inventory could be linked to an accounting software that would be amazing.
I would like to have 2 different stores (ie a public one for memorabilia and a private one for parents or incoming parents for purchase of uniforms).
I would also like to see integrated shipping fees from different companies like we see in amazon. If the client chooses FedEx vs mail (also include CAN companies like Purolator and Canada Post) or other, the prices would be different depending on postal code and weight. Or at least be able to create a "table" for shipping cost to be applied to different items or locations.
Be nice that they could use PayPal to pay as we have an account there.
Taxes (federal and provincial/states) to be counted separately.
AND Notifications.
I'd like to see more detail (i.e., item ordered, size) on the notification), much like the [data] feature on the custom forms notifications.
Currently, store has only one payment gateway. We would like to choose a different gateway for the different categories (i.e., Fine Arts, Booster Club, etc.)
AND
that each store category can be managed by different managers.
Thank you.
I would like to see the ability to modify orders if someone orders the wrong size.
Send a detailed order confirmation.
Change orders to handled based on their category - not one at a time.
Be able to sort alphabetically - so first and last name in separate fields.
Users need to see their running total on the same screen as the catalog, rather than a pop-up cart window.
Also they need to adjust the options for tax and tax on shipping. In some states it's allowed (like ours) so it makes it more difficult for us.