CartSpan is packed with features that save you time, enhance customer service, and promote solid business practices. At CartSpan, we’re ‘business people’ first and believe technology should serve to that end. This means that you will find us very receptive to all suggestions, large or small, as to how we can better support your unique business processes. We are an agile and flexible organization with respect to the evolution of CartSpan. So, if you don’t see functionality that your business requires, please contact us so that we may discuss the possibilities of collaborative development.

Order Import

Item Price/Quantity Updates

Security/Performance

Software Update Notifications

Order Import – Key Points of Integration

Import as Order, Invoice, or Receipt – CartSpan supports import as either an Order, Invoice, or Receipt. The order number flows directly to the order or invoice number in QuickBooks, Sage 50, or FrontAccounting. Please note that import as ‘Receipt‘ is currently only available for QuickBooks installations.

Additionally, CartSpan can direct the transaction-type based upon the customers role/group coming from the shopping cart. For instance, if you want all of your ‘wholesale’ customers to be imported as ‘Orders’ and have all of your ‘Retail’ customers imported as ‘Receipts’, this is achievable with CartSpan.

Customer ID Handling – With Customer ID management arguably the most problematic aspect of integration, CartSpan offers multiple options for creating the new Customer ID in accounting. When the new customer master is created, you may:

1) Use the shopping cart assigned Customer ID (typically a nondescript integer).
2) Craft the ID from available Bill-To or Ship-To details using a configurable rule.
3) Manually cross-reference the Cart-assigned ID to legacy Customer ID (memorized).
4) Utilize the Store ID in the Cart as the Customer ID (with meaningful cross-reference). *
5) Utilize the Customer Group as the Customer ID. *
6) Assign Customer ID based on the Ship-To State
7) Assign Customer ID based on the payment method
8) Assign all transactions to a common Customer ID
9) Optionally assign all ‘Guest’ transactions to a common Customer ID

* Given significant variance in functionality, not all carts are supported. Please call to verify.

QuickBooks Users Only:  CartSpan is the only integration product on the market that can completely ‘regenerate’ your existing Customer Names in QuickBooks to support rule-based ID creation for future imports from your shopping cart. This is often a ‘make or break’ circumstance if your existing Customer IDs follow non-standard or inconsistent naming conventions.

Cash Receipts – If you are importing as an Invoice, you can optionally import a cash receipt, essentially closing out the receivables transaction. The cash receipt is triggered by configurable order status codes. Where supported by the individual cart, CartSpan will apply the CC type and ‘last 4’ digits of the card as the reference. The cash account to which the receipt is applied is configurable based upon the payment method.

PayPal/Bank Transaction Fees – For any payment method that applies a consistent transaction fee, CartSpan can calculate this value and apply it to the payment as a discount. This is accomplished via a configurable formula for each payment method affected.  This adjusment is typically applied manually during the reconciliation process; long after the order has been imported. CartSpan saves you significant amounts of time by removing this task entirely.

Customer Prepayments – If you are importing a web order (paid by credit card) into accounting as an order, CartSpan can properly apply a credit on the order itself and also create a transaction that debits cash. Where supported by the individual cart, CartSpan will apply the CC type and ‘last 4’ digits of the card as the reference. The cash account to which the payment is applied is configurable based upon the payment method.  CartSpan can receive the customer prepayment as either a ‘credit’ or a ‘short-term liability’ depending upon your individual business process.

Tax Handling – CartSpan allows you to direct taxes to specific codes based upon City, State, or Zip Code. What’s more, CartSpan will detect and allocate taxes to any configured sub-authorities that may be configured for the referenced tax-code.

Address Handling – CartSpan overcomes the challenges parsing of the second address line for billing and shipping addresses from some carts that combine everything into one field. For users of Sage 50 and Peachtree, CartSpan will cross-reference state codes to import a valid 2 character reference.

Item Configurable Options – CartSpan offers special support for items with configurable options. All of the configuration input provided by the customer will be specially formatted and appended to the general description of the item during import.

Bundled Item Support – The seemingly intractable problem of ‘child’ items being exported from the cart without prices is resolved with CartSpan. For fixed-priced bundled items, CartSpan will intelligently allocate pricing across these items. Individual items descriptions are also modified to indicate their association with the original ‘parent’ item.

Many-to-One Item Mapping  – CartSpan is the only integration that allows you to create one (or more) ‘phantom’ items in the shopping cart that can be mapped to a single SKU in the accounting system.  Moreover, these cart-level phantom items can represent multiple quantities and pack-based pricing for the item mapped in the accounting system. CartSpan manages all price/quantity conversions during the import/export process.

‘Piggy-Back Item’ Support  – For those marketing campaigns where you need to easily attach a ‘free’ or ‘complementary’ item to the purchase of a specific product, CartSpan supports easy association of this ‘piggy-back’ item so that it is dynamically added during the import. This is accomplished without any extended or complicated configuration in the shopping cart.

Auto Creation of Items – If your business process is such that you choose not to create items in your accounting system until they are sold on the Website, CartSpan can be configured to auto-create the item at the time of order import. The new item is created using the description and the price of the ordered item.

Discounts and Coupon Handling – CartSpan will create individual line items for any coupons or discounts that are applied to the order along with reference to the individual coupon or promotional codes.

FedEx Shipping Integration – For QuickBooks customers, CartSpan offers special formatting of the ShipTo address so that you don’t have to make any adjustments to support import into QuickBooks’ FedEx Shipment Manager. Additionally, the order weight is conspicuously imported into the beginning of the Memo field so that all you have to do is ‘Cut & Paste’ it into the corresponding FedEx Shipment Manager field. This saves you loads of time in manually calculating total weight of the individual line-items.

Gift Certificates – For those carts offering native support for Gift Certificate sales and redemption, in a GAAP-compliant manner, CartSpan will properly apply GC sales to an ‘unearned revenue’ (short-term liability) account until which time it is redeemed. Please verify that CartSpan supports this functionality in the cart version you are planning to utilize.

Pricing Overrides – Override cart-level pricing with QuickBooks’ pricing by Customer/Item. (QuickBooks Enterprise only!). This functionality is particularly useful if you are selling Business-to-Business (B2B), import as a sales order, and allow your customers to pay later. Your customers will see ‘list’ pricing when they order, but understand that their contracted pricing will be applied on the back-end when the order is received.

Automation – CartSpan can run manually or be configured to import new orders at a predetermined user-defined frequency.

Email Alerts (administrative and operational) – CartSpan can be configured to send email alerts to a system administrator when there are exceptions encountered during the integration. For instance, CartSpan can send notification for when new items are created in accounting.

Pick-List Generation – If your organization deals with external fulfillment services, you can configure CartSpan to send a comprehensive pick-list to one (or more) email addresses. Or, you could simply choose to send the email to an internal resource. The CartSpan generated pick-list has full shipping information as well as any customer comments relating to fulfillment. CartSpan will recognize an item custom field designating stock location (QB Enterprise Only); which can then be sorted upon and used to create a more usable pick-list for warehouse fulfillment operations.

Multiple Stores – CartSpan can import order information from select (multiple) stores within a single Magento database. For instance, one CartSpan customer operating Magento for ‘field sales’ has approximately 55 different companies configured…one for each sales person on the force. As long as you are importing to a single accounting company, there are no additional charges.

Item Price/Quantity Updates – Key Points of Integration

Stock Quantity Updates – Near real-time updates of stock quantity available in response to receiving, invoicing, and adjustment activity in the accounting system. As an additional measure of accuracy, CartSpan reflects the quantity available for sale based upon item quantities on open sales orders. If you take orders that are transaction dated in future accounting periods, CartSpan can be configured to exclude open-orders past a future date (based upon days).

Expected ‘Back in Stock’ dates published to shopping cart – NOTE: This functionality is currently available for QuickBooks and Magento only. Improve your conversions for items currently out of stock! This feature alone has the potential to quickly pay for your investment in CartSpan. Rather than have your customers view an item page simply indicating ‘Out of Stock’, provide them with a definitive date as to when it will become available so they can decide if they are willing to wait. Not only will you benefit from more sales, but you will also cut down on the number of unproductive phone calls from customers inquiring as to when product will be available. Referencing your open Purchase Orders for out-of-stock items, CartSpan does the heavy lifting for you automatically. CartSpan even allows you to ‘hedge’ the number of days for the expected delivery…just to give you an extra measure of cushion in meeting consumer expectations.

Minimum Stock Configuration – If you are oversold in the accounting system, CartSpan allows you to artificially indicate a minimum quantity available in the cart.

Item Price Updates: Standard and Sales Pricing – CartSpan allows you to maintain both your ‘standard’ and ‘sales’ pricing in the accounting system; no need to remember updates between two systems.

Price Markup or Markdown Tools – If you elect to offer more competitive pricing on your website, relative to your ‘bricks and mortar’ operation, CartSpan allows you to configure global or item-specific markdown (or markup) percentages.

Price Rounding – We all know that multiplying existing prices by a given percentage often results in an odd looking value. CartSpan employs rounding rules to bring your price to the nearest ‘0.05’ or ‘0.09’ value; giving you pricing consistency across your site.

Multi-Pack Support – Option to sell individual items as a multi-pack unit (as configured in accounting) and have the appropriate conversion to ‘Each’ applied during the import.

Advanced Support for Assembly-based Product Types – Though you may not have final product assembled for sale, CartSpan can present the amount of final product you can reliably offer. CartSpan will determine available inventory for each item represented on the first level of the assembly and calculate the maximum quantity of the parent item that can be produced. This availability calculation even includes open orders for after-market purchases of affected child components.

Advanced Support for QuickBooks Group-Item Product Type – Though similar in behavior to assemblies, the QuickBooks Group-Item never really ‘exists’ in inventory as it is ‘exploded’ on the Invoice/Order from within the QB user interface. Because of its nature, a Group-Item can’t typically be represented directly by its Item Name in the shopping cart. CartSpan’s special handling of the item type enables this. CartSpan can present the amount of final product you can reliably offer. CartSpan will determine available inventory for each item represented in the group configuration and calculate the maximum quantity of the Group-Item that can be offered. This calculation goes so far as to include open orders for after-market purchases of group components. During the import process, CartSpan will ‘recognize’ the incoming SKU as a Group-Item and convert it to the associated components with appropriate quantities and allocated pricing.

Factor Quantities on Open POs in Inventory Availability – CartSpan allows you to include a percentage of the materials on open Purchase Orders in the quantity available sent back to the shopping cart. This allows merchants to safely ‘hedge’ the representation of their offering so that they do not miss sales opportunities. The ‘hedge’ factor allows a merchant to anticipate for damage-of-goods or short shipments from suppliers.

Support for ‘Stock Location’ Custom Field – (QuickBooks Enterprise users only) CartSpan will recognize an item custom field designating stock location; which can then be sorted upon and used to create a more usable pick-list for warehouse fulfillment operations.

Support for QuickBooks Multi-Warehouse – CartSpan is the only commercial integration product that fully supports Multi-Warehouse functionality offered by QuickBooks Enterprise. CartSpan’s unique business logic will appropriately assign stock location to create a highly usable picklist for warehouse personel.

Security/Performance

All credentials used to access the Shopping Cart are securely encrypted. To support PCI compliance, CartSpan does not transmit or receive any credit card or sensitive financial information to/from the Shopping Cart.

Order Download/Import:  CartSpan has been stress-tested for high-volume import operations. In one contiguous session, CartSpan has been observed to import 1,046 orders in approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes. This includes the automatic creation of new customer master records, followed by Invoices and their subsequent receipts for paid transactions.

Item Price/Quantity/Status Upload: CartSpan has been stress-tested against an implementation of Peachtree integrating with a UNIX/mySQL cart architecture, with over 10,000+ items having been successfully exported and uploaded in a single call to the supporting script.

Software Update Notifications

Automated Notifications! By default, CartSpan will provide you with automated notifications of important product updates as they are released. This includes changes supporting the current version that you are running as-well-as major releases for newer versions of your accounting system. These notifications can be limited with configuration options, or completely disabled as you desire. The option to manually check for product updates will always be available.

Backward Compatibility! New versions of CartSpan will support older versions of your accounting system. We are certainly advocates of staying current on your software systems, but you won’t have to upgrade your accounting to take advantage of the latest CartSpan functionality.