Shipping and Preorder

[alucard13mm]

Hello. I am a new user. I have searched the forums but I have not found an acceptable solution or answer because those threads are quite old or there were no answers.

I am running a store that will be selling official Japanese figurines and merchandise. It will be selling a mixture of preorder products and in-stock products. There are some jerry rigged solutions for some of my problems, but the solution makes things complicated since I will be adding 5-8 preorder/instock items a day.

So here are a few questions I'd like to ask:

1) A lot of products will be sold by pre-order. A lot of my competitors are "pre-order now, pay later". I am using paypal as my payment gateway and the solution (change from automatic to authorize only/capture) that I found on the forum is not a solution for me. A lot of products has to be pre-order 3-5 months in advance. The authorize only setting on paypal only works for 29 days I believe. Is there a way to HOLD and ask for payment through the admin panel to customers that bought a certain preorder item when it is released?

2) If a customer bought an instock item, a pre-order item that comes in January 2013 and another pre-order item that comes out in May 2013.. how would shipping work? Would I have to put shipping as 0USD for the pre-order items and then manually send the customers emails to ask for payment for shipping when the item comes out? I read on another thread that I should tell customers to make separate orders (one for instock and one for preorders), but I feel that would make it complicated for the customers and that is bad for business. Plus it would make it complicated for me. There is no way to calculate shipping prior to receiving the pre order product because I would not know the dimensions of product's box and its weight.

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Long story short. Is there a way to have orders be comfirmed by me BEFORE asking for payment? I would like to approve the order and make any changes to the order like shipping costs based on instock/preorder or charge for in-stock items now and sending them an invoice requesting payment for preorder items when released.

Thank you.

I also think it is strange that no one has made a pre-order module or extension for zen cart yet. It seems that a lot of retailers do businesses through pre-orders these days like hobby shops and gaming shops.

[kobra]

One could use the cash on delivery - changing the text to read "Pre Order" instead
You would have to arrange for payment ion some other manner manually

This would only work if only pre-order items were in cart though

[alucard13mm]

Thanks for replying kobra.

I suppose that would work if the volume of orders was low, but if (i hope it happens) i had high volume of orders, it is not practical to do.

I will probably play around with the admin/order section to see what it can do.

If I do get high volume of orders, I would have to move to another shopping cart that has better pre-ordering resources and that seems like a big hassle where things can go wrong. Or commission someone who might be able to customize zen cart to do it.

[alucard13mm]

I cant seem to find the edit button for my above post. I apologize if this counts as double post.

So I just tested the order module on the cart with a friend ordering something from me as a test. It is just not practical for me to ask for shipping separately for preorder items that are release in later date.

I'd have to search for the item that is just released in the order admin module to see which orders have this item. Then I have to check that same order to see if there are other items coming in near the same time to combine shipping. Then I have to check other orders that same customer made to see if those other orders contain items that are coming in near the same time to also combined shipping. Then I have to email the customer to request for shipping. I would have to do this over and over with other customers or the next preorder item, which would be extremely time consuming. Not to mention it will result in poor record keeping for tax purposes and mistakes being made.

Since I would be inputting 5-8 new pre-orders a day, you can imagine how big of a nightmare that this can quickly become. Combined with high volume of orders.

I did look at other threads before posting my own thread and it seems people has been asking for a pre-order function for zen-cart since at least 2009. Also, other shopping carts seem to lack proper pre-order capabilities as well. Does that mean that I have to freelance someone to develop pre-order?

Thank you. Again, I apologize if this counts as double post or spam or bump. I am still looking, but no edit button.