Product population via feed - is it possible?

[nojamin]

Hello Group

I've been a long time user of Zen, love it, and have been pretty good about customization. Now I have a situation that has me stumped.

My client basically needs multiple carts online all selling the same product and using the same inventory. There needs to be multiple carts because of separate payment gateways depositing in separate accounts.

Think of a big non-profit group with sports teams and each team has to do fundraising. All of the product is the same but each team is responsible for its earnings.

Ideally I would love to have one carts set as the master and do an XML feed, and then have all of the affiliates read from that feed for an updated inventory (new product, sold out, discontinued status). I know I don't want to delete product - that would confuse the order history.

I've seen exports, I have seen tabbed .txt file imports but not a product in the vein of XML and self managed.

---------- OR --------------- (the plot sickens)

Would it be possible to have one central cart and trap the affiliate source of the order to divert to the related affiliate payment gateway?


Thanks in advance to any help -

OH and I am not opposed of a free or pay add-on that would pull either of these tasks off. If anyone has first hand experience with such a model, please I would love to hear from you.

Thanks again

~ Ben

[fairestcape]

There's nothing really in a standard install that accomplishes what you want. And in addition to extra coding in ZC, the external data management programming would need to be pretty sophisticated.

However:

1. There is a multisite module (I haven't used it) that allows several sites to operate off one database. It could be that this mod also allows specific tracking of sales per site - I don't know. Check the free add-ons section and take a look at that mod.

2. The affiliate route may be a way to go. I have successfully integrated JROX Jam into ZC and it works very well as an affiliate manager.