Selling Training Classes

[Papabjoe]

I am considering using ZenCart. I am having difficulty understanding if it will perform in the following way. If so can you give me a brief explanation of how and point me to the appropriate resources.

I offer training classes. I would like to list my classes by type. I only offer three "types" of classes. class 1, 2 and 3 for example. These classes are scheduled randomly and can only have a certain number of students.

From the admin, I want to be able to create a "product?" based on one of these class types. Schedule it for a certain date. Limit it to a certain number of "registrants". When the class fills up, I don't want it to be available for purchase any longer.

The problem I want to avoid is having to recreate the same class over and over again, when only the date changes. I suppose if the class were a product, it would be available in certain quantities at certain times.

Can you give me a breif idea as to how zen cart can make this happen?

[Kunal]

Here's how I would do it with Zen Cart:

I could create my three classes as products. Then, have my quantities (stock) be the number of students allowed in the class. Once it sells out, it can't be purchased to fit another student.

I could name my product the name of my class & date, for example:

"Tuesday Yoga Class" or even in more detail. That way I can re-use the product simply by re-naming it instead of creating new ones over and over.

Does this make sense?

[Papabjoe]

Yes but what if I class type 1 scheduled for saturday the 1st of the month. But I have another class type 1 scheduled for saturday the 7th of the month. They are the same class but on different dates. Different students.

[Kunal]

Then you could still have the following:

Product 1 Name: "Class Name 1/1/09"
Product 2 Name: "Class Name 1/2/09"

Then once it sells out, you could leave up for a few days, or simply rename it with a new date and replenish the stock (which is your number of students)

Would this not work?

[Papabjoe]

I guess it could work. I'm still looking at it from a database point of view. Where I have a "classes" table with records for each class. Then I have a "students" table with records for each user/registrant. Then I have an "events" table where I as admin create an "event" using one of the classes from the classes table. Restrict that event to a limited amount of "students". I'd like to be able to generate a report on each individual event. I'd like to avoid creating a class description every time I create a new event - or in this case a "product".

[Kunal]

I understand. If you have another site in my that is organized to fit your needs. You could always just use the Zen Cart for the "checkout process".

But I still think ZC is more than enough to handle your case. It will require some effort, but nothing too far out there.

The description of the class doesn't have to change if it's the same class over and over. You'd just need to change the name to suit the date. You could even have them download a ticket or something to appear after they have paid. Events can be done in a similar way with a few tweaks.

In the end though, you should use a platform you are comfortable with :-)

[PL13]

I have used zencart for about 2 years to sell classes or rather 2-4 days camps and 1 day clinics for a volleyball club.

I used the way of having a product for each date. In our case, one
particular type of camp or clinic doesn't repeat that often.

To avoid overbooking you must turn on stock management.

I had to make a bunch of changes to make people happy, ie
change texts, product to event, order to registration and so on.

To be able to see who has signed up to a class I had to write my
own reports.

With 3 types of classes I would look at setting up Date as attribute. and hook the attributes (date) into stock management. Kind of like selling a tshirt, you have 14 blue, 14 red. when someone orders a blue tshirt, that is deducted from stock.

I have looked at and keep on looking alternatives. no free system
that I have found is targeted towards 'events', except openfreeway (didn't have attribute textfield that I need).
also looked at prestashop, magento, and opencart. I like prestashop and opencart, but neither have that attribute textfield.
/P

[Papabjoe]

Can't tell you what a relief it is to read your post. We have been looking and looking. It's a little bizarre that none of the open solutions even consider "service-based" businesses like training classes. We have a zen-cart site up and like you have had to modify too much. Many times we have been reminded of the adage "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Thanks for your suggestions, we are going to use the zen cart solution we have now, and begin looking at others. We are probably going to choose one and build modules that gives us the functions/features we want.

We are also going to take a look at a couple of ruby on rails carts. Substruct, and Spree. Both are alluring but it seems that unless all you sell are widgets, your going to be hammering a lot of nails.

[crafterscafe]

I have used zencart for about 2 years to sell classes or rather 2-4 days camps and 1 day clinics for a volleyball club.

I used the way of having a product for each date. In our case, one
particular type of camp or clinic doesn't repeat that often.

To avoid overbooking you must turn on stock management.

I had to make a bunch of changes to make people happy, ie
change texts, product to event, order to registration and so on.

To be able to see who has signed up to a class I had to write my
own reports.
With 3 types of classes I would look at setting up Date as attribute. and hook the attributes (date) into stock management. Kind of like selling a tshirt, you have 14 blue, 14 red. when someone orders a blue tshirt, that is deducted from stock.

I have looked at and keep on looking alternatives. no free system
that I have found is targeted towards 'events', except openfreeway (didn't have attribute textfield that I need).
also looked at prestashop, magento, and opencart. I like prestashop and opencart, but neither have that attribute textfield.
/P

You mentioned that you wrote custom reports. Are these integrated into zen - I need backend to be easy for client to get class list, signin sheet, etc... Do you mind sharing how you did this.

[hephaestus]

The description of the class doesn't have to change if it's the same class over and over. You'd just need to change the name to suit the date. You could even have them download a ticket or something to appear after they have paid. Events can be done in a similar way with a few tweaks.

Several years ago I implemented a site for selling classes on top of osCommerce, using the "Master Products" contrib module.

A "course" (or "class type" as it's called in this thread) was implemented as a "master" which contained all the common descriptive information, and wasn't purchasable. Each different "section" of each course (called an "event" in this thread) was implemented as a "slave" under the course master. Each section slave had specific time, date, pricing and inventory level information. All the slave products were displayed as line items under the descriptive information that came from the master. This solution worked pretty well, although custom reports were still needed to show which students were enrolled in which sections.

I'm now looking to do something similar using Zen Cart, but it doesn't appear that there's any equivalent to the "Master Products" module, neither as a native Zen Cart feature nor as a contrib. Or if there is, I haven't figured out what it's called!

Can anyone give me a few pointers on how I might conveniently get a scheme like "master/slave products" to work under Zen Cart?

(I do kind of like PL13's idea of using an attribute to select a particular class section by date, and if I were starting from scratch I might do it that way. But I've gotten used to conceptualizing the problem the way I've already implemented it, so I'd really like to find a way to re-use my existing design (and maybe some of my php code as well!), without going so far as porting the "Master Products" module from osCommerce to Zen Cart -- if such a thing were even possible.)

Thanks all,

Michael