Placing orders as admin or staff

[chris parker]

Hi Everyone,
I know the title sounds a bit stupid but it's the best way I could think of to describe what I need to do.

I have a small team of sales reps who collect orders in person, and I'd like them to be able to log on to Zencart from home and place the orders they have collected for their customers. (Zencart has the best and fastest ordering page I have seen...I love that customers can enter quantities into each and every box before pressing "Add to Cart" just once).

How would the sales reps do that? Would they have to create an account for each customer and log in and out for each customer, or can they make new orders for customers from the admin panel?

Many thanks for any assistance or advice you can provide.

[barco57]

Entering the orders through the catalog side is your only option. Load the master password mod so that the reps don't have to try and remember every customers passsword.

[chris parker]

Many thanks for the fastest reply I have ever had on a support forum! My Goodness, you guys are good!

One more question then...I was thinking about using OSFinancials as my accounts and general ledger program...also to keep track of customer credit limits etc. Is this something that others with Zencart are currently doing successfully, or are there any better suggestions?

Thanks again.

[DrByte]

One more question then...I was thinking about using OSFinancials as my accounts and general ledger program...also to keep track of customer credit limits etc. Is this something that others with Zencart are currently doing successfully, or are there any better suggestions?

You can certainly use any accounting package you like. However, Zen Cart currently has no direct built-in means to handle communication with an accounting package automatically.

Nevertheless, an interface to send transaction data *to* QuickBooks can be obtained in the Downloads area. Check out its features to see if it suits the needs you're after.

[Fuzion]

Hi Chris,

I am not sure about OSFinancials, but we use Sage and have some software from a company called DataLinkUk (www.datalinkuk.com - not sure if we are allowed to put links in here, so if not I am sorry )

This links Zen straight to Sage Line 50 and save hours of manually copying and pasting customer orders from one to the other.

Hope this helps,

Jamie @ Fuzion

[chris parker]

Thanks so much for your quick and helpful replies.

The reason i was looking at OSFinancials is that it is also OpenSource, and they have developed a plug-in for Zencart that can take the orders, products, customer info etc. directly from Zencart and also Vtiger.

I was wondering if anyone had used this as a solution.

Which is easiest to use by the way? Quickbooks or Sage Line 50? I have used Sage Payroll previously in a bricks and mortar business and found that I had to read the manual from front to back just to process a simple payroll.

Thanks for your ever helpful advice.

[Fuzion]

Hi,

Well I have only ever used Sage. It is quite a deep program, but there is so many more developers for it. We bought it direct from a developer (not SAGE!) and heoffered us 1 year free support (as long as you dont take the p*ss!).

We have found there are alot of processes we spend time doing each day which we tell him about and within a few days we have some software written (very reasonable aswell!) to automate the task.

Yes, Sage is expensive, but I would not change for any of the others. We have been using it for nearly 2 years and with a bit of learning (and the odd mistake!) things are very simple and smooth.

As to their Payroll software, I looked at it, got confused and passed it to our accountant!

Laters