Can I set up Zen Cart to do this? and how?

I will be installing Zen Cart in the near future for a client. We would like to build the entire site on top of Zen Cart without any additional software. So, here are my obstacles, and I hope you can point me to solutions.

We need some basic content management, outside of products and pages, which I believe ZC can already do.

We'd like to support 2 merchant accounts so that the two businesses that feed out of the same store can have the appropriate money sent directly to them. The two companies are on different continents, so it's important that this part works - we don't want them passing money back and forth because it will most likely screw with their taxes. If this is impractical, we are open to running to ZC installs in parallel.

Along those lines, can ZC determine (with some margin of error, of course) a customer's locality?

Is there a "quick order" form or module? Some clients order the same stuff over and over, and it would be nice to let them bang out a list of SKEW numbers and quantities quickly and add them to the cart.

Is there any kind of super-basic document manager so the client can easily upload PDF files to a folder? These just need to be available to be linked from product pages. They would be spec sheets or MSDS forms, additional literature for certain products.

Can we add custom fields when users register, like a simple checkbox to let users opt-in to an email list?

Can we securely store credit card info so the regular customers don't need to re-enter payment info over and over?

Thanks very much - I realize this is a substantial list and I appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks!
Frank

FrankDeRosa:

...basic content management
Yes. Use EZ Pages. Very simple to set up and edit and manage.

FrankDeRosa:

...support 2 merchant accounts
It's possible using custom coding, but not easy at all. Use two stores, either in separate directories on the one domain or in completely separate domains.

FrankDeRosa:

...can ZC determine ... a customer's locality?
Not sure what you mean, but if you're thinking of using perhaps the postal code, yes, I can see that being possible. There are some shipping add-ons which are adept at this sort of thing, though you would have to define what you want to do with the info once it has been "determined".

FrankDeRosa:

Is there a "quick order" form or module?
Yes, I use it on my wholesale site below. Works just fine. One catch: if you have, as we do, products which may go "out of print" for a time, then it's possible to enter an unavailable SKU in Quick Orders and not get a warning until checkout.

FrankDeRosa:

Is there any kind of super-basic document manager
You can FTP PDFs to the pub folder and let visitors download them from a link. Creating the link is not, however, automatic. You'd edit that into your product description or an EZ Page as needed.

FrankDeRosa:

Can we add custom fields when users register
There have been many threads here on the forum showing how to do this.

FrankDeRosa:

Can we securely store credit card info
You seem to know this is not recommended, but... Zen Cart by default keeps the first 4 and last 4 digits of the CC# in the database and emails the middle 8 digits to the store owner so the CC# can be reassembled for off-line processing. (What it does when on-line processing is performed I don't know. Others will chime in on this point.) Storing the complete CC# in one place would violate your Terms of Service with your processing company and is not supported in Zen Cart.

Be sure to look into the Free Software Add Ons link (top left) to see what other modifications are available.

Hope that gets you started.

Rob

Wow. Seriously, wow. Thanks for your awesome answer to my long list of questions. This will get me started on my design and well on my way with the project. Again, thanks very much. I'll be taking a closer look at your answers later on when I am actually getting into the project (as it hasn't started yet) and I will note any clarifications or further questions then.

Again, thanks. Your answer gives me faith in both the software and the community.