One time charge without customer selectable options (read only??)

Hello,

I've been banging my head against a wall all morning today trying to figure out how to do something I assumed would be easy with Zen. I've dug through the forums, and google. But I can't seem to find an answer.

Is there a way to apply a one time charge to an item - regardless of the quantity ordered - without having that charge rely on a user selectable control? If so, how?

Let me elaborate:

I have a store where we sell invitations and favors. We sell a lot of "personalized" stuff, where we have a set template, and we just fill change it a little with your wording, font, and colors.

But we also offer "Custom" invitations and favors. For that we charge an additional one time fee of $15.00.

Now the way we want it (for... reasons) is that we have a simple link from all the "Personalized" (non-custom) invitations pointing to a single product. That product is "Custom invitations".

I know I can simply add a "Make this custom" radio button with a $15.00 fee to all the other invitations, but that's not what we want, because it begs for misuse.

What we'd like is to have a one time charge of $15.00 always apply, regardless of quantity, and regardless of user selectable attributes on our "Custom Invitations" product.

Right now, I have a bit of a hackish solution, but it works. I've got a radio button dialog with only one option (s there's nothing else to select), but this is less than ideal. It's ugly, and potentially confusing to the end user.

I had thought the solution would be to use a "Read Only" attribute, but that won't pass the value. If I understand what I've read here on the forum correctly, this is by design. I'd say this is a poor design decision, but I admit there maybe factors I'm unaware of (I'd love to see it changed, if it's not due to technical factors).

How do I pass a one time fee that doesn't rely on the user selecting something, and doesn't rely on some kind of ugly hack like I'm using now? Is there a way, or am I going to have to add this to my "to do when spelunking through code" list?

Thanks in advance!

Attributes have Regular Prices and Onetime Prices ...

If you edit an Attribute, you will see that there is a setting for:
One Time:

Put in your One Time charge on your Attribute and that will be applied once, regardless of quantity ...

Ajeh:

Attributes have Regular Prices and Onetime Prices ...

If you edit an Attribute, you will see that there is a setting for:
One Time:

Put in your One Time charge on your Attribute and that will be applied once, regardless of quantity ...

Either you misunderstood my question, or I am not understanding exactly what an "attribute" is.

As far as I can tell, I can create an attribute that is either:

1. A checkbox
2. A Dropdown box
3. A file dialog
4. A radio button
5. "Read Only" (for which the price attribute doesn't work)
6. Text.

There is no way to create an attribute without one of these widgets, correct?

I already know how to create a one time price with an attribute. (As I said before, I'm using a radio button with only one option. Ugly and confusing, but it works).

What I want to know how to do is assign a one time charge to a product without using one of these dialog controls (attribute?).

I hope I'm being clear, but your response makes me suspect I'm not even sure I understand 100% what an attribute is.

When you Add an Attribute to a Product you pick an Option Name (example Color) and Option Value (example Red) ...

The Option Name for Radiobutton, Dropdown, TEXT and Checkbox are used for building regular Attributes with prices ...

Make your Option Name for Color a Radiobutton or Dropdown ...

Add your Option Value(s) to the Option Name ...

Now go to the Attributes Controller and find your Product ...

Add an Attribute and you will see there is a place to set the Price and a place to set the:
One Time:

The One Time is where you enter the One Time charge for the Attribute ...

Okay, that confirms it. You're the one who's not understanding me (perhaps because I'm being unclear, or because I'm using incorrect terminology, I don't know).

I don't want options. I don't want customers to choose anything.

No radio buttons.
No checkboxes
No text fields.
No combo boxes.
No file dialogs.

I just want to have a product that has a one time charge of $15, with a per-product charge on top of that.

Is this possible with a stock installation of Zen Cart? It seems it is not.

I understand that you're trying to help me, and looking through the forums, you've clearly been tireless in your efforts to help all sorts of people. But you're completely misunderstanding what I'm asking here. I understand how to set a one time price with options. I want to do it without options.

Nothing to select, just charge the customer a one-time fee, plus a per product fee when they add to cart.

I really am grateful for your help. Your tips to others have helped me more times than I can say.

Thanks again!

And I am trying to explain to you that One Time charges are built in to Zen Cart via the Attributes ...

If you want One Time charges done in some other manner, you will have to customize the code to suit your needs ...

At this time, there isn't a One Time charge available in Zen Cart without using a Radiobutton ...

You can make that Radiobutton selected so that it is not optional ...

If you have Attributes on your Products already, you can add it to the existing Attribute(s) ...

Otherwise, make a Product Option Name such as:
Setup Charge

and an Option Value such as:
Custom invitation

Thank you, that's all I wanted. Confirmation that the attribute system UI elements are currently the only built-in way to do it.

To bring up my other point again though:
Am I correct that I can't use the Attribute system's "Read Only" feature to do what I want?

From what I understand, this would do exactly what I want, but for some reason, pricing is disabled on Read Only.

Am I missing something? And if price control based on Read Only attributes is disabled, are you in a position to speak to what the reasoning is? Why was it designed this way?

Thanks again for all your help.

Readonly are just that ... Read Only attributes designed to display text but not be included in the shopping cart ...

I made the READONLY option type this way so that when you wanted to have Text displayed on many products that might need changing from time to time it would be done with 1 change vs 100s or 1000s of changes, depending on where and how it was used ...

You might take a look through the Free Software Add Ons. There are a few mods which add an extra charge for one thing or another that you might be able to adapt. Try searching for 'handling'.