Online Quote Builder ?

I started to use Zen Cart for a much different reason then the norm. I work for a Pro audio and lighting rental house. we process multiple quotes a day for ppl and as of late many are just shopping for a price to see where they can find the cheapest price. Unfortunately that takes up valuable time. Also we have repeat customers that are always in a rush but never remember what they need or what we have. So we came up with the idea of an online quote builder that they can use to get their pricing or try to figure out what they need without tying up ppl for extensive amounts of time.

So we started to look for a solution. In comes Zen Cart everything about it is perfect. we can set up multiple shipping points for out customers to choose from they have access to our entire shop and they spend as much time as they need to put it all together. they submit and we and them get a copy we review for any potential omissions that might cause them a problem with the rental enter into the system and viola saves and avg of 15 hrs per week.

Now the problem. The problem we are running into is that there is no way to calculate a multiple week rental. Granted i know this system was not designed to that capacity but with all the mods that are out there for this i am wondering is there a way to multiply the subtotal depending on how long the customer needs the equipment? So if the rental is $700 and they need it for 2 weeks is there any way we can get it to $1400?? I'm a little tech savvy and my boss... well he tries. it would be the last hump to make this a perfect setup to generate online quotes.

I suspect that you have products setup???

If so, you can add attributes to them for one week - two weeks - three weeks - etc

See this tutorial on how to add them
http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?99-how-do-i-add-attributes-to-my-products

If your rental is for one week, the customer can order two of the "product" (only having to select the options one time) and the price will double. You can even set up quantity discounts so two will cost a little less than double, if that fits your business model.

ok that makes total sense. will def look into it. Just wondering can that be done to an entire cart just before checkout or it needs to be set up on the product level?

You can adjust the quantity of a product in the shopping cart. Adjusting the quantity of an attribute would require going back to the product info page.

gjh42:

If your rental is for one week, the customer can order two of the "product" (only having to select the options one time) and the price will double. You can even set up quantity discounts so two will cost a little less than double, if that fits your business model.

yeah the only problem with the dbl order part is that they would order say 75 lights and 130 pieces of cable and so on then we would have to try an figure out the break down on all the items on a 3 week rental. think that would actually create more work.

If you have lots of individual parts rented in one contract, that would get complicated. Not sure of the best way to cleanly adjust the rental span for this.

yeah some rentals will easily go into over 300 pieces or more. The attribute thing looks like it might be the ticket if i can get it to work the right way.
Thanks for the help and ideas i was really banging my head against the wall over this. Im still learning the in's and outs and will prob have more questions as time roll on.

Do items have options besides quantity or time? Do any other options affect the price? Do all items in a rental always go for the same length of time?

It might be worth the effort or cost to get a mod to blanket adjust the time span and cost of a cartfull of items. I don't know how difficult that would be; a new database table or field might be needed to make that feasible without insane gymnastics to recalculate every item's total price. It might just be possible to tweak the sale or special calculations to increase rather than decrease the price based on an individual rental term.

it is pretty much just a time thing when it comes to rentals. I was just playing with the attributes and it went real smooth actually. i was expecting at least a couple of hiccups but it work just as i needed it to. My only question is with the multi week attribute i just created is there a way to apply that to every item at once or do i need to go item by item and add it in?

Is the cost of the week rental the total of all Products added to the cart?

When on the cost of the Products in the cart always for the same length of time as as all other Products in the cart or does each Product get added with its own rental time so that Product A is 1 week, Product B is 2 weeks, Product C is 1 week etc.

I am just thinking about some options that might work for this, but need to better understand your rentals and charges for Products/Order ...

Unless people do actually rent different items for different lengths of time in one contract, the blanket multiple of order total is far better than expecting customers to correctly select the rental term for each item before adding to cart.

Slightly off topic, I was just thinking about your general order flow. If many/most customers are just shopping for quotes, but some also will use the system to actually rent, you could activate some payment modules to take payment, and some to process the "order" without taking payment using the check/moneyorder or COD modules. You could customize the wording on the COD module to read "Quote only" or whatever, and to make it clear that selecting this option does not obligate them to anything.

gjh42:

Unless people do actually rent different items for different lengths of time in one contract, the blanket multiple of order total is far better than expecting customers to correctly select the rental term for each item before adding to cart.
That is pretty much what i am looking to do. I had set up the drop downs for each item to be able to select multi week rental but that would get annoying for the customer depending on how many different items that they are adding (can go as high as 75+ separate components). The idea of a blanket multiple for the total is exactly what i am looking for.

Now the question: is there one out there or can someone with little experience make it up? If not how would i go about finding a person to create such an action.

In answer to your other statement. We don't want to give them the options to pay for rentals because the equipment might not be available for the rental period that they need it or there might be flaws in what they ordered. The big thing is inventory that why we really don't want them to finalize anything online it could turn into a nightmare very quickly.

Have been reading through this thread with interest

as I see it your scenario is (assuming all items are rented for the same period of time) :

rent item A for 1 week = $x
rent item B for 1 week = $y
rent item C for 1 week = $z

total for all items for 1 week: $t = $x+$y+$z

select number of weeks to rent - say 4

quote = $t * 4

further: rent 6 items of A for 1 week then $x*6

etc etc

is this how you want it to work?

what would be ideal is that they build their order then say on the checkout page (or where ever it can be placed) they get a drop down asking how long the rental will be ( usually 1 to 4 weeks ). They choose the length of time then it is reflected in the total. So if they had a base rental of say $2,000 and needed it for 3 weeks the over all total would multiply by 3 bringing it up to $6000. Instead of them having to select an item and choosing 3 weeks and then moving on to the next item and doing the same, over and over again. Brings up the issue if they miss one or click the wrong time frame it will screw the entire pricing up for the quote.

Not sure if that makes sense. I'm not great on the technical lingo.

The desired flow is quite clear and sensible. Now all we need is someone like Ajeh to find the correct place (perhaps in the order total module?) to insert the duration multiplier, and whatever else will be needed to record this in the order.
It may be best to hire someone for this clearly defined task if it goes beyond what can be worked out in a forum post.

Oh im not beyond hiring someone to do the task. just not totally sure about how to actually find said person that is able to do it.

So is there anyone out there that might be able to help me with this type of modification? It is the last piece that will make this quote builder setup complete.