Sales Reports

Newbie question here....I am trying to decide on which cart to develope in and one key factor is the backend reporting features/functionality. How does Zen Cart stack up with these features? Is there a 3 rd party module that will expand its functionality?
Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

What type of reporting features are you specifically looking for? Sales, Visitor Tracking, Products, etc...?

That would help us determine what functionality you are looking for as far as reporting goes.

Typical sales reports that can be sorted by various details like products purchased, region(State), amounts. I want to be able to track Brand A in a specific region...etc Compare brand trends....

Tracking in various "regions" is not available to my knowledge in any current "sales report" offered by Zen (or third party).

The "Sales report" plugin adds some functionality to the current reporting features of zen, but there is nothing for "regional" breakdown that I know of.

Here is the "Sales Report" third party module you can look into this to see if provides at least some of the data you are looking for. For any other reporting features, you would need custom coding. But it can be done :)

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_41&products_id=83

Another question...In the admin area, once an order is received, does it show the entire Credit Card number for human processing or refunds if needed?
If not, do you know of a system that does this?

eradio:

Another question...In the admin area, once an order is received, does it show the entire Credit Card number for human processing or refunds if needed?
If not, do you know of a system that does this?

You can set (from within the Admin) to save the credit card information to your database (viewable from within the Admin) or not.

So, if you want to be able to see the info for human processing, then you would want to save the information to your db. Yes, it does.

thanks so much for the quick response..let me pick your brain for a few more questions and I will not bother you anymore..

In regards to viewing the credit cards in DB..where do I enable that? I didnt see it in the admin area..

Seperate question.
When an order is placed, does it sit in the admin area as "pending" until it an admin processes it? And Can the orders be edited before processing..lets say one ore more items is not available and needs to removed from the order?

One more..Is there a 3rd party module to increase sales reports and tracking data?

Thanks in advance..

eradio:

In regards to viewing the credit cards in DB..where do I enable that? I didnt see it in the admin area..

Admin > Modules > Payment

Select the payment method of your choice and click "Edit". Typically on the screen that follows, you are given the opportunity to save CC information to the database.

eradio:

When an order is placed, does it sit in the admin area as "pending" until it an admin processes it?

You can set to to just about anything you want (from within the Admin). THe default is all orders are "pending" until they are either processed manually by the Admin (and then set to something other than Pending) OR, until the automatic payment notification is received from the payment gateway you choose (if using real time cc processing).

eradio:

And Can the orders be edited before processing..lets say one ore more items is not available and needs to removed from the order?
Yes. Orders can be edited, however, keep in mind that if you are using real time cc processing, you will want to make sure users can NOT order products that are out of stock. Otherwise, you'll end up not only processing a lot of returns, but making your customers and merchant processor very unhappy.

eradio:

One more..Is there a 3rd party module to increase sales reports and tracking data?

There are a number of add-ons available for all kinds of tracking etc.. in the downloads section of Zen Cart. They are scattered, but you will probably find most within the "Admin" category.

Hi Guys,

I have a question about Sales Report. My company uses the latest version Zen Cart, but it's a highly modified version. I need sales reporting capability and the company that does my web development & programming are willing to use Sales Report 2.0, but tell me they will have to spend time modifying it in order for it to work with my cart.

They also can create their own custom sales report for Zen Cart for me, but before they can give me an estimate for either way ... they asked if they could see some samples of Sales Report's data pages so they can see what data is provided and how the report is laid out. If OK for us, they can modify it, rather than custom writing something for me, which would save me money.

Can anyone either email, or point me to, some sample report pages so we can check it out?

Regards,
Brian
........................................
Brian Marine
PlayTime Ventures
p: +1-845-454-6258
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salesreport 2.0 drops right into zen 1.3.x with NO core files touched, there is no reason for them to have to change anything