Using Zencart w/ retail store

Hi,

I've created an online store for a guy (with help in here) who runs a successful retail store in a local shopping center. He is going to be listing a lot of his retail store merchandise online.

He wanted to know if he had 10 identical items listed online and he sold 2 or 3 out of his shop if he'd have to manually edit the quantity through zencart everytime that happened or if there was some way to have this done automatically.

This is a very vague question as I don't know really anything about what he uses for the retail store but I'm meeting him for the first time in about 2 hours and would like to be able to tell him 'something'.

Thanks

How can it be done autmatically when the physical store isn't "linked" to the virtual store?

I'd suggest
admin profiles and add customers from admin. Admin profiles allows you to limit the user's access to the admin. Add customers from admin will allow the user to add a customer's information and order to the virtual store (Zen Cart).

afo:

How can it be done autmatically when the physical store isn't "linked" to the virtual store?
Thanks for answering. Is there a way to do this? Again, I know it's a wide open question but because he's not too computer savvy and he's the one to ultimately run the online store I can see big screw ups in his future. He does a brisk business from what I understand so it wouldn't take long for his online inventory and actually inventory not to jive.

afo:

I'd suggest
admin profiles and add customers from admin. Admin profiles allows you to limit the user's access to the admin. Add customers from admin will allow the user to add a customer's information and order to the virtual store (Zen Cart).
I don't follow you about the above. Could you elaborate?

Thanks

There's no way to autmatically update the ZC inventory when something is sold in the physical store. How would the website know something's been sold unless someone tells it?

I suggested the admin profiles and adding customers from admin to facilitate allowing a less than savvy user to record sales from the physical store and therefore reduce the Zen Cart inventory.

I use admin profiles on the Holzheimer site in my sig. I'm the webmaster and have access to the entire admin. The site owner has limited access to the admin.

I haven't used "adding customers", but it could be a way to record the physical sale and therefore reduce the inventory.

You might also need the master password add-on to actually "make" the sale online.

afo:

There's no way to autmatically update the ZC inventory when something is sold in the physical store. How would the website know something's been sold unless someone tells it?

I suggested the admin profiles and adding customers from admin to facilitate allowing a less than savvy user to record sales from the physical store and therefore reduce the Zen Cart inventory.

I use admin profiles on the Holzheimer site in my sig. I'm the webmaster and have access to the entire admin. The site owner has limited access to the admin.

I haven't used "adding customers", but it could be a way to record the physical sale and therefore reduce the inventory.

You might also need the master password add-on to actually "make" the sale online.

After reading up a little more I think you may be on to something. I'm going to install those on my test server tonight. I want to make it as simple as possible for him. I'm meeting him in just a little while...ugh.

Thank you for the input.

I built a small mod to facilite loggin in as the customer from the admin side see this thread

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=475224#post475224