Price structures and discounting

[mash]

I am new to the forum and Actinic software, I have come cross a major pricing problem which I can not see round. Love some help.

I saw Jan's Buy two get one free/quantity discounting which should solve half the problem.

However, I am selling products which relate to the growing season, I have 5 delivery windows (April, May, June, July, August) which have become my sections. Within each section there are various products available (some products can be available in more than one delivery window however usually a different name). What I want to encourage my customers to do is to buy more than 1 product at each delivery window hence Jan's discounting but I want to distinguish between delivery windows.

For example buy 3 packs in April will receive a discount (3 packs in one delivery window), however buying 1 pack from April, May, and June will not have a discount as it equates to 1 pack for each delivery window.

The product packs at the moment are all the same price, pricing structure £14 for 1, £25 for 2, £36 for 3. This may change. Pack price currently includes P&P.

Is this possible, any help I would be truly grateful, regards Mash
:confused:

[Jan]

If you create a hidden product for each growing season and then link the plants in each season to the appropriate hidden product price rather than linking them all to the same one then it should work nicely.

Regards,

[mash]

I see what you mean, however, would that enable a customer to gain a discount if they order 2 packs of plants in the May delivery window plus 1 pack in June. The price to the customer would be then £25 + £14 therefore total cost of £39.

If that is the case it would make my day.

Thanks Mash :)

[Jan]

It should do - the quantity price breaks only come into play if enough of the correct product are ordered so it should work exactly like that. Try it and tell us if it works:)

Regards,

[mash]

Excellent. Intend to work on this on Thursday / Friday so hopefully will be able to post answer then.

Thank you so much. Mash:cool:

[mash]

I am stuggling with this at the moment hence no more information, is there away of seeing if it works without up loading to the site. I currently coming up against the "The link you selected would normally run a CGI script." warning therefore unable to check if it is works.

[Jan]

The only way that I know of to do this is to publish to a local web server but I find them quite difficult to set up - it's all in the advanced user guide though.

[Jan]

I've tried it out here, and it worked. This is what I did.

I created a 2 hidden products :

Spring Price with prices of 35 for 1 and 20 for 2 or more
Summer Price with prices of 35 for 1 and 20 for 2 or more

I created 2 products:
Sprint Plant, with a component of Spring plant associated to the Spring Price product
Summer Plant, with a component of Summar plant associated to the Summer Price product

I uploaded to my local web server and added 1 spring plant and 1 summer plant to my cart.

I then click on view basket, the price was £35.

I added another spring plant into my basket and clicked on view basket and the price was £20 for each of the spring plants and £35 for the summer plant.

I then added another summer plant into my basket and the price (on view basket) went to £20 for all of them.

Things to watch our for :

1) When you create a new product you do not seem to be able to add in the price break data unless you close the product and open it again.
2) Make sure that you set the price details to 'Sum of components' for the linked products (the Spring and Summer plants in my case), it's on the component tab in advanced.
3) The price when you add to the basket is only correct if you have already exceeded the price break quantity (ie. it will show the wrong price when you add the second but the correct price when you add the third). This is not a bug apparently, it is 'working as designed'. The view basket price is always correct.


Hope this helps,

Jan

[mash]

Jan indeed you are right, I uploaded my site to a test location and it works, fantastic news I was over the moon. so thank you for your guidance.

Wish list, to be able to cope with different product at different prices, it would be useful to offer this discounting price schedule as percentages. So if you by 1 pack full price, second 5 % off each pack price (which may be different), third or more 10 %. instead of setting actual prices.

That is a wish, as it is very happy with the outcome except the script error in the new thread! Once again thank you. Mash

[Jan]

I'll second that wish list request, I wanted to set a percentage discount rather than use actual prices as well.

Glad it worked Mash.

Regards,

[mash]

Certainly a logical step.

[cdicken]

Thanks - these have been added to the wishlist.

[mash]

I have noticed that using this method for achieving a discounted price relating to quantity that in the 'Shopping Basket' screens for each product the components are shown.

For example: If you bought an April Allium Selection pack the shopping basket will show two lines the Product name (April Allium Selection) and the component name (Pack Price) with the relevant quantity allocated against them and a single price.

I know on the component form there is a check box to show the 'Component As Separate Order Line', this is not check however it is still shown on the 'Shopping Basket'.

What I would like to see is just the product name, quantity and correct price made up from it components.

Is this possible.

Regards Mash

[cdicken]

I'm afraid the component details will always appear underneath the main product details in the shopping cart. There is not any way at the moment to turn them off.

[mash]

Can you set the font colour for this text to the background colour so when view the discription is invisible!

Mash

[cdicken]

Not really as the same code is used for the product lines as is used for the component lines.

I will ask the development team if they can suggest anything.

[mash]

Thank you.

[cdicken]

There is a fix for this that involves editing the Perl within the file called 'ActinicOrder.pm' within your Site1 folder.

Open this file in Notepad and search for the phrase:

'Check components in this order line'

You should come across the following code:

#
# Check components in this order line
#
foreach $pComponent (@aComponentsIncluded)
{
$ProdTable .= ProductLineHTML($pComponent->{'REFERENCE'},
$pComponent->{'NAME'} . $pComponent->{'DDLINK'},
$pComponent->{'QUANTITY'},
$sProductLineHTML);
}

Change this to read:

#
# Check components in this order line
#
foreach $pComponent (@aComponentsIncluded)
{
$ProdTable .= ProductLineHTML($pComponent->{'REFERENCE'},
$pComponent->{'NAME'} . $pComponent->{'DDLINK'},
$pComponent->{' '},
$sProductLineHTML); # QUANTITY
}

Note that this forum strips out all the tabs at the beginning of these lines so the actual appearence might look different in the actual file. Actinic is not able to provide any detailed support for script changes made. If you find that there is a problem, an original copy of the script can be found within the 'Original' folder in your installation. Copy this into your site folder.

[mash]

Tried and tested and it works great, thanks for that Chris.

If I remove 'NAME' and replaced it with ' ' from the stament below

$pComponent->{'NAME'} . $pComponent->{'DDLINK'},

I assume that it would remove the component name? Just out of interest as at the moment it is not required.

Anyway thanks for your help.

Kind regards Mash

[cdicken]

Sounds about right. You can always put it back if it doesn't look right.

[mash]

Solve one problem, just moves some whereelse!

The email generated for the customer has the quantity against the hidden product.

Email Example:


Shopping Cart (Prices in British Pounds)
DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Oriental Selection 1 £14.00 £14.00
Pack Price 1
======================================================================
Subtotal: £14.00
Total: £14.00

Is it possible to edit this so either second quantity is not shown, or the second quantity and the compent description (Pack Price) is not shown?

Any suggestions are appreciated, thank you Mash

[cdicken]

I've been looking at the Perl on this one, but it all looks really odd. The cart display in the email seems to be work differently than online, so I have not been able to make any headway on trying to adjust it.

Sorry about that.

[mash]

No worries, at some point I will tidy it up.

Regards, Mash