General Settings

This section contains general In-commerce settings, which are not related to specific products.

• ‘Select Module Root Category’ - allows the administrator to specify the module root category of In-commerce. Clicking on the folder shortcut button will pop up a category picker. The module root category is used in several ways. For example, on the front-end of the default theme, the top menu links each module to its module root category. Therefore, the ‘Store’ menu item will open this category and its contents. In the Administrative Console, this setting provides a faster way to navigate in the module, as it presets the category for module-specific actions.
• ‘Require login before checkout’ – forces the customers to log in before they can purchase anything (complete the checkout). When this option is checked, a guest who has not logged in will be asked to do so as soon as they click on ‘Checkout’. This option is useful if you want to be able to better track purchases by the same customer – all of the orders will be associated with their user name. When using this option, it is strongly recommended to enable instant registrations. Otherwise, a guest who wants to purchase something from your site will be asked to register during the checkout, but the registration will not actually complete until the administrator approves it. Therefore, if the customer gets tired waiting for the approval and closes his or her browser, the order with the shopping cart contents will not be saved, causing even more frustration.
• ‘Allow ordering of products with different types’ – allows users to purchase tangible, service or subscription products at the same time. It is generally not advisable, because of various shipping calculations, which only apply to tangible products and not to service or subscription products, may confuse the customer.
• ‘Enable Backordering’ – this option enables the backordering functionality in the system. Backordering allows customers to place orders for items, which are actually not in stock. Effectively, the customers are paying for the products at the time of the order to reserve them when they become available. The system will automatically generate shipping requests (set the order status to ‘To Ship’) for the backordered products when they become available. If this option is off, the customers will not be able to place unavailable items in the shopping cart. For more information about backorders, controlling the individual items and processing of the backorders please see manual.
• ‘Process backorders automatically’ – when this option is enabled, the system will automatically use the entire incoming inventory to fulfill the backorders. For example, let us say one of your products was out of stock, and you have received at least one backorder for this item. With this option on, as soon as you add any quantity of the item to stock, it will be immediately allocated towards the backorders, which will then become ‘To Ship’ orders. If the option is off, when you receive more inventory of the product, you will need to go and manually process backorders. Although it is as simple as one click of a mouse, it is generally recommended to leave this option on – to avoid administrator mistakes. After all, the customers who placed the backorders have reserved the items, and they are counting on receiving them before anyone else.
• ‘Next Order Number’ – specifies the number of the next order. This option is useful for new stores, when you need to start your order numbers at something higher than zero. For established stores, it might come in handy when you need to re-sequence the orders numbers, for instance skip a range of numbers allocated for the orders outside the system.
• ‘Order main number digits’ – this option controls the format of the order number, specifically the number of digits it takes. It is set to 6 by default, the number is usually high enough to make all orders have the same number of digits for better visual sorting. It does not affect any system processes.
• ‘Order sub number digits’ – this option controls the format of the sub order number, specifically the number of digits it takes. In In-commerce, the orders can be split into sub-orders, when they are shipped separately. In this case, each sub-order will have the same main order number and a unique sub-order number after a dash. This option is primarily used for better visual sorting, and does not affect any system processes.
• ‘Allow ordering in non-primary currencies’ – this option is used to enable your online store to accept more than one currency. Note, that even with this option off, you may display the prices in other currencies on your storefront, however during checkout they will be converted to your primary currency. With this option on, however, the checkout will be performed with the currency that the user has selected. Please also note that in order for this to work, your payment types must support other currencies. For more on payment types, see manual.
• ‘Choose the exchange rate source’ – this dropdown allows you to choose from all available sources to download the exchange rate information. With new releases of In-commerce, we are going to add more banks, which provide free information about exchange rates. If your favorite bank is not listed, but you know that it provides the exchange rates online, please contact our support department to request it being added. The source that you choose here will be used when you update the exchange rates of your currencies (see section on how to do that). Please note that these sources may not be available all the time; they are not under our control, nor do all of them guarantee the availability of the data. In the event your chosen source does not work, please select another one, or contact our support department.
• ‘Default coupon duration (days)’ – this setting controls the default duration of new coupons. Whenever you create a new coupon, or clone one to create a series of coupons, the expiration date will be preset to the current date plus the duration set here. For more information about coupons please see manual.