The Online Shop Designer Blog » prestashop

Prestashop: setting up GST for Australia

tosd — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:56:09 +0000

This is a two step process:

Create a zone called ‘Australia’
Create a tax code called ‘GST’ and assign it to the zone ‘Australia’

Creating a tax zone

In admin select Shipping/Zones and then click ‘Add new’
Assign the name ‘Australia’ and save
Tip: while you are there remove any zones that are not applicable

Creating a tax code

In admin select Payment / Taxes and then click ‘Add New’
Enter the name ‘GST’ and ’10′ for the rate
Tip: as above, while you are there remove any taxes that are not applicable

You should now be set up to assign GST to products when you create them.

See also:

Prestashop Quick Start Guide

The importance of good meta page descriptions

tosd — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:18:03 +0000

Whether you have a modern CMS such as CMS Made Simple, or and online shop based on Prestashop or Viart, the facility exists for administrators to insert meta information to describe the page to search engines. Here are some good references I have come across to help with this task:

And this is a nice article on writing page titles just to round off the subject. While titles are arguably not as imortant as descriptions they are still relevant:

SEO page title tips

And what about meta keywords?

Well, the truth is that they are no longer very relevant at all. Still, if you would like to use them ensure that you use no more than about 5-6 words. Long lists of keywords are more likely to have your site flagged for spamming.

Prestashop Offline Order Processing

tosd — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:33:19 +0000

‘Offline’ order processing refers to orders where the customer submits there credit card details as part of the checkout process for secure, encrypted storage in the database. The site administrator then (in the Australian context) retrieves the numbers and processes the transaction via an EFTPos terminal or online gateway. In this way processing offline orders in Prestashop is quite straight forward.

Here is the sequence after accessing your shop’s admin:

Click the [Orders] tab
Click on a line that displays the order of interest -the detail of the order is now displayed. The most recent orders will be listed at the top, and those requiring processing will be flagged “Awaiting Credit Card Validation” in the Status column.
Click the [Click here to reveal the information] button under the Credit Card Information box to see the credit card details
IMPORTANT: For additional security click the [Remove Credit Card Data] button after you have processed the order.
Change the status (top left) during processing to reflect the stage that the order is at. The customer will see the status when they log on to their account.
At the bottom of the screen there is a New Messages box. This can be used to add a comment to the order or send a message to the customer.

See also:

Did you find this article useful? Feel free to leave a comment.

Setting stock levels in Prestashop when using attributes

tosd — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:10:57 +0000

At first sight setting stock levels for a product would appear to be simple. Just open the product’s Info tab and set the ‘Quantity’ field to the correct value. And if you do not have any attributes assigned to that product, that is all you have to do.

If attributes are in use for the product (you can see this by checking the table at the bottom of the ‘Combinations’ tab) then Prestashop will not allow quantities to be set at the product level. Rather, they must be set by entering a quantity for each individual attribute group option.

This makes sense when you think it through. For example, a product may be available in red and orange. If Prestashop has been instructed to track stock levels then it needs to know how many of each colour are available so that it can present the customer with the correct availability information.

In short, to set quantities for products with attributes (options), each individual option must have its quantity entered in the ‘Combinations’ tab screen. Here is how you do it:

Scroll to the bottom where there is a table listing all assigned attribute options
Click the edit icon on the right hand side of the row associated with option you want to set the quantity for
Enter the quantity in the ‘Quantity’ field above the table
Repeat for each option as appropriate

Prestashop stock inventory setup

tosd — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:56:08 +0000

The first thing to decide when setting up stock management is whether you actually want Prestashop to ‘manage’ your stock levels at all. It is possible to completely disable this function. If you do want it to manage your stock levels however you must have ‘real’ stock numbers assigned to each product.

The switches associated with stock management can be found under admin/preferences/products.

If you do not want Prestashop to manage your inventory simply set Enable Stock Management to ‘no’. The result will be that Prestashop will not check stock numbers in order to decide whether a product can be ordered or not.
If you want Prestashop to have a measure of control over an item’s availability for purchase the following options on the same page apply:

Allow ordering out of stock products – only set to ‘yes’ if you get regular top up orders. In other words if the potential delay to the customer will be minimal. Setting this to ‘yes’ when considerable re-ordering delays could be reasonably expected will only cost you sales.
Display quantity on product page – optional
Display pre-tax price on product page – within Australia this should be set to ‘no’ when dealing with a retail customer base. If your market is the wholesale trade then you could set it to ‘yes’
Display unavailable product attributes on product page – in general it is probably best to set this to ‘no’ as a customer will then be more likely to choose from the available options rather than wait on something that is not in stock.
Display last quantities when quantity is lower than – setting this to 1 or 2 can be a good way to encourage immediate purchases. I wouldn’t use this option if you only have 1 of virtually everything in the shop though . . . that’s not a good look.
Number of days in which the product is considered new – the result is used to select items that display in the new items module. The actual number will vary widely for different product ranges. For example new CDs may be released every week, but new BMWs only once a year. Adjust to suit your product range.