Linking EPOS to ecommerce

[Jo@apartyshop]

We currently have an established ecommerce site running Actinic Business Plus v9.0.5 JHZA and Actinic EPOS Network 3.10

I'm looking to link them together but concerned about the pros and cons in doing this with two established databases. My main concern is differing product codes for the same product.

Anyone any experience/advice in doing this?

[Jo@apartyshop]

Is there anyone from Actinic that has an answer this?

Or perhaps there's a community member that has both Actinic Ecommerce & EPOS intergrated?

Any advice much appreciated.

[ton]

I use business, epos and link them. Im not quite sure what you want to know, you must have the same code in both programmes for the product and also the same barcode for stock control. No way around it that I know of, a big job, i had to do it mayself before we linked the two, but aside from being able to use epos link its also handy to have both systems using the same codes and therefor talking the same.

Regarding epos link, i was a little disappointed to be honest. I thought they would swap much more information than they actually do.

[Jo@apartyshop]

Yes, it was mainly the integration with product refs & barcodes that concerned us and the potential impact on Epos or Business.

Thanks for the input. Basically with 8000+ products the EPOS link is something we are going to find extremely difficult to do as online has been running for 5+ years before the EPOS was installed

[oldhasbeen]

Are the reasons for setting up the 2 systems with different product codes/barcodes set in stone? Without changing codes on one or t'other you might come unstuck - it kinda makes the whole link process a bit of a moot point if the 2 systems can't talk to each other effectively.

We were ecommerce for 8 years before installing EPOS and at the time we had approx 12k SKUs (all of which had to be barcoded), so whichever way you do it, there's gonna be some huffin' and puffin' involved. I would say without hesitation that having the link running makes the whole caboodle much easier to run, keeping tabs on stock movements, sales (and whether they're ecommerce sales or B&M), stock control, stock management etc (plus we also use Actinic's real time stock control).

We no longer have the B&M shop, but we've kept EPOS as it's so useful - wouldn't be without it now, so despite the initial pain it's been well worth it for us. Just my tuppence worth

Cheers - Helen

[ton]

Not fun! but I do think it will be worth it in the end.

Note however (and I may not be correct with this statement but perhaps someone can confirm) when you change a product code in EPOS you loose all the historical data.