Multi Currency- Multi Site??? Urghhhh

[Daniel.S]

Hi there
OK, i know this question has been asked before but hopefully someone out there may have a better idea how to do this than the way I currently am.
I have a site that has shops in £, USD and Euros.
here's the rub. Just to download my orders in the morning i need to snapshot and export (twice, one for backup) then import the next site. I need to then repeat the process twice before i need to go back to the UK site to edit any design changes. Here's what i need
1. i need to do away with the multi snapshot thing, one of these days i'm going to stuff up and export something wrong and bam, i'm stuffed.
2. The good thing about the way it's set up is that I'm not constantly changing prices due to the exchange rate fluctuation, i simply enter it as the currency price, so this needs to stay.
3. This is the biggie. It would be fantastic if i didn't need to change the info on all three sites everytime i make a change to a product. It's doing my head in.
here's the site
www.TheGigRig.com
just click on the flags at the top to enter into the different shops.
I have a multi currency merchant account so that side of things is all fine

This is the first time i've posted here, primarily because i can't afford a designer to keep doing this so need to start sorting this stuff out myself but have hit the wall on this one.
Any help makes you a legend!

[leehack]

Sounds like you are using one copy of actinic to run 3 stores, which although a clever way of getting round things, is in fact outside of the license agreement I believe, so you certainly don't want to highlight what you are doing in a public forum.

You need business plus, each site is then selectable from the file menu.

Actinic only works in one currency per site, so multiple currencies on one site is a bit of a pipe dream.

[Daniel.S]

Sounds like you are using one copy of actinic to run 3 stores, which although a clever way of getting round things, is in fact outside of the license agreement I believe, so you certainly don't want to highlight what you are doing in a public forum.

You need business plus, each site is then selectable from the file menu.

Actinic only works in one currency per site, so multiple currencies on one site is a bit of a pipe dream.

Thanks for the reply. This was actualy sorted out for me by Actinic support and i was assured what we were doing was inside the terms of the license. No way i'm clever enough to do this on my own. It's one website, we've just seperated the different currencies out but it all gets uploaded to the same place.
OK, i'll check out business plus, thanks for your help.

[leehack]

Ah, i'm with you fully now Daniel, you are serving up different currency pages but all on the same domain name, which would be within the licensing i believe as its a per domain license.

I don't think Business Plus is your answer, that is the answer for 3 separate domains which is how most people do it.

[Daniel.S]

Ah, i'm with you fully now Daniel, you are serving up different currency pages but all on the same domain name, which would be within the licensing i believe as its a per domain license.

I don't think Business Plus is your answer, that is the answer for 3 separate domains which is how most people do it.

ok, thanks a bunch. maybe i need to do three seperate dpmains then?

[leehack]

That's the only way that I know that people use. Your best solution may be outside of actinic in all honesty, this isn't a strong point for actinic.

[Daniel.S]

That's the only way that I know that people use. Your best solution may be outside of actinic in all honesty, this isn't a strong point for actinic.

Yeah, but i do think its a but strange. I can't be the only person having this problem. I've been using Actinic since 06 and there still seems to be no elegant solution. It would seem simple

1. Allow multi shops within a site, each have their own currency and merchant account info but share product information.

2. See no.1

If anyone has any insight how this might be achieved, even outside of Actinic, I'm all ears.

Lee, you have reached official 'Legend' status. Thanks so much for you input.

[Daniel.S]

I think i've found it!!!

OK, i've just upgraded to business plus to stop the infernal snapshot thing, but then there's this

http://www.codepath.co.uk/actinic-plugin-siteclone.htm

I can create a MASTER site and use this plug-in to update all the info on the shop pages but leaving the pricing alone

result - easy management of three seperate currency shops. No more precarious snapshot import/export ( was averaging around 15 per day)

I'll get to work on it and let you know how it goes

hoorah!

[NicolaUK]

This is something I need to look into also, please let me know how you get on

[Phil H]

Follow on question re currency sites

I use Actinic link to post invoices/orders into Sage quite successfully for GBP orders and payments.

I have a EURO site which I want to bring orders/invoices over in EURO's to Sage, via Actinic Link and have them correctly post against the EURO customer the invoice and the EURO payment in the EURO bank account.

When I run the interface the invoice comes over into Sage in GBP ingnoring the fact it is EUROs. Only when I reselect the same customer (A/C reference in Sage) on the Invoice does it pick up all the euro pricing. Is there something I can do to get it to happen automatically without going into each invoice and reslecting the customer?

Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom or other methods of solving this.

Phil

[Daniel.S]

OK people, i have been working solidly on this and have come up with the best solution i could find.
OK, so the multi site thing is easy, just upgrade to Business Plus and you can create and control all the sites you like without having to snapshot every time you want to change something. But the best thing has been Site Clone at Code Path.

Basically i have 3 sites, a UK, EU and US store which you can see here

www.TheGigRig.com

but they all sell generally the same products. When i need to update waiting times online all i do is put the info into my UK site which is set as my master, then shut down Actinic, hit site clone, and the info is automatically updated on the other 2 sites without affecting the prices or tax codes. Once it has cloned the info just open actinic aging and upload the sites.
I can still add things that don't get uploaded to the other sites like specific invoices for certain customers in Europe for example so the can pay their invoices online in Euros, you just need to set-up site clone to work the way uou want it to work. There are a few little things to get used to but Andy was a complete legend at helping me get this sorted.

i am saving at least 2 hours everyday with this new set-up, it wasn't free but between business plus and site clone its pretty much sorted.

thanks everyone for you hep on this. i will update in a few weeks but so far everything is fab. Here's the link to siteclone if you want to take a look

http://www.codepath.co.uk/actinic-plugin-siteclone.htm

[Sean Williams]

Hi Daniel
this sounds like a very interesting solution.
Do you know - if we wanted three sites in three different languages, one in Sterling and two in Euro - would the solution you have found do this?
We already have Business Plus.
Thanks

[Daniel.S]

The language thing would be an issue, but it would certainly sort out the two that are in the same language.
What exactly do you need to sort out?

[jodg]

We currently run Actinic Catalog but have a reqiurement for new multi-currency sites.

Would we need to upgrade to Business+ to be able to do this? Or would using SiteClone be enough?