Various Questions

[EaglesNest]

Hi All,

First off let me apologize if any of these questions have already been answered.

1) Is there a link to Best Software's PeachTree accounting system available, I see that there is a link for QwerkyBooks , however I have did not see any reference to PeachTree accounting.

2) I have a group of customers that I would like to be able to give their own pricing. I have three different pricing levels for Retail, Trade, and Dealer. These pricing levels are not $ off, or any of the listed discounted pricing they are cost related and each has their own pricing structure. In PeachTree for an example I have the customers listed to receive either retail, price 2, or price 3 depending on their customer number. Is there a way for me to do this same thing with Actinic?

3) I am currently using one of the templates that came with Actinic and the headers are using the actsmallheading class from actinc.css, this class for some strange reason uses the NETQUOTEVAR:PALBGCSS I have no earthly idea why you would want to use the background color to represent the text in a heading, especially if the background is not a light color, and the header background is a darker color. Anyway, I would like to make a change to the actinc.css class and make it NETQUOTEVAR:FGCOLORCSS which I could then control by using the design : colors dialog. I have manually made this change and it works fine, however I would like to make sure that if I make any design changes in the future that this will not be overwritten by the system. So, after that lengthly description (sorry), my question is what part of the system creates the actinic.css and will it be overwritten without query to the operator?

Thanks
Eagle

[EaglesNest]

Hi all,
I have yet another question. In the documentation for the shipping bands it says the following:

The first thing you need to do is to decide what aspect of the order will be used to base the shipping charge on. In the 'Calculation Basis' area, there are three choices:

· Total quantity: Shipping will be calculating based on how many items the customer has ordered.

· Total value: Shipping will be calculated based on the total cost of the order. This will allow you to set up shipping as the percentage of the order value.

How does it know what percentage of the total value I want? I don't understand how to add the percentages, it only askes for dollar amounts?

Thanks
Eagle

[cdicken]

Is there a link to Best Software's PeachTree accounting system available,

Unfortunately not. We only have a link to QuickBooks in the US.

I have a group of customers that I would like to be able to give their own pricing. I have three different pricing levels for Retail, Trade, and Dealer. These pricing levels are not $ off, or any of the listed discounted pricing they are cost related and each has their own pricing structure. In PeachTree for an example I have the customers listed to receive either retail, price 2, or price 3 depending on their customer number. Is there a way for me to do this same thing with Actinic?

Actinic can do this.

First: You need to get your customer information into Actinic. In the 'Help | Help Topics' there is section on 'Importing' and 'Hierarchical Importing' which is how customers are imported.

Second: Create two customer groups - Trade and Dealer - in 'View | Customer Groups'. Assign your different customers to the different customer groups.

Third: Go into the 'Prices' tab of each pdoduct, untick 'Generated' for each row in the grid and enter how much each product costs to each customer group.

what part of the system creates the actinic.css and will it be overwritten without query to the operator?

The actinic.css is not generated by the system. It is a standard CSS file in the 'Site1' folder and contains variables which are replaced by the colours in 'Design | Colors'

How does it know what percentage of the total value I want? I don't understand how to add the percentages, it only askes for dollar amounts?

As an exampe:

Value: $0.10
Cost: $0.01
and then set 'Excess' to charge an extra $0.01 per $0.10

This would give you 10% shipping.

[EaglesNest]

Value: $0.10
Cost: $0.01
and then set 'Excess' to charge an extra $0.01 per $0.10

This would give you 10% shipping.

Ok, now I understand how you are deriving a percentage from total value. Now the next question is, how do I set up the different zones in the US for shipping? For instance for my zip code 15237, my shipping zone is 2, for Reading Pennsylvania 19604, the shipping zone is 3, I am familiar with setting up the zones in v7, however I can not see how to set up "Shipping Zones"

First: You need to get your customer information into Actinic. In the 'Help | Help Topics' there is section on 'Importing' and 'Hierarchical Importing' which is how customers are imported.

Second: Create two customer groups - Trade and Dealer - in 'View | Customer Groups'. Assign your different customers to the different customer groups.

Third: Go into the 'Prices' tab of each pdoduct, untick 'Generated' for each row in the grid and enter how much each product costs to each customer group.

Thank you for this solution however, this would only be possible with the "Business" version of Actinic, correct? If so, then is there a possible way of doing this with just "Catalog"? I thought perhaps I could use the coupon feature of Actinic but like I stated the pricing is not a straight discount off the retail, hmmm, however since it is my business I could make it that way, hmmm food for thought....


Thanks
Eagle

[cdicken]

It's not really possible to set up zones by zip code. You can do it by state by right-clicking in the white rectangle in 'Business Settings | Shipping and Handling' and selecting 'New Zone'. Call it 'Zone 2' (or whatever) and then select some states from within the 'United States' in the right-hand list.

If you want to do it by zip then you might consider our plug-in to UPS Online Tools for shipping calculation - which also requires Actinic Business (just like the customer account functionality does).

[EaglesNest]

Thanks Chris I appreciate the responses. I think for now I am going to stick with Catalog and just use the coupon routine for my trade accounts, and dealers. As far as the shipping goes I am going to charge a flat fee of $6.50 for purchases $25.00 and below then increment 15 cents on each dollar spent above $25.00. Wish List -> Add USPS Zones to the shipping bands as well as enable me to charge a flat fee for orders under a certain amount and a percentage of total order value above that amount.

IE: $25.00 ---> $6.50
25.01 - 499.99 --> 25% of total order value
500.00 and up --> 15% of total order value

I was attempting to mimic my supplier's shipping cost so that I was covered expense wise but it doesn't look like I am going to be able to do that.

Thanks
Eagle