Multiple stores for overseas, single database?

[paulbeckett]

Hi all

I have been reading through the "multiple stores, single database" threads and it looks like I can do this but just wanted to get some opinions on a more specific idea.

I currently have a .co.uk site which I intend to duplicate for the US (.com), Canada (.ca) and New Zealand (.co.nz).

My idea:

I would like the .co.uk site to drive product management and some sort of export would take place to a database that then imports into the .com, .co.nz, and .ca sites. Therefore the overseas product range is identical in everyway (including having all custom properties in the product details of the .co.uk range) except: Price.

Price. I would need to increase the price for overseas sites so that product price is higher than in the UK (to cover increased postage costs which I include in my price). I think this additional increase is the thing that complicates my idea but I very much want postage included in price (not added at the end of shopping) to give customers hassle free shopping.

Furthermore the price would then need to be converted to local currency for each of the sites.

Likewise the stock management from each site would be required to be exported into the main database so that stock on all sites is up to date.

Is it possible to do this? Any opinions would be appreciated!

To recap:

• Using Actinic V7 - Developer.
• 1 site's product range being copied into other sites. All properties (including custom properties) are also copied across.
• Other sites would need a different product price from main site (most likely a standard £4 increase on every product price).
• Each site would need to be converted to the relevant currency and exchange rate (real time exchange conversion not required).
• Stock monitoring and control would need to be linked across sites.

Also, can anyone recommend a company to approach who could assist setting this up should it be complicated?

Thanks

Paul

[Bruce]

For a starter you could use the Product table within ActinicCatalog.mdb as this table contains all the product information, prices etc and import it into the databases for the other sites. As for the price change for each country catalog, perhaps you could export the price column to an excel spreadsheet and run a macro to increment or decrement it to the price that needs displaying and put it back. Prices by default are displayed as 851 for £8.51 and so on in the database. This will require some manual work.. If it is all to be automated then I guess you will have to use an external database to maintain the data and do the imports from there.

Can anyone else post here if you have an idea or experience of doing this sort of a thing please.

Kind regards,

[paulbeckett]

Bruce

Thanks very much!

Can I re-import the Product table within ActinicCatalog.mdb into another site relatively easily?

Can anyone confirm the best place to get a general awareness of how to do imports and exports. I'm struggling to find a source that I readily understand!

I think it would be best to try and do automation using an external database so if anyone has any ideas I would appreciate it.

Paul

[wjcampbe]

Paul,

Copy ActinicCatalog.mdb to your My Documents folder and then right click the copy and rename it to othersite.mdb

Now open othersite.mdb in Access, and click File | Get External Data | Import and follow the on screen instructions, select your Site1 ActinicCatalog.mdb and then select the Product table - easy enough?

Now, because you already have a table with that name in the othersite database, Access will have created a table called Product1. You need to delete the original Product table and rename the new one to remove the 1 from the end.

[paulbeckett]

Thats great! I will give this a whirl. I had assumed this would be a long and complicated process (I'm always over complicating things ;-)

I will have a play and will no doubt have more discussion points as my work progresses!

If anyone has any opinons regarding my general idea (e.g. creating direct copies of product lists for other sites) I would apprecaite your opinions. For instance, is this managable when you have 7 or 8 sites???

Paul

[dickunderwood]

One Shop - Two sites

Paul,

It's a while since your last post.

I've got a site at www.cheapdvdsnow.co.uk on which I sell items with free postage. Because of that, I limit customers to within the UK.

I also have other sites. I'd like to put my shop on one of my other sites to sell items within Europe.

Were you able to put the same shop on two sites, and then change the prices on the second site? If so, how did you do it (and was it easy!).

I'd appreciate any info you could provide.

Thanks

Dick

[Highlander]

Mutliple Sites

I am developing a similar system.

I plan about 12 sites. Many will have overlapping products.

1. First back everything up
2. Create a blank mdb file called Products.mdb in the top level sites folder.
3. Open Products.mdb and import the Products.MDB and the ProductProperties mdb from the live Actinic db.
4. Create a new table called tblCurrencyConvertor with two fields - the Currency as a text and ExRate as a double. The first record may be US Dollars so this goes in the Currency Text Field and the conversion rate eg 1.78. The second record may be Euros etc
5. Create a query for each currency. called eg qryProductUSD1 and qryProductEur1. This query will use two tables - Product and tblCurrencyConvertor . Select all fields from Product and ExRate. For the dollar query you will filter tblCurrencyConvertor for Currency = US Dollars. Then you need to multiply all Price fields by the ExRate and add USD to the field name eg PriceUSD:[Price]*[ExRate]. remove the Sterling fields such as Price from the query output
6. Now create a second query for each currency called qryProductUSD etc. This query will will use all field from qryProductUSD1. But you will now change the field names back to those that Actinic Expects. eg Price:[PriceUSD]. You now have a query that holds all the data in dollars. You can use this to build a new Product Table called ProductUSD
7. Now go to your US dollar site. Rename the Product table to zProduct. You can now link to the ProductUSD table and then rename it to Product.
8. You will need to do a similar thing to the shipping tables.
9. This will give you stange prices - eg $450.03 and you may want to create a more sophisticated price conversion formula - to round to nearest 50 cents.

[dickunderwood]

Thanks for prompt comprehensive response. I'll try this.

Dick
www.cheapdvdsnow.co.uk