VAT and Discounts

[itsdanny]

Two hopefuly easy to answer ones on VAT an discounts.
firstly when do the customers see the discount prices? Do they need to be logged in for this. Also when is the VAT calculated on the product discounted, is it before the discount is applied or after? will this depend on the type of discount being applied? or am i worrying over nothing?
thanks
Dan

[cdicken]

firstly when do the customers see the discount prices? Do they need to be logged in for this.

Are you talking about the discounts in 'View | Discounts...'? These apply to non logged-in customers as well as logged-in ones.

The discounts appear within the shopping cart just under the sub-total.

Also when is the VAT calculated on the product discounted, is it before the discount is applied or after? will this depend on the type of discount being applied?

Well, at the moment we only have one type of discount - calculated on the whole order total. The discount is on the ex-VAT amount, and then tax is calculated on top of the discounted amount.

[kat]

Hi,

I'm wondering if I am missing something really obvious but I can't see the option View | Discounts in my copy of Actinic Developer V6.

I want to apply 10% off everything in January as a general discount for all customers.

Can I do this at the checkout stage?
thanks

Kat

[Ben]

Hi Kat

I'm wondering if I am missing something really obvious but I can't see the option View | Discounts in my copy of Actinic Developer V6.

I think that you're currently using v6.0.2 so you will need to upgrade to the latest maintenance release for the discount feature (available here).

The discounts are based on 'triggers' e.g. the cart value is over a certain amount, but I think you should be able to set a 10% discount on the cart total against a £0 cart value trigger. The discount is displayed whenever the shopping cart is viewed.

Ben

[kat]

so if I upgrade our developer copy will I need to update my clients copy of actinic catalog to match?

I had version problems at first when I had CNNA for the client and DV (or something - can't remember) version for us.

[Ben]

If you share the operations of the store with your client, e.g. your machine is used for uploading the site whilst theirs is used for downloading and processing orders then definately yes, the copies of Actinic need to be the exact same version. If not, it's still a good idea to keep the versions the same because you may wish to send them a snapshot from time to time.

[kat]

Thanks for your advice but would the upgrade have any implications for the customised templates? I remember when I tried to import a site snapshot onto the client machine with the wrong version 6 catalog there was some kind of upgrader/file comparison process and the templates went a bit mad!!

As you can see, our store is heavily customised.
http://www.davidmellordesign.com

[cdicken]

If you just upgrade both your and the client's version from 6.0.2 to 6.1.3 then there should not be too many problems as there were very few changes made to the templates between those two versions.

During an upgrade, the template changes made by Actinic have to be added into your templates. In the case of v6 we've been trying to keep these to a minimum. They are listed in the Release Notes available to download from the Download Centre (see the link in my signature).