Universal Discount

[UselessNovice]

Hi Everyone,

Is there any way of changing the default pricing from Retail to a discounted rate - basically we want to discount all products by the same amount (10 percent) as we're such generous people!!

Any help would be great, i suspect this is fairly easy - when you know how!

Thanks

Andy (Useless Novice)

[NormanRouxel]

If using Catalog then Catalog 6.1.3 introduced Order level discounts. See View / Discounts. So you could set a 10% discount for orders over 0 value.

However I don't think this will affect the displayed prices on the Product pages but they'll see it in the shopping cart.

You can also customise the message that's displayed there (again in View Discounts).

Norman

[UselessNovice]

To - Everyone!


Norman,

Thanks for that suggestion, it would certainly have the required effect but i am still trying to think whether i can make a discount that will be evident before someone adds to cart.

I was wondering whether anyone had tried changing the discount within the Pricing Schedule table of the ActinicDatabase.mdb found in the Site1 folder.

I am expecting lots of warnings about dangers of potentially destroying my database - so i am testing on a different computer just to be sure!

Also, does anyone know what the other fields in the Pricing Schedule table stand for - i am guessing that i may need to adjust one of these if i want the field to highlight the rate of discount.

Last of all, does anyone know if it is possible to get software to provide a non-internet sales database that utilises the information in the Actinic Database - it would certainly seem a time saver on entering product information in to two different databases.

Thanks

Useless

[Mike Hughes]

You should read the forum befroe asking questions. There's an answer (of kinds) here just a few messages below yours.

Mike

[UselessNovice]

Mike,

You're quite right, i should read the messages but i did on Sunday and this one wasn't there at that point.

I was really trying to find out whether anyone had any reason to question my suggested solution - which does seem to work although it doesn't offer the advantage of highlighting the discount offered - a definite bonus.

I guess i will have to learn a bit of Javascript!

Thanks, i promise to pay more attention in future!

Andy

[UselessNovice]

Mike,

Have been looking at the suggested solution - thanks again for that.

I have spotted a possible problem with both the AppleSound method and my own suggestion.

If you wish to use a drop down selection to offer something like a six or twelve month subscription (as in the Actinic sample site) then, if the prices differ, you enter the type and price as a html name. As it stands, either of the methods above will not update the text here and it will have to be done manually.

For this reason, is it perhaps better to use Normans method and state that the pricing is subject to a discount with the correct values being shown in the cart.

Any thoughts?

Ta

Andy

[cdicken]

As it's Christmas, here is a solution....

1) Back up your site.

2) Open the ActinicCatalog.mdb database in Access and go into the 'Product' table.

3) Find the 'Price' column, highlight it (by clicking the grey column header) and copy it to the clipboard.

4) Open a new worksheet in Excel and paste the column of prices in.

5) Now click in the cell next to the one containing the first price and type the following:

=ROUND(

6) Then click with your mouse in the cell containing the first price. The name of the cell should appear in the formula.

=ROUND(A2

7) Then complete the formula with the following: *0.9,0)

=ROUND(A2*0.9,0)

8) If you just press enter on your keyboard then the discounted amount should appear.

9) Copy and paste this formula into all the cells underneath it in order to convert all the prices.

10) Now copy all your converted prices to the clipboard and click in a spare cell and go to 'Edit | Paste Special'. Select 'Values' and then click OK. This will just create a list of prices rather than formulas.

11) This column of numbers can be copied back into the 'Price' column in Access.

[UselessNovice]

Chris,

Thanks for that, couple of comments though:

If i'm right then just changing the dCalculationFactor value to 0.9 in the Actinic Access Database 'Price Schedules' table (and changing the other cells (nBaseSchedule and nCalculationMethod) as required) has the same effect but is possibly quicker and without the danger of customers with an account discount getting 15 percent off prices already discounted by ten percent!!

Also, it still leaves the discount as not being highlighted - a problem overcome to a certain degree by AppleSounds effective solution.

Last of all, I am not aware of any way of making the 'choices' in a drop down menu show their associated price without entering it as text and thus eliminating an automatic change with discount rate. Have i missed a trick here or are ther plans to overcome this in future releases. - It is quite a problem for me as the majority of our products come in a choice of 3 formats which thus have differing prices - If it comes to it, i could set up a database/excel file addition which would enable me to automatically update this text depending on current discount rate.

Thanks for the ideas though, i will definitely make sure that i keep an eye out for further posts and that i let everyone know what i come up with in the end as an easy solution would i'm sure be very appealing - we intend to get our customers revisiting our site regularly by sporadically changing rates with the occasional super discount day - The excitement of this may wear off after a number of uploads!!

Cheers

Andy

[dybs]

In response to :

Last of all, does anyone know if it is possible to get software to provide a non-internet sales database that utilises the information in the Actinic Database - it would certainly seem a time saver on entering product information in to two different databases.

We do. email me on andy.dyble@midsoft.co.uk if your not already sorted.

Andy