Cart Setup Guide - Must Be Done

Step 1. Customer Receipts screen. 
This is where you set up the return link to your site, the description of the return link (e.g. "Go to my site"), and your Email from address. 

The return link is used when your customer has finished the shopping cart. The order is completely processed and there's nothing left to do, except, of course, ship the order. 

The description tells your customer what the link does.

The Email from address is used when we send your customer an order confirmation Email. Your address will be in the From of the email.

Click here to go make the entries.

Step 2. Sales Tax screen. 
If you're required to charge sales tax, this is where you set it up. When the screen first opens, there won't be any entries there. Click the New button so you can enter your sales tax.

You are going to enter the state that you collect sales tax for from the list. If you charge sales tax on shipping charges, check the box. Finally, enter the percentage (e.g. 8.25). Click the Update button when you're done.

If you charge tax in more than one state, click the New button again and enter the information for that state.

When you're done, click the Close button.

Click here to enter your sales tax.

Step 3  Set Up Your Shipping.

There are two options available to eCOMpal users. Under the Shipping Charges selection you can set up your basic shipping information and your UPS® shipping options.

If you don't charge for shipping, Open the Shipping Charges option and check the option for no shipping. That's all you have to do.

No Shipping Charges - If you don't charge for shipping, check this box.

Is Shipping Taxable - If you charge sales tax on shipping, check this box.

Free Shipping Over - If you give free shipping on orders over a certain amount, enter the amount here.

Free Shipping Desc - If you offer free shipping enter a description, e.g. "Free USPS shipping on orders over $100"

If you're going to use EZ Ship, skip down to step 3A, click here.

Your Shipping Zip/Postal Code - This is used for UPS Rates.

Shipping Country - What country are you shipping from?

Your handing charge - This is used with UPS Rates to determine the full charge to your customer.

Metric Weights & Sizes - If you don't use US measures (lbs & inches) then check this box. 

UPS® Normal Packaging - Select the normal packaging when you ship UPS.

UPS® Rates & Service - Check this box if you want to offer your customers real time shipping rates from UPS. NOTE - you must enroll in the UPS Online® Tools program. See below.

UPS® Address Validation - If you want to use the UPS Address Validation, verifies city, state and zip code for US addresses, check this box. NOTE - you must enroll in the UPS Online Tools program. See below.

UPS Services - The Click Here to Enroll for UPS Online Tools will open up a window to allow you to enroll in the plan. Once you've completed the enrollment process you can use the online shipping calculator.

UPS Services - Check boxes select the service you want to offer your customers by checking the appropriate box(es) in the matrix of UPS services.

Click Here to set up Shipping

Step 3a Setting Up Ez Ship

The other selection Set Up Ez Ship gives you a simple way of charging for shipping especially if you use shipping options other than UPS. The following is a description of how to set up Ez Ship.

When the first screen appears, it will be blank, because there aren't any entries. Click the New button to add your first entry. Click here for a complete description of how shipping works.

The first field is the Country/Region. This tells your customer where you're shipping to. For example, if you're pricing shipping to the US, enter US. Let's say you want a different price for the western US than for the eastern US. You could enter US west of IL. and another entry that would US IL & east. If you're shipping to other coutries, you can enter as many countries as you want, or regionalize them. For Example, you could have entries for Europe, Pacific Rim, Middle East, World Wide, etc. This gives you a lot of flexibility to ship virtually anywhere in the world.

By the way, when you see the list of EZ Ship items, it's sorted in Country/Region sequence. If you want a particular country/region, e.g. US, to appear at the beginning of the list, use a space in front of the name. So instead of "US" you would enter it as " US". That will place it at the beginning of the list.

Next, enter a description of what the shipping is. For example,  "Fedex Ground", "Fedex Overnight", "UPS Ground", "UPS Overnight", "USPS Priority Mail", etc. This is what your customer will see when choosing the shipping method.

First item amount  - field is how much you charge for the first item you ship. Usually, shipping is some amount, let's say $5 for the first item, and another amount for each additional item, let's say $2. In this case, you'd enter 5.00 in the first item amount field.

Next item amount field is how much you charge for additional items. In the example above, you'd enter 2.00 in this field. 

Finally, there's the Shipping Free Over field. If you give free shipping for orders over some amount, let's say $100, you enter 100.00 here and the eComPal shopping cart will give your customer a free shipping option. If you don't enter anything, shipping will always be entered.

If you need a more thorough description of shipping calculations, click here.

When you're done, click the Update button to save your information. 

Enter as many different shipping options as you offer. The options are virtually unlimited.

Click here to set up EZ Ship shipping.

Step 4. Order Notification Screen.

This is where you set up the Email addresses for notification of when an order has been received.

Contact Email is the Email address of the normal contact for the account. He or she will always receive a notification when an order has been received.

Order Notification Email is the address of an additional person in the company that is to receive notification of orders. If you don't enter anything here, nothing will be sent.

Fulfillment House Email is used to notify your fulfillment house or shipping department to ship the order. If you don't enter anything here, nothing will be sent.

Include Prices and Show Billing Address checkboxes, if checked, will include that information on the Fulfillment House Email. If they are not checked, the fulfillment house Email will not include that information.

Electronic Order Notification Url If you want to have your orders electronically sent to you, fill in the web address you want the orders sent to. More information is available here.

Send Prices? Check this box if you want the prices for each of the items sent along with the electronic orders.

Click here to enter the Order Notification information.

Step 5 Payment Options screen.

Here's where you tell eComPal what types of payments you want to accept..

Credit Cards Accepted displays what credit cards you accept when your customer gets to the payment screen. Enter the names of the cards you accept (e.g. Visa, Master Card, American Express, etc.).

Require Card Verification Number determines if you will accept the customers credit card order without the Card Verification Number. We strongly recommend that you leave this box checked.

Accept Online Checks determines if the eComPal shopping cart will display the fields for an online check when your customer is checking out.

Accept COD Payments if checked will allow your customer to select  a COD (Cash On Delivery) as a payment option.

COD Fee defines an additional charge if the customer selects the COD payment option. Frequently, companies charge an additional fee because of additional paperwork and expense in handling COD's.

Require a Money Order for COD payments is used to tell your customer that if they chose COD payment, the amount must be paid with a Cashiers Check or Money Order. No business or personal checks will be accepted.

Accept Paypal allows you to give your customer the option of paying through PayPal.

Your PayPal Email Address is the address you use with PayPal to receive your money.

Be sure to click the Update button after you've entered the information.

Click here to enter your payment options.

Step 6 Payment Gateway screen

If you're a Gold or Platinum member, this screen allows you to select the payment gateway through which your credit card payments are going to be processed. 

If you're a Bronze or Silver member, there's nothing to do here.

Payment Gateway determines which of the gateways we offer you're going to use. Select one from the list.

Merchant ID is your identifier at the specified gateway. This is assigned to you when you sign up with the gateway.

Merchant Password is your password for your merchant ID at the payment gateway.

Click here to set up your payment gateway.

That's it. You've finished the "Must Be Done" entries. Your cart is functional. 

Step 7 Build A Link

You can create your own links to eComPal, or you can use our link creation screen, Build A Link. The process is quite simple and will only take a couple of minutes to complete and add to your web page(s).

URL Only is for those of you that are using FrontPage or a similar editor. I.e. an editor that creates most of the link for you, all you have to add is what follows the "http://" of the actual link. If you do not check this option, the program will generate the full link including the description.

Description is the description of the item you're selling. 

Sku is borrowed from the retail industry. It stands for Stock Keeping Unit. It's an identifier for the specific product you're selling. This is an optional field, but if you're using our Desktop Software or you're using a fulfillment house to ship your orders, you should assign an Sku identifier to each of the different items you sell. This will take letters and/or numbers.

Quantity is the normal quantity that is purchased. This is an optional field. You can fill in a number here, like 1. Or, you can set up a user entry on your site where they select the quantity they wish to order. When your customer gets to the shopping cart, they can change the order quantity very easily. It's a number field that accepts decimals.

Taxable is a flag that indicates the item is taxable, or not.

Price is the price for each item ordered. If the price is $1.50 and your customer orders 10 units, the shopping cart will calculate a sale of $15.00. Its a number field that accepts numbers, commas, and periods.

Weight is used for calculating shipping charges. It's the shipping quantity. If you don't charge shipping then don't make an entry here. You may have some items that affect the shipping charges and some that don't. Shipping is based on the total weight of the shipment. Click here for a complete discussion of shipping charges and how they are calculated. It's a number field that accepts whole numbers only.

Order Source is an optional field. If you receive orders from different sources, e.g. different search engines. Or, if you have more than one web site you process orders on, you can identify them with the Order Source field. It's 2 characters of  letters or numbers. 

Continue shopping page is the link back to where your customer can continue shopping. If you have more items to sell enter a link here back to the page your customer can continue shopping on. If you don't enter a return link here, the customer will only be able to go back to your site with the "Back" button.

Click Here to Build A Link

One last note.

When you sign up for eComPal's service, your account is automatically placed in "test mode". This allows you to fully test your cart and the connection to the payment gateway without actually sending real credit cards through the system.

You can turn "test mode" off in Your Basic Info screen, down at the bottom. Just uncheck the Test Mode checkbox.