Walkthrough: configuring order processing
This article is part three of our Quick Shopping Cart® Walkthrough series, designed to guide you through creating an online storefront using Quick Shopping Cart. Go to the beginning of the series.
Time to Complete: 1 hour.
Once you've added products to Quick Shopping Cart, processing orders involves many external factors. Payment, tax, and shipping options all involve third parties.
Because the configuration is open-ended, this walkthrough uses our imaginary shirt company for examples to better inform your decisions instead of dictating how your store must be configured.
The examples show accepting PayPal® payments, location-based tax, and shipping with USPS.
Selecting Payment Options
Every store owner needs to decide how customers can pay for services.
- Log in to your ITEGY account.
- Click Quick Shopping Cart.
- On the Quick Shopping Cart page, click Manage next to the Quick Shopping Cart account you want to modify.
- From the Set Up menu, in the Operations section, select Payment Options.
- Click Set Up next to the payment option you want to use.
Credit Card — Most customers are used to paying on the Web through merchant services; they provide their credit card information and the money is withdrawn directly from their bank account.
Processing credit cards directly from your site requires both a merchant service and a secure certificate, which you can purchase and set up from this section.
Merchant Service — For a monthly fee, in addition to a processing fee per transaction, a merchant service processes your store’s credit card transactions. Merchant services handle the transfer of funds from your customers to you.
Secure Certificate — To protect your customers’ credit card information, merchant services require credit card transactions to be protected by a secure certificate, also known as an SSL. Secure certificates prevent theft of your customers' credit card numbers by encrypting the information sent to the merchant service.
A merchant service does not automatically deposit transactions into your bank account. All transactions must be manually approved. For more information, see How does collecting payment work?
PayPal — Unlike a merchant service, PayPal doesn't require a secure certificate (more information on that under Credit Card, above) and doesn't charge a monthly fee. The only requirement is that you have a PayPal Business Account.
Once a customer pays for an order using PayPal, PayPal verifies the transaction and transfers the funds into your PayPal account.
After speaking with several customer service representatives, we decide PayPal is convenient for our customers and us. We set up a Business Account with PayPal and provided Quick Shopping Cart with the email address associated with the account.
COD — Cash on Delivery is less common these days, but still has value as a means to allow customers to purchase products even if they do not have, or want to use, a credit card or online wallet service such as PayPal.
Print and Call — Print and Call ordering allows your customer to arrange payment with a credit card over the phone, through a purchase order or some other way.
- Click OK.
Configuring Taxes
You might find that your online company needs to tax its orders. Quick Shopping Cart can calculate the tax in the customer's shopping cart immediately.
- Log in to your ITEGY account.
- Click Quick Shopping Cart.
- On the Quick Shopping Cart page, click Manage next to the Quick Shopping Cart account you want to modify.
- From the Set Up menu, in the Operations section, select Taxes.
- Select an option for collecting tax payments through your storefront.
Note: Laws on e-commerce change often, so be sure to get advice from a tax accountant or attorney.
No Tax — No order placed on your Quick Shopping Cart is taxed.
Location-based Tax — Taxation is based on the customer’s shipping address and defined as a percentage based on either state or postal code.
For example, our shirt company is in Arizona and our accountant has advised us we need to charge tax only to our in-state customers. We choose a State-based Tax of 9% and to not charge tax on shipping.
Flat Tax — Every order is taxed a flat percentage.
VAT — Value Added Tax lets you to define the VAT value for individual products.
- Click OK.
Choosing Shipping Methods
Once your customers decide which products they'd like to purchase, you need to provide them options for shipping.
Quick Shopping Cart supports flat rate, FedEx, USPS, UPS, and FreightCenter.com. It also supports a custom option that lets you define your own shipping charges, and the option for local pickup.
If you set up FedEx, USPS, UPS, or FreightCenter.com for your shipping option, then you must input your products' dimensions so your shipping charges will be accurate.
- Log in to your ITEGY account.
- Click Quick Shopping Cart.
- In the Quick Shopping Cart list, click Manage next to the Quick Shopping Cart account you want to use.
- From the Set Up menu, in the Operations section, select Shipping.
Percentage Flat Rate — If you want to charge shipping fees based on a percentage of the order total, click Set Up next to Flat Rate (%). For more information, see Setting Up Flat Rate Shipping Options.
Fixed Flat Rate — If you want to charge flat rate shipping fees to the order total, click Set Up next to Flat Rate ($). For more information, see Setting Up Flat Rate Shipping Options.
Custom Shipping — If you want to define the shipping cost for each product or multiple products in a single order, click Set Up next to Custom Shipping. For more information, see Setting Custom Options for Price-Based Shipping,
. United States Postal Service — If you want to ship via USPS, click Set Up next to USPS. You can specify any handling fees and the postal code you are shipping from. For more information, see Enabling U.S. Postal Service shipping .
UPS — If you have an account with UPS, click Set Up next to UPS and follow the on-screen instructions. For more information, see Enabling UPS shipping .
FedEx — Like UPS, if you have an account with FedEx, click Set Up next to FedEx and follow the on-screen instructions. For more information, see Enabling FedEx Shipping Options in Quick Shopping Cart.
FreightCenter.com — If you sell items that must ship via freight carrier, or bulk items that ship via pallet, click Set Up next to FreightCenter.com and fill out the required information. You must have a FreightCenter.com account, but if you don't already have one you can sign up for a free account directly from the setup page in Quick Shopping Cart. For more information, see Offering Freight Shipping Options for Your Quick Shopping Cart Customers.
Local Pickup — If you have a local office, click Set Up next to Local Pickup to let customers pick up products to avoid shipping costs. Local Pickup still allows you to charge a handling fee. For more information, see Using the Local Pickup Shipping Option in Quick Shopping Cart.
- Click OK.
After you configure your payment, taxes, and shipping information, all of the buttons displayed across the top of your screen will display check marks except the Publish button.
You can click Preview to see how your store will look once published. If you have any changes to make, click the appropriate button.
If you're ready to start selling, simply click Publish. For more information, see How to publish
We also publish a mobile version of your storefront optimized for smartphones. With Deluxe and Premium accounts, you can customize your mobile storefront to attract even more mobile shoppers. For more information, see Customizing your mobile storefront .
Start from the beginning with part one: Designing Your Storefront.
Go back to part two: Setting Up Products.
