adding same item to cart adds new line item

[rlw]

I am just getting started with ShopSite Pro version, switching over from another cart. Testing with a couple of items. When I add the same item to the shopping cart, a new line item is added rather than incrementing the quantity of the existing line item. Is this standard functionality of the shopping cart - my previous cart would increment the quantity which seems much more inutitive.

[Jim]

Yes, each time you add an item to the cart it will be a separate line in the cart. If you add the same item to the cart at different times they will not be combined into a single line. One reason for this is that each product could have different ordering options.

The Pro level of ShopSite has a Quantity Pricing feature that allows you to give a different price based on the quantity of an item (or a select group of items) purchased (e.g. 1=$10.00 2-5 are $9.50 each etc). In this case the total quantity of various lines will be combined to determine the price level but items added at different times will still remain on individual lines.

[ginsusc430]

i would also like to address this issue. I sell over 14000 different items on my website. its very frustrating because our order have on average 20-40 items per order. so when we pick we will go by line by line and pick the products and low and behold after a few lines the same item appears and have to track back to that same bin, when if they could have been combined at purchase point, problem solved.

[Jim]

When you print out the packing slip for the order you can either have the items listed in the order they are in the original order or you can have them sorted by SKU or Name. Using one of the sort options should put similar items next to each other in the pick list so when you pull from your stock the items would be next to each other. This is configured on the Orders > Configure screen at the bottom in the Section Product Sort Order.

I don't see where this is really much of an issue. I can't think of a single place where I shop that if I have the same item in my cart multiple times and one is rung up and then different item is rung up and then the duplicate item is rung up that the receipt puts both the same items into a single line item with a quantity of 2 .

[fhwu]

Has anyone developed a solution to this? My customers don't like the separate line item. Also, I agree that for most online shopping that I personally do, when I add the same item to may cart multiple times, the cart change the quantity.

[Jim]

There is no solution. Each add to cart creates a single line item. They will not be combined into a single line item and there is no way to force this to happen.

If you enable the quantity pricing feature (Pro level stores) and items belong to the same pricing group the total number of items that belong to a price group will be calculated and all will receive the price for that level. So discounts based on quantity of a product will be calculated but the items will remain on separate lines.

[fhwu]

I hope this is something that gets worked into the product in the future - especially at the pro level. If the software has the ability to aggregate the purchase, it also should have an option to present it that way.

[Jim]

All products can have order options. When an Item is added to the cart there is no way to know if the shopper will be selecting an order option for that product or not. And if they do select an order option will it be the same as the other products in their cart? If we automatically combined the items and the shopper wanted different order options how would the shopper be able to separate the items so they could make the appropriate option selection?

There is the functionality in the cart to set the quantity of items they wish to purchase. If a shopper wants multiple of an item they can simply change the quantity. This still allows for multiple line items if they want to choose order options.

As for filling orders from the merchant perspective, there is an option to sort products as they display on either the order screen or the packing slip by the SKU or Name or to leave them as they are in the original order. So that would place similar items next to each other on the list and should simplify pulling orders for shipment.

[fhwu]

I understand why the cart works that way for product order options, but many times products / stores do not have order options. So, it would be nice if developers/merchants could choose if they want the cart to have line item separation for each entry or automatically aggregated (or even toggle on/off by product).

Our website and inventory is set up such that the order options (such as color) are selected on the site, not in the cart, and there is no volume pricing. 90% of our items do not even have options to choose. So not having an ability to aggregate quantity on the customer side requires the customer to make the changes in the cart if they don't want to see a long list of the same item.

[Jim]

You could add a quantity box on your store pages so they could select the quantity there.

I recently place an order for a friend and myself for some roses. We ordered together because there was a significant savings in shipping having it all delivered to one place. She wanted some of the same roses as I did, so to keep our individual orders separate I ordered all of her items and then all of mine but in a single order. If the shopping cart had lumped the same products together it would have made it more difficult for us when the order arrives.

We have weekly meeting at work each Friday afternoon and I am assigned to get the treats. I go to the store to get the items and may also pick up something for home, that is the same as for work, for example milk to go along with the cookies for work and some for home too. I place the items on the checkout counter with the items for work first and then my items. That way on the receipt I can just total down to the last item for work and submit the bill on my expense report. If the checkout process combined the 2 milks into a single line item it would make getting a total for my expense report much more difficult.

So there are scenarios where the shopper may want to keep the items separate. But I can also see cases where it would be nice to have them lumped together. For example going grocery shopping, if corn is 5 cans for $2.00 and I pickup 5 cans and put them in my cart along with all the other items. When I get to the checkout everything in the cart is just randomly placed on the counter and the clerk grabs something and passes it across the scanner. If the receipt lumped the 5 cans together in a single line item it would make it easier to see if I got the $2.00 price instead of having to find 5 cans of corn on the receipt in different places and check if each had the 5@ 2.00, with a line item total of $.40.

In most cases I don't think the customer is really going to care if there are individual line item every time they added something to the cart. And if they want multiple of something they would usually change the quantity either in the cart or in the quantity box by the add to cart button.

From the merchant perspective I can see where it might be advantageous to have them lumped together to making pulling an order easier. The ability to sort the order, as displayed to the merchant in the backoffice, by name or SKU was specifically added to facilitate the the order pulling needs of the merchant.

If you would like to add an enhancement request you an do that in the Enhancement Requests forum. If there is enough interest in such a feature it will be considered for a future release. Something like this is probably not as simple as it seems because it could affect code in the the shopping cart, billing, thank you, customer registration, order importing, order display, order downloading, shopping cart database , the main ShopSite database. It would also involve modifying various screens in the backoffice for configuration options, and testing for everything that is changed to see that it works and that it doesn't break existing users. Resources are always tight when it comes to adding features so there has to significant reason for implementing the feature.

[fhwu]

Thanks. Clearly there are many reasons to have it the way you have it set up, and many reasons to have it consolidated. I've been to stores that combine or don't combine, and I agree it all depends what you are trying to do. I haven't personally experienced the separate line entries on websites - only automatic consolidation - but that's just my experience.

Having the option to consolidate it would be a great enhancement. I'm sure there is plenty of interest, as other carts do it - unless you are saying all the other carts are taking the lazy route by doing it and offering no alternative . I also know it isn't just me, since others have inquired here in this forum, and my client describes it as a "miscalculation" in the cart. I'll add it to your enhancements suggestions when we are not pressed on deadline.

[Kennedy]

I would also like to express interest in having the cart update total of the items if the same item is added more than once instead of individual line items. I have been setting up my site for a couple weeks now, and had just ignored that it added line items for every time I hit 'add to cart' for the same product, because I expected to find a setting that allowed me to combine those. I'm disappointed that there is no such option.

[fhwu]

Reiterating my complaint. We let it go because we were already deeply committed in the software build. We made sure the "order" to the warehouse is going in Product Code order, so these repetitive entries in an order show up together at least. It is still a problem, and we are having to try to solve it by adding programming to the order export now (via the Order API). Here is a direct quote from our operations director: "We want the data export to show one line per Item. The multiple lines for same Item is not working well with the warehouse software & also confusing the packers."

This really needs to be an option in the software, and when it is developed, I hope you'll provide an update to those who already own the license.

[fhwu]

I've just posted a request in the Enhancement Forum. Please go there and support the request with your reasons. http://support.shopsite.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8539

[ShopSite David]

In ShopSite v11 sp2 you now have the option for the cart to automatically combine multiple line items of the same product into one line item (if there are no order options.)