Order Transfer items don't map correct into QuickBooks items

[cnoelplemmons]

That's a huge undertaking (I think). Is there an easy way to do that?

[shopsiteandy]

That's a question for whoever runs/maintains your website. The information to build your HTML (PHP) pages is coming from somewhere - perhaps a database? Wherever the SKUs are being pulled from to build those pages, that is where the new (replacement) SKUs would need to be entered. Perhaps a find/replace function.

If that method proves too painful, another option would be to leave the SKUs as they are, but to set up the products as subproducts to a "parent" product that has the SKU prefix you are needing. Example:

Current SKU:
10000

QB entry:
BED:10000

You would create a new product with "BED" as the SKU, and assign the product with SKU 10000 to "BED" as a subproduct; and so on to set up the desired parent/child relationships for your products.

This way you would not have to change the SKUs of the products themselves, and your order anywhere buttons would not be affected.

[cnoelplemmons]

Great, I'm going to try the second option of creating parent products in ShopSite and assigning the subproducts. When they are exported using Order Transfer, will they be exported as follows?:

Newly Created Parent SKU:Numeric Subproduct SKU

[shopsiteandy]

They should. The best thing to do is to work with test data and verify that things are working as expected before working with your real data.

[cnoelplemmons]

That doesn't work. The subproduct SKU is imported just as before, with no parent SKU associated and it doesn't map into the right place. Is there a setting somewhere that could change that?

[shopsiteandy]

In Commerce Setup -> Order System -> Shopping Cart Screen, there is an option called "Display subproducts without parent name:". Make sure that this is UN-checked.

[cnoelplemmons]

that box was unchecked, so that can't be the problem.

[shopsiteandy]

Are the SKUs showing as expected in the cart? With the parent/child relationship? If they are not showing that way in the cart, they won't import that way either.

The only other things I can think of to check would be to make sure that:
--The subproducts were selected and those selections were saved
--The site was republished
--Again, that the parent/child relationship shows in the cart

[cnoelplemmons]

Hi, there.

I've done everything you've listed but I can't get the parent child SKU relationship to show up in the shopping cart, which I guess is the reason it still won't import correctly. Like I said, the checkbox in Commerce Setup for showing parent child relationship is un-checked and it doesn't seem to have an effect either way. I tried to check it to see what it would do and nothing looked any different in the shopping cart.

Noel

[shopsiteandy]

I'll do some testing with Order Transfer and get back to you with what I find out.

[shopsiteandy]

Ok...

QuickBooks uses SKU to match up items during import, if you are using SKUs in ShopSite.

If you were not using SKUs, then assigning products as sub-products (and making sure the box is unchecked) would tell QuickBooks about the parent/child relationship you want your items to have. The names would appear in the cart like this: Parent Product Name:Child Product Name; and QuickBooks would use the names to match up the imported products with the correct entry in your items list.

However (and this is where I got things mixed up), the same does not apply to SKUs. The SKU will not appear in a parent child configuration in the cart. I was thinking of the above situation, using product names: with the names, the colon between the parent and child product names (showing in the cart) will cause them to import with the parent/child relationship being understood by QuickBooks. The SKU will always appear alone in the cart, and therefore QuickBooks cannot determine the parent/child relationship from a stand-alone SKU.

Since you are using SKUs in your store, unfortunately the only way for QuickBooks to know what the relationship should be is to have a colon in the SKU itself, as suggested earlier. The problem you ran into with that is having to re-do your site so that the order buttons are referring to the new SKUs.

After my testing today, it seems that the options are:

1) Continue to modify the orders after import to assign the correct items/sub items

(Depending on your reasons for needing the parent/child structure in QuickBooks, you might be able to put off changing anything until year-end, and then merge/move the product in QuickBooks (used by the imported orders), thereby avoiding the need to update each individual order)

or

2) Change your SKUs to reflect the parent/child relationships, AND update your website order buttons to point to the new SKUs

Unfortunately the alternate suggestion (assigning subproducts in ShopSite) did not work as expected; my testing today showed that modifying the SKUs themselves is the only way to get the products (with SKUs) to import with parent/child relationships.

[Oat Man]

I have a small web page that needs to automated, at this time we print out each order and then retype the info into a Point of sale software that will track the sales and also interfaces with UPS WorldShip to ship the product to the customer. What I am interested in doing is to add the ShopSite Order Transfer option to my shopsite to allow me to download the orders into Quick Books and then within QB 2006 I see that can create UPS and Fedex shiping labels to saving us a lot of typing time and give us better reporting and accounting opitons.

Our web page is hosted by Verio and using shopSite Pro 7.1.4.1. We have 4 different products at this time and when they were set up they did not put any SKU's in. We are just getting QB 2006 going so have not done anything in it yet.

Here are my questions.

How easy is it to set up ShopSite Order Transfer ?
Have you had issues in the setup or transfer to QB?
Has anyone ever used the QB shipping option and what do you think of it?

Thanks for your thoughts and comments before I get to far down this road.

[cnoelplemmons]

Hi, there.

I've been working slowly but surely to change the Order Anywhere links to include the new extended parent:child SKU and everyting seems to be mapping correctly, BUT I continue to get the following error message whenever anyone purchases one of the items with the updated SKU format:

There is an invalid reference to QuickBooks COGS account "Cost of Goods Sold" in the ItemInventory. QuickBooks error message: To change the expense account, you must switch to single-user mode.

I have imported the QuickBooks COGS accounts into SS Order Transfer and I have selected and reselected the appropriate COGS accounts. I don't know what else to do, but I fear it's going to be very bad once I've changed all of our products and every order that comes into Order Transfer gives us this error message. Can you help me fix this problem?

Noel

[shopsiteandy]

From the wording of the error, it sounds like QuickBooks wants you to switch to single user mode. (The setting is under the "File" menu in QB).

[cnoelplemmons]

do you mean that I have to be in single user mode to import the orders?