Manage > Orders > View Order # > Automatic Fulfillment

Digital Goods

A Digital Good is a file delivered electronically via a secure login to the customer's order page.  In AbleCommerce, you will need to create a digital good and a product to complete the setup.  From the Catalog > Digital Goods > Manage Digital Goods page, you will be able to create a new digital good and manage all your existing ones.  Then assign one or more digital files to a product.

A digital good is delivered via the product, which is typically marked as "unshippable" and will not generate shipping rates.  When you fulfill an order with a digital good, you will have the ability to activate a license agreement, readme link, fulfillment email, and a serial key.

Fulfillment of Digital Goods

When a product with a digital good(s) is purchased, the merchant can decide upon automatic or manual fulfillment.  With the automatic method, you can change the digital good settings so that the file is available for immediate download when full payment is made.  Additionally, a digital good can trigger it's own email notifications on activation and fulfillment and pull from a pre-defined list of serial keys.  

During manual fulfillment, you will need to activate the download or generate a serial key from the order management area.  This document will describe how to manually fulfill an order with a digital good.

Serial Keys for Digital Goods

For each digital good, you can either enter a license key individually for each download, or you can enable the Serial Key provider.  The serial key provider is an automated system where you can pre-populate the serial keys used for digital good purchases.  It is available from the Edit Digital Good setup page.

Activate a Digital Good

REQUIREMENTS: The order must contain a digital file product purchase.

This example is using a digital good with a manual activation mode setting.  License agreement and Readme are setup. The automatic serial key is not enabled.

  1. From the Summary page, click the Digital Goods tab in the left-side menu.

  2. This will take you to the Digital Goods page for the order.  On this page you can see the name of the digital good and a pending status which indicates the file is not yet available to the customer.

    dg_inactive.gif  

  3. Click the ACTIVATE button to make the digital good available for download.  The page will be refreshed to include the activation date, number of downloads, and a valid status.

    dg_activated.gif

  4. If the digital good requires a license key, you can click the ACQUIRE button to enter the serial key data.

    dg_serialkey.gif

  5. When finished, click the SAVE button.

  6. The Digital Goods page will now display the RELEASE and VIEW buttons.

    dg_buttons.gif

  7. If you click the VIEW button, you can only view the serial key entered.

  8. If you need to enter a different serial key, then you must click RELEASE to remove the key.  To re-enter a key, click the ACQUIRE button.

  9. If you need to remove the customer's ability to download a digital file, then click the DEACTIVATE button.  It will not remove the digital good from the order, only make it unavailable for download.

What does the customer see for Digital Goods?

The customer can login to their account and view their order to see the digital goods available.  

Digital Good - Pending

For a download that is not yet available, the customer will see something like this from their order page:

db_cust_pending.gif
 

Digital Good - Download

For a download that is activated, and serial key assigned, the customer will see something like this:

dg_cust_delivered.gif

The customer can click on the linked Readme (optional) or License agreement (optional).  In the next column, there is the DOWNLOAD icon.  The customer would click this to download the digital file.

The number of downloads available is shown in the Remaining column.  A serial key (optional) may be displayed on the page as well.

If the digital good is setup to require a license agreement, then before the customer can download, they will read and accept the agreement terms before the download will commence.  

Using Fulfillment Email with Digital Goods

The configuration settings for email notifications and digital goods are available from the Catalog > Manage > Digital Goods page.  The Sample Data includes default email templates for digital good activation and fulfillment.

  1. When you create a digital good, you will have the option to associate it with up to two email notifications.

    dg_emails.gif

  2. In the example above, there is an Activation Email which can be sent to the customer when the digital good is activated, available for download.  The download activation occurs according to the activation mode (manual, immediately, on full payment).

  3. The example also has a Fulfillment Email which can be used to distribute serial keys. The fulfillment of a digital good occurs according to the fulfillment mode (manual, automatic).

A digital good does not require it's own email, these are optional settings.  By default, the standard order notification will be sent when any order is created.  You can choose, however, to have additional email sent upon download activation and/or fulfillment of a license key.  

TIP: Use the built-in Serial Key Provider and enter your digital goods' keys in advance.  Turn on automatic fulfillment, and automatic activation on full payment, for a totally automated system of distributing electronic data.

 

 
Related Topics

Catalog> Digital Goods > Manage Digital Goods
Create and manage digital goods, and the orders or products they are associated with.

Catalog > Category > Product > Subscriptions
Setup and edit the pricing and frequency of a subscription product.