Holiday Bonus!  Install PayPal's Braintree payment integration [released October 21st, 2016]

1. • Braintree: free integration with PayPal's newest payment gateway

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 12 Service Release 1 [released August 30th, 2016]

1. • Data Exchange:  Ability to export, import or update Product Options

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 12 [released May 5th, 2016]

1. • Inventory back-in-stock notifications for customers (automated and manual)

   • Add CustomFields collection to all entities - Wiki update

   • Improve WEB API by exposing customers and orders information - Wiki update

   • E-Payment Integrator (with support for 93 payment gateways)

   • BeanStream (new stand-alone payment gateway for Canada)

   • BluePay - (new stand-alone payment gateway for Canada and US)

   • eWay - (new stand-alone payment gateway for Australia)

   • Moneris - (new stand-alone payment gateway for Canada)

   • Payeezy - (new stand-alone payment gateway, soon to be clover)

   • Chase Paymentech Orbital - certification process completed

   • Allow customers to edit a saved payment profile (Authorize.net CIM)

   • Four new Merchant Reports:  Annual Sales, New -vs- Existing Customers, Sales by Country, Sales by State

   • Ability for a merchant to add or edit customer shipping addresses

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 11 [released October 8th, 2015]

1. • Added Encrypted Website Payments to prevent a known security vulnerability with PayPal

   • Create informational Blog pages for your store and products

   • Ability to print shipping labels, use address validation, and configure negotiated (business) rates through UPS

   • Add Batch Edit feature for Categories

   • Add a new Contact Us form with merchant and customer notification.

   • Support for SSL over entire store

   • Complete the Affiliate Self-Signup feature

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 10 [released March 17, 2015]

1. • Responsive Website Design template using Bootstrap front-end technology.

   • New TaxCloud integration is a free tax service for U.S. online retailers.

   • New ShipStation integration provides a robust shipping service with support for all major providers.

   • Payment card industry (PCI) re-certification for the newer PA-DSS version 3.0 (available for all R10 SR1 deployments)

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 9 [released September 30, 2014]

1. • New Shop By feature integrated using Product Templates and the store's Product Finder / search page.  Give your customers a new way for them to find exactly what they are looking for.

   • A new checkout option to store credit card profiles for registered users.  Secure and PCI compliant using Authorize.net CIM gateway support.

   • PayPal upgraded with new financing options, including the PayPal Credit (Bill Me Later) and advertising banners.

   • Improvements made to the Low Inventory report by adding more product search filters.

   • New Printing triggers added so merchants can use custom order statuses to automatically update orders when printing is initiated.

   • New Export Email list feature which includes name and email only.

   • Upgrade available to new Google Universal Analytics

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 8 [released June 5, 2014]

1. • Export Users for use in mass mailings or third-party applications.  All user fields are available for export.

   • Variable Payments option that allows customers to enter multiple payments in amounts they choose.

   • New Products control that can be added to any webpage or sidebar.  

   • Specials control that can be added to any webpage or sidebar.

   • Custom HTML control improved so a webpage ID can be used.

   • Move an order to a different user account.

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 7 [released March 17, 2014]

1. • Automated Recurring Orders.  This is a new subscription feature that makes use of Authorize.net CIM (Customer Information Management) gateway.  The new feature allows merchants to create products with delivery options.  Customers can subscribe to the subscription, make address changes, payment updates, and more.  Merchants will see new orders appear and be paid automatically.

   • One Page Checkout.  New and improved checkout page that's easy to enable in your store.  Enable this feature from the Configure > Store > General page.

   • Special Shipping/Handling fee.  For products that might have some special shipping requirements, you can add the amount to each individual product and it will automatically be added to the shipping charge or the handling fee per the setting you choose.

   • Shipping defined by Maximum amount.  Now you can setup special shipping rules that allow you to include or exclude a shipping method depending on the maximum value of the shipment.

   • Improved search, batch update, assignment, and removal for almost all administration features like coupons, featured products, discounts, taxes, warehouses, and many more.

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 6 [released September 17, 2013]

1. • Store and Product membership options.  You can define the users that have access to the entire store, or to individual products.

   • Improvements to reports with a new export data feature.

   • 18 new sample themes from a Book store to a Wedding store.

   • Ability to search orders by product name or SKU.

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 5 [released May 28, 2013]

1. • Product Review Reminder Service will send an email to your customers asking for feedback on their purchases.

   • SEO Improvements including custom Page Titles, Meta Keyword and Description, Rich Snippets.

   • Google Feed improvements including the 2013 Spring update and support for product Variants and Options.

   • More Data Exchange features including WorldShip® and the ability to import and export product Variants/Options.

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 4 [released February 25, 2013]

Data Exchange features with Order Export, Product Export and Import

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 3 [released November 30, 2012]

Address Verification Services through USPS shipping   

Amazon Payments - Increase shopper confidence with Amazon Payments or an Amazon Checkout option.

Available in AbleCommerce Gold Release 2 [released September 21, 2012]

Mobile Store Templates - Offer users a version of your store that they can use on their mobile device.  

For more information about our products and services, please go to www.ablecommerce.com

What's New for the merchant...in AbleCommerce Gold [released August 30, 2012]

• Improved HTML - no table layouts, CSS friendly, and retail scripts are w3c valid

• Much faster product searches without requiring SQL Server Full Text Services

• All new store themes and choice of 3 new merchant admin themes.

• Reorganized admin with easier access to important management tasks

• Updated user account management with tabbed interface

• Improved image gallery for product browsing

• Redesigned checkout experience

• Merchants can now process refunds of gift certificates

• Easier entry of meta keywords and descriptions for products and other web content

• New tabbed interfaces for order and product management

• Capture payments from the main order screen

• All new features for managing website content.

• Import and export store themes

• Make changes to your store theme with the new CSS editor

• Customize your page layouts with the new layout manager

• Orders can now be deleted by superuser admins

• Valid payment is now required for an order to be submitted

What's New for the developer...

AbleCommerce GOLD is all about bringing the best Asp.Net shopping cart in line with current technologies.  Our core API has been rewritten using technologies like NHibernate, Castle Windsor, and Lucene.  We have incorporated over 600 (and counting) automated integration tests to verify that our software meets higher standards of quality.  We have also upgraded our web scripts to the Web Application Project architecture to provide faster startup times with the pre-compiled website.

Developers and custom site designers alike will appreciate our restructured scripts that make better use of standard asp.net technologies and less use of proprietary techniques.  Master pages make it easy to make global changes to layout or design, and our WC3 valid HTML provides plenty of hooks for designers to make your website fit your unique company image with CSS.  One look at our sample store themes and you will see the wide variety of look and feel that can be applied without any changes to our source code!

Ease of Installation

AbleCommerce can be installed to your local PC, in a shared hosting environment, on a virtual private server or dedicated server.

1.  Open the AbleCommerce.sln project file in a developer's program such as Visual Studio.

     Or, upload the files to a web-accessible folder.

2.  Launch a browser and run the web-based installation.

System Requirements

• A website that supports Asp.Net applications in .Net 4.0

• A database that supports MSSQL 2005 and higher, or  

• SQL Express is an included database with AbleCommerce, it is the free edition of SQL Server.  The Express version requires additional software to be installed.

Runs in both full and medium trust environments.  Medium trust requires WebPermissions.

Secure Visa/MC PCI certified solution

AbleCommerce software is officially PCI certified under the new, and stricter, PA-DSS v3.1 standards. AbleCommerce is one of the first shopping cart software products to be certified under the new PA-DSS certification process.

PA-DSS is the Council-managed program formerly under the supervision of the Visa Inc. program known as the Payment Application Best Practices (PABP).

Quick access icons in the header, so you can easily access the most common management pages.

Enter any number or word, and Search through everything, including orders, categories, products, web pages, links, digital goods, warehouses, and users.

A Welcome message greets the currently logged in user.

On the Daily Tasks tab:
- View and your most Recent Orders.  
- Order Summary can be changed to list the totals for in the selected date range.
- Check the Action Items section for any new messages or alerts.
- The Software News Feed will be updated when new announcements are made.

From the Navigate tab, you can access each menu item and view descriptions of the features.

The Configure tab has navigation to all the areas within the Configure menu, and feature descriptions are provided.

The Reports tab generates graphs showing:
- A bar graph with Sales over Time for last 7 days and past 6 months
- A bar graph showing Page Views within last 24 hours, last hour, by day, and by month.
- The Popular Products bar graph and summary reports show top selling product sales, sales data, and user views
- Access More Reports such as Monthly Sales, Daily Sales, Sales Summary, Taxes, Sales by Product, Low Inventory, and many more. (see Reports)

A customer Account system for user management features:
- Registered users, or your customers, can login securely to access all available features through their account management pages.
- View new orders, and past order history, showing the order number, date, shipping information, status, and the items purchased.
- View an existing order to print an invoice or Reorder the same items.
- View an unpaid order to make a payment towards the balance, or pay in full.
- The User Profile page allows your customers to change their login credentials, sign-up for any newsletters, or change the preferred currency.
- Your customers will have their own Address Book to keep track of multiple shipping addresses.  During checkout, these addresses will be displayed for the customer's shipping address options.
- A customer can create and view his or her own Wishlists, and check on the status of any items that are purchased as a gift.
- After a customer has written product reviews, then can view, edit or delete one of their own reviews.
- Subscription plans and their expiration dates are shown separately when purchased.
- The Digital Download manager allows your customers to download digital files and more.  This page can track the number of downloads available, show the status of all downloads, display serial keys or license information, show readme links, and you can require customers to agree to terms before downloading.

Improved checkout system to make the checkout experience as simple as possible for the customer.

The option to ship to multiple addresses appears when there is more than one item in the shopping cart.

Use a Mini-basket in the sidebar, a full shopping cart page, and a tiny-basket in the header, which shows the number of items in the cart.

A Product Finder can help to narrow search results by Category, Manufacturer, or Keyword.  Great for large catalogs!

Featured Products, Top Sellers, Related Products, and Recently Viewed items are sidebar controls that you can include in any page layout.

Users can sort catalog items by name, price, manufacturer, and featured.  The number of results for each page is an option, and paging is enabled as needed.

A comprehensive search through your catalog where all product information is used to find more results for your search term.

Use the Advanced Search page to enter specific criteria like price ranges or a product SKU.  Search by category or manufacturer using keywords.

Rate a product and write a review.  Depending on the settings, reviews can be disabled or require approval.

Create new Wishlists and send them to your friends and family.  Wishlists can be password protected.

Offer gift wrapping services during checkout, or include a free gift note option.

Send an email to a friend with a link and a personal message.

Use Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, Paypal Express, standard Paypal, along with any other payment methods you want to offer like:
- Credit/Debit cards with validation for different card types like Visa, Mastercard, Discover, AMX, Diner's Club, and Discover, and more...
- Electronic checks
- Purchase Orders
- Pay by mail or phone
- Gift Certificates

Share with social media links and statuses on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Offer gift certificates that can be a fixed amount, or a customer can select the amount to purchase.

Create a new order from the admin or make adjustments to a new order.  Then the customer can login and Pay Order after it is adjusted.

Shipping estimator calculates shipping rates for an individual product or the shopping cart.

Taxes can be shown while the user is shopping and during checkout.  Show tax itemized, separately, or let one of the built-in tax providers, like AvaTax to do it all for you.

Order Management:  View all orders from a single page that shows the payment status,  shipment status, and overall order status.  Use sort criteria and advanced searching to find specific orders.

Post-order processing of credit card payments.  Capture funds from a pending authorization, enter a credit card payment, process refunds or partial payments.  

PayPal and Google Checkout have bi-directional communication with AbleCommerce so orders are updated regardless of where the transactions are being processed.

Create new shipments or edit existing ones.  Split a shipment, move products to different shipments, and merge shipments together.  

Enter tracking numbers when you ship orders.  Your customer can be sent an email when partial shipment or full shipments take place.  They can view their tracking details through the customer account system.

Communicate with your customer by using the Order Note feature.  Simply enter a comment and an email is automatically sent to the customer.  Likewise, the customer can enter a note which would notify the merchant by email.

Dealing with order changes is easy when you can add items, change, or delete items.  If a new balance is due, then use the order note feature and send your customer an email with instructions to return to the store to make a payment on the order.  

Batch processing:  Select multiple orders and process payments, ship, cancel, or update order statuses.  

Batch printing:  Print multiple invoices, packing slips, and pull sheets for inventory selection.

The Payment Manager allows you to view all the payment and transaction history.  Search by transaction ID, date, or payment status.

The Order Notes Manager shows you all the new unread notes from customer orders.  Search by keyword, date, or author.  Reply here or from the order directly.

The merchant can place new orders on behalf of the customer.  Works great for customers who call in to place an order.

Image and Asset Management:  Upload files directly to the server.  Create new folders to keep your images organized.  Use the automatic resize tool to create icons, thumbnails, and regular sized images from one large original.

Manage your inventory levels from one page.  Adjust in-stock and low-stock for each product in one simple update.

View all gift certificates that are created when a customer orders one.  You can add new gift certificates, edit existing ones, activate, deactivate, and view available balances.  Each gift certificate shows detailed information about the associated orders.  

Subscriptions plans can be managed showing orders used to create the subscription.

Review and approve product ratings and reviews.  Delete and edit as needed.  The merchant can configure who is able to submit a product review and whether or not it needs to be approved before listed with the product.

A digital good can be delivered automatically when the order is paid, or you can manually activate the download and fulfill license keys.

Basic content management system with unlimited categories, sub-categories, products, web pages, and links.

Products may be assigned to more than one category for easier maintenance and better product visibility in the storefront.

Products, categories, and webpages can be sorted, moved, and copied for quick organization and creation of your catalog.

Easily re-organize your catalog system with the Move options which can move or copy a category and all of it's contents.

Batch operations also let you select multiple items and move, change visibility, or delete.

Catalog item visibility can be "hidden" so they are only available from a direct link, or "locked" so they are inaccessible for maintenance purposes.

Use product templates to create custom fields that can be applied to one or many products.

The Merchant fields of a product template can be used when custom data must be entered for a product when it is added to the catalog.

Customer fields can be used when you want to add a special input for the customer to enter some custom data. (e.g. personalization)  You can add a text box, text area, drop down list, multiple list, radio, and checkbox.

Enable Catalog Mode to hide the "add to cart" button for all products, so customers can browse your catalog but are unable to purchase directly online.

You can enable Inventory Management for your store and display the number of items available.  When stock is depleted, the out of stock message is displayed.

Manage and create digital goods.  Upload the file that will be associated to the digital good, and assign the digital good to a product for purchase.  You can customize each digital good.

Download policy - set the number of downloads, timeout, and when the file becomes activated for the customer.

Licensing - create and assign license agreements (set when required)

Readme - create and assign readme's (displays with the download)

Serial Keys - use the built-in license module or plug-in your own.

Email Notifications - create and assign activation and fulfillment emails (included).

Batch Editing is a powerful feature that allows you to search through products and make multiple updates to any product field from one page.

Product name, summary, description, and detailed description.  The product's name, price, and summary would typically be shown on a category page.  The description is shown on the product page, and detailed description page is optional.  

Enter basic information for the product, such as price, retail, SKU (item #), Model #, UPC/ISBN, item cost, manufacturer, vendor, and part number.   

Enter product weight and dimension for shipping.  Select the warehouse that the product will be shipped from.

Select the tax code which determines if the product will be taxed according to the rules you setup.  Supports multiple-level taxation (Canada) and VAT.

You can disable the purchase of a product, hide the price until a customer clicks to view it, or create a product with a variable price where the customer enters the product price within a range you specify.

Assign a gift wrap group and customer can select from the gift wrap options you setup.

Check a box to turn the product into a gift certificate.  When purchased, a unique gift certificate serial number will be created automatically.  Used with the variable price feature, you can create gift certificates with a value that the customer specifies.

Upload a large product image and let the image re-size tool automatically create three different size product images for the mini-basket, category page, and product page.

Create an image gallery by uploading more photos of your item.

Turn on inventory control for individual products and track stock.  Email notifications can be sent when the low stock threshold is met.  Allow purchase of an out-of-stock product for back orders.

Set a minimum and/or maximum purchase requirement.  Great for business to business.

Check a box to create a featured product.  It will automatically display and rotate with other featured products.

You can use your own Custom URL instead of the system generated one.  This allows you to change the URL to match keywords that your customers are commonly searching on.  The result is better search engine ranking.

The Meta Description field is used by search engines to find the summary of the page.

The Meta Keywords are used in the Meta tag for search engines to describe your page.

You can set the Condition of an item, Age Group, Gender, Color, Size, or completely exclude an item from a feed.

The automated Google Feed and Shopping.com Feed writes your product data to a text file every 6 hours.

Google Adwords features include Grouping, Labels, Redirect. requires that you include a category

Options and Variants:  Add product options like color, size, style with choices for each. (e.g. Colors: red, white, blue)

You can assign a small and large image to each option choice.  When the customer clicks on the small image, the corresponding larger images displays.

Options can also be managed as variants.  Variants are all the possible combinations of a product with options.   You can enter a unique SKU for each variant (e.g. RED-SMALL).  You can set the values for price and weight specifically for each variant if it is different from the default calculated value.  

Inventory tracking is available for the variants, plus, you can control the availability of any possible combination of option choices.  Inventories can be tracked for a product or it's options.

Product Kitting:  Select from five different types of components for your kit.  Add products to each component to create a kit.

Included-Shown - Products added to this component type are required to be in the kit and shown to the customer.

Included-Hidden - Products added to this component type are required to be in the kit but are shown only to the merchant.  

Drop Down - These products will be displayed as a drop down list where the customer selects one, or none.

Radio Button - These products will be displayed in a list with a radio choice next to each.  The customer can select one, or none.

Checkbox - These products will be displayed in a list with a checkbox next to each.  The customer can select any number of products in the list, or none.

Choose a kit style of "Bundle" or "Itemized" to indicate how the kit will be displayed.  You can choose to show a kit as a single line item in the basket and invoice pages (bundle) or you can choose to itemize the contents.

Use Product Specials to create special pricing for a product based on dates. (e.g. Product on special through end of month)

You can also use pricing rules to create multiple price points for user groups.  (e.g.  only members of the premier customer group get special product prices)

Subscription Plans:  Turn a product into a subscription plan.  Choose the expiration in days or months from initial plan start.  Setup the billing option for a one-time charge, recurring charge, or initial charge with a recurring charge.  

You can also select a "group" that the customer will be assigned to at purchase.  When the subscription expires, the customer will be automatically removed from the group.    

For recurring billing options, you need to use a payment gateway that supports recurring billing transactions.

Deliver all types and sizes of digital goods.  Assign one digital good to a product or use options to assign different versions of digital goods to a single product.    

Associate products to other products so a customer will be presented with additional purchase ideas at checkout.  For example, you could offer matching shoes with a dress, or recommend accessories for a main purchase.

Associate categories to a product so customers are able to find your items through different "shop by..." options.  The categories would be similar to departments in your store.  A product can be shown in any number of categories.

Cross-selling scenarios can be easily created by assigning related products to other products.  When this happens, the customer is presented with some additional purchase ideas of Similar Products.

Up-selling is another way to present more items that could be purchased because they are closely related to the item(s) already being purchased.

Offer incentives to purchase more by using volume discounts.  You can setup discounts by  quantity purchased or by value purchased.  Create a discount matrix based on an amount off or a percentage off.  You can even make the discount available to preferred customers by making it group specific.

Product Templates can be used by both merchants and customers.  They are simply custom fields or options that you create to collect or display information for the merchant during product editing, or for the customer on the product detail pages to collect information during purchase.

Configuration of the Store - These are the global settings that impact the entire store.

• Store name and internet address (URL) can be modified at any time.

• Allow users to use the Guest Checkout option if they prefer not to create an account as a registered user.

• An option to accept failed orders, even if the payment fails the authorization.  The payment status will show a problem when this happens.

• Site Disclaimer message can be enabled so users are required to agree to your terms before viewing the store.

• Works with SSL 3.0/2.0, medium and full trust environments.

• Adjust your next order number and change the incremental value.

• Enforce minimum and maximum order amounts before customer is allowed to checkout.

• Enable Catalog mode which allows customers to preview your store but removes the ability for them to purchase online.

• Set units of weight and measurement.

• Set the time zone for your online store.

• Enable inventory management for the store and customize the "In-Stock" and "Out-of-Stock" messages.  You can still enable or disable inventory for individual products.

• Select a discount mode to determine how discounts that are assigned to categories will behave when multiplies of items from the category are purchased.

• Enforce a minimum search length to ensure that customers are not able to enter invalid search terms that may impact the performance of your website.

Maintenance - These are scheduled events that run automatically.

• Remove anonymous users and their abandoned baskets from the database.  You decide how long to save the information.

• If you use affiliates, then you can select how long to save anonymous users with an affiliate association.

• Choose the number of days before a new gift certificate will expire.  Or, set them to never expire.

• For scheduled or unexpected maintenance, you can immediate close your store and display a custom message to let customers know the store is temporarily unavailable.

Page Tracking and Logs

• Enable tracking of page views.  You can see statistics about what categories and products are popular. It will also enable customers to see their recently viewed items.  Select number of days to maintain history and archive options.

• Add Google Analytics so you can take advantage of ecommerce and page tracking.

• AbleCommerce automatically records any program errors or email issues.  You can view the online error logs to make sure your store is running smoothly.

• Report bugs from any page and we'll get them fixed in the next scheduled release.

Security - Configuration of security settings

• Customize the requirements for you password policies.  Merchants and customers have separate password policies.  Set the minimum length, required characters, length of password history, maximum age, maximum login failures, and the lockout period.  You can also require CAPTCHA on the login page to prevent brute force attacks.

• Sensitive account data is encrypted within the database using a secret key. Without this key, the data cannot be read. You should change your key on a regular schedule, at least once per year but every 90 days is recommended.  Easily change, backup and restore encryption keys.

• You can decide to store credit card numbers or not.  Of course, the most secure option is to never save credit card information, but if you don't use a real time payment gateway, you can retain the details for post-order processing. If you choose to store credit card data, only certain user groups will be allowed to view the sensitive account data.  All credit card information is encrypted in the database and can only be viewed over SSL.

• Specify your own file types when new files are uploaded through the merchant menus.  Valid file types can be specified for your Images, Themes, and Digital Goods, so uploading of malicious files can be prevented.

• Security audit log shows all successful login attempts, unsuccessful login attempts, audit log views, password changes, and admin user views of customer credit card number. This information is retained for a minimum of 3 months. Only super users may view this log.

• Any user account can be disabled for fraudulent activity with the option of banning the IP.

• Orders can be marked as fraud for later investigation.

• The built-in Firewall allows you to block IP's, and IP ranges to help prevent fraud or to stop unwanted search engines from visiting your store. IP's of all users are tracked.

Regions - define geographical areas for calculation of tax and shipping

• Countries - AbleCommerce can be installed with all countries or just USA and Canada.  Countries are used to determine what locations you are going to sell or ship to.  When a country is added, it will be listed in all the address forms throughout AbleCommerce.  Customers from those countries will be able to place orders in your store.

• Provinces - A few countries, like USA, Canada, and Mexico, have been pre-populated with states or provinces.  You can add your own states or provinces for each country that you ship to.  This can make it more convenient for your customers to select from a list rather than typing the information into a form.

• Address Formatting - A country will also have an Address Format option which can be changed to display the correct address formatting on your invoices and receipts.  This feature allows you to easily comply with addressing standards.

• Zones - A zone is a defined geographical area using countries, provinces, or postal codes.  The zones can then be selected when you create shipping methods,  setup shipping services such as UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc., or define your tax rules.  When you assign a shipping method or tax to a zone, the calculation will only appear for customers who are using an address within that zone.

Shipping - setup shipping with an integrated service, create your own shipping methods, or use a combination of both.

Built-in shipping service integrations include UPS OnLine® Tools, FedEx, U.S. Postal Service, DHL International, CanadaPost, and AustraliaPost

Add custom shipping methods based on a fixed rate, or vary depending on order weight, order cost, or quantity purchased.

Include a separate handling fee that you can combine into the shipping cost or invoice separately.

With user groups, you can assign shipping methods so they are only available to specific users.

Using zones, you can create shipping methods that apply to specific areas.  Works great if you require certain types of shipping for specific areas.  e.g. perishable foods, plants and animals, etc.

For each shipping method, you can also define whether or not the shipping amount is taxable.

Merchants can set a minimum purchase and easily offer free shipping options when the purchase amount is at or over the amount specified.

The Tax Settings menu is where the merchant selects from various tax display options.  You can choose tax display options for both the catalog and also the basket and invoices.  Taxes can be displayed separately or included in the product price (VAT requirement).  You can also display a separate column that shows the tax rate for each item.

Create as many tax rules as needed.  A tax rule contains information about the rate of taxation, rounding rule, and to what addresses (zones) it will apply to.  Select the address that is taxed (billing or shipping) and apply a group filter if needed.

You assign each tax rule to  tax code.  Then, the tax code gets applied to the product.  This allows the product to have more than one tax rule applied.

Compounding (tax on tax) is also supported for our Canadian neighbors.

Email Templates

Email system supports standard SMTP server, ports, SSL, and server authentication.

AbleCommerce comes with sixteen pre-configured email templates.  Some emails are sent automatically when certain event occur, like a paid order.  Other emails are sent automatically with features like electronic software delivery, mailing lists, and verification processes.  You can add as many new email templates as needed, and they can all be customized.

Each email template includes a name, From address(es), To address(es), BCC address(es),  and subject.  The content of your email is an html file that you can edit within AbleCommerce or with any standard html editor.

AbleCommerce incorporates the NVelocity template engine.  Using NVelocity syntax, you can  substitute dynamic information in your email messages when they are generated.  This includes Variable Substitution, Standard Variables, .Net Syntax and Variable Formatting, Conditional Statements, and Looping.

You can also use Triggers to specify when an email should be sent.  Available triggers are listed below:

In AbleCommerce, warehouses are used to create real or virtual shipping origins.  You can create any number of warehouses, virtual or real, and assign products and shipping methods.  This association allows the merchant to provide product specific shipping methods.  For example, you could create a virtual warehouse for oversized products and then assign specific shipping methods to accommodate the special shipping requirements.  Warehouses, in a real physical location, can also be added for businesses that use drop-shipping.

Mobile Shopping

Users with mobile devices will be directed to the /mobile/ version of your store automatically.  The mobile store can have it's own theme and stylesheet so you can modify it to include smaller versions of your logo, buttons, etc.

There are settings to control the type of display, in grid or row format.  You can also set the Page Size to limit the number of items being shown to the mobile user.

Coupons - there are three types of coupons.

Order coupons - Provide a discount on the entire order. (e.g. 10% off the entire order)

Product coupons - Provide a discount for a specific line item. (e.g. Buy one get one free)

Shipping coupon - Provides a discount on shipping charges for an order. (e.g. Free UPS ground shipping)

The coupon discount can either be a fixed value or a percent off. (e.g. $10.00 off or 20% off)

Set a maximum amount the coupon is good for. (e.g. Save up to $100 dollars)

Set a minimum order value for the coupon to be valid. (e.g. Purchase $200 or more, and get 20% off)

You can specify a start date and an end date of when the coupon is valid.

You can set the maximum number of uses for a single customer or all customers. For example, an individual customer may only use the coupon once, or, only the first 50 customers may use  this coupon.

Choose whether to allow coupons to combined with other coupons.

Specify which products the coupon applies to.  A coupon can be valid for all products,  selected products, or be excluded from products.

A coupon can be applied to a user group so only selected users are allowed to use the coupon.

For shipping coupons, you can specify which shipping methods the shipping coupon is valid for.

View the Coupon Usage report to see which coupons are used the most.

Discounts - there are two types of discounts

Setup volume discounts by quantity of line items or by total price of line items.

Specify multiple discount levels, creating your own custom discount matrix.  See example:

~ Buy 1 to 10 get 10% off

~ Buy 11 to 20 get 15% off

~ Buy 21 or more, and get $50 off your order

Discounts can be a fixed amount off or a percentage of the total.

Create a global (store-wide) discount which affects all products in the store.

The discounts you create can be applied to products or categories.  If you apply the discount to a top-level category, it will be applied to all sub-categories and products within it.

Discounts can be applied to selected products which override the higher level category discounts. This allows you to remove or apply a different discount structure.

Discounts can be assigned to user groups so that only selected customers will be able to see the discount.

Available discounts are automatically displayed on the product page to encourage the customer to purchase more.

Affiliates -

Reward partners or affiliated web sites for referring business to your store.

Commission rate can either be a fixed amount or a percent of the products purchased. (e.g. $10.00 for each sale or 15% of the product total)

You can specify a referral period. (e.g. 365 days would give commissions on all sales made by the customer for 1 year)

Affiliate report shows sales, and commission amounts due to the affiliate.

Built-in support for third party affiliate system, AffiliateWiz.

Tracks affiliates name, address, country, city, state, zip, phone number, mobile number, fax number, email address, and web site address for easier management.

Mailing lists -

Maintain multiple email lists to encourage shoppers to return to your store or to provide helpful updates on existing products and services.

Mail list name and description are displayed during checkout or on the customer account page.

Maintain public and private email lists.  A list that is marked private will not be shown anywhere in the store, and a public list automatically appears when created.

Choose signup rules to require a user to opt-in by replying to an email, or just sends them a confirmation thanking them for joining.

You can customize the signup emails for each mail list if desired.

Tracks the last date and time an email was sent to the list.

Easy user maintenance allows you to quickly find, add, or remove users from a list.

Export the list in CSV format.

Product Feeds - there are three product feeds built-in.

• Google Base Feed - create and upload product feeds to Google Base.

• Yahoo! Shopping Feed - create and upload products using Yahoo!'s Product Submit.

• Shopping.com Feed - create and upload products to Shopping.com

One click creation and upload of products to supported feeds.

Integrated XML site map for Google and Yahoo submission. Increase these powerful search engines’ awareness of your site!

Sell a great product?  Then turn on product reviews and let your customers tell about it.  Product reviews can be monitored and approval required before they are displayed in your store.

Do you have some extra inventory you would like to move?  Make a product featured to display it in the Featured Products section.  

Search for users by last name, company name, email address, and by the user group their a member of.  Wild cards *, and ? are supported in the search, and you can also click on a letter from A to Z to retrieve the corresponding results.

Every user has a profile which can be viewed and modified by the merchant administrator.

Each user has the following information displayed on the user profile page:  

Username/Email address, and Group membership.  Customers can modify their email address and password through their own account pages.

Billing Address or a primary address.  This can also be modified by the merchant or customer.

If a customer has items in his/her basket, these will be shown to the merchant.  

A merchant can place an order on behalf of the customer.  Great feature for customers who call in to place orders!

View the customer's Order History and Page Views.

Create groups to manage customers and setup administrators of the AbleCommerce system.

Pre-defined Administrator groups (roles) -

Super Users can view/edit all aspects of the store including the security settings, and audit log required for PABP.

Admins can view/edit all aspects of the store except the security settings, and audit log.

Jr. Admins can view/edit all aspects of the store as the Admin can but are unable to assign other users as Admin users.

Order Admins can only access the order fulfillment areas.

Catalog Admins can only access the edit/add categories, and products.

Website Admins can only access the layout, and themes areas of the administration.

Report Admins are only allowed to view the reports.

The list above are suggested roles for AbleCommerce administrators.  You can create as many groups as needed with the ability to define permissions on a page by page basis.

There are many features in AbleCommerce that can be associated to user groups so that  selected members will be the only ones who can use certain coupons, qualify for volume discounts, have special pricing, see special shipping options, payment methods, or tax rules.  

With subscriptions, you can assign a user group to a subscription.  When the subscription is purchased, the customer is automatically added to the user group.  The automatic maintenance will remove users from groups when the subscription is expired.

Add Vendors to the system and associate products to each vendor.  When an item is sold from an associated vendor, an email notification of the items sold and shipping information is sent automatically to the vendor.

Easily manage your vendors and products with the Find and Assign Products feature.

Add Manufacturer name and associate products to a manufacturer.  This gives your customers the option to search products by Manufacturer or locate them with the Product Finder  (Amazon-style) search page.  

Easily manage your manufacturers and products with the Find and Assign Products feature.

Daily sales report with easy to use next day and previous day buttons. Includes order number, sales amount, shipping cost, tax amount, discounts, and coupons. Totals for all fields shown at the bottom of the page.

Monthly sales report with easy to use next month and previous month buttons. Includes order number, sales amount, shipping cost, tax amount, discounts, and coupons. Totals for all fields shown at the bottom of the page. A graph at the top of the page shows sales by day for the month.

Product sales by time period showing product name, quantity sold, and sales total. Sort by any field, ascending or descending.

Product popularity by total number of customer views.

Category popularity by total number of customer views.

Product low inventory report showing product which are at or below the reorder level. Update reorder level and quantity in stock directly from the report page.

Top customers report showing sales volume, and number of orders placed.

Abandoned basket report by month with link to view the basket details. If the customer entered their billing information there is an opportunity to contact the customer to save the sale or identify the reason.

Browser popularity by page views with pie graph. If you are making major changes to the store layout it's important to test with the browsers your customers are likely to be using.

Sales summary by month from affiliate referrals. Includes commissions total for each affiliate.

Sales order details by month from affiliate referrals showing all affiliates or selected affiliate.

Coupon usage report shows coupon name, number of orders, and total of orders that have used the coupon. Quickly track marketing efforts that have included coupons as incentive to revisit.

Who's online report shows customers that are actively browsing the store. Links to the customer profile page where you can view their current basket contents, and more.

Tax summary report, itemized by tax rule with selectable time periods.

The Audit Log records all administrator activies like logins, successful and failed, password changes, etc.  User's email and IP address is recorded.  Only a super user can view the audit log.

Upload a store logo for any Theme you select.  This is automatically placed in the header.

Upload a printable logo which will be used when you print invoices and packing slips from the merchant admin.

The Product Image Lookup by SKU feature is a great time saver for large product catalogs.  When this option is enabled, product image URLs are automatically calculated using the SKU so you don't have to manually assign images to each product.  Through the use of naming conventions, the images will automatically associated to the matching product.   

Just browse to any store page as an administrator and you will find the editing controls at the bottom.  Easily make changes from the front or back of the store!

Edit any page with ease by using the Layout editor. Change the header, footer, or instantly change the entire layout of the page.  Add sidebars that can display category lists, mini-basket, recently viewed, featured, and popular products.

Select from built-in store themes, copy and make them your own with the Theme Designer. You can change the theme in use by your store at any time. You can have any number of themes installed.  Use a single theme for all pages, or apply different themes to areas in your store.

Import or Export themes with the Themes File Manager.  Edit files directly, upload and manage images, skin files, css, and html files.

There are seven different Category display pages that you can choose from when designing your store.  Select a layout, theme, and apply them to categories in your store as needed.

There are three Product display pages that can be used with your layouts and themes.  Apply them to products in your store as needed.

The Webpages are your custom content pages like the Home Page and Contact Page that come with the sample data.  Create new webpages that can be part of your catalog system or separate.

Fixed Redirects can be used when you need to redirect one page to another.  To add redirects that cover many pages, or even whole directories using pattern matching (regular expressions), you can use Dynamic Redirects.

Everything added to the catalog can have it's own Custom URL.  This is an excellent feature for SEO, because you can type words into the URL that might include keywords, or when you need to make product changes, use it to help maintain position of a page that is already ranked well.

Full Text Indexing creates and maintains an index of the database. This helps improve performance when searching.

XML Sitemap is a specially constructed XML file that contains a list of all URLs for your site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Custom Extensions can be used change the page type from .aspx to something else like .htm.  The feature is not available if using Classic Asp.net.

Add as many currency display options in your store as needed.  The customer can select from the currency options available and display all prices in the customer's own monetary system with prices converted.

The store will have it's own default, or base, currency in which all transactions and prices will be displayed in the merchant administration.

For each currency, you can adjust the exchange rate manually or use one of the built-in automatic exchange rate services for free.

Foreign exchange providers:

- Bank of Canada

- European Central bank

For compounding taxes, or where tax is calculated on tax, there is an option to select another tax code that should be used to charge tax on the selected tax rule.  Compounding taxes are used in Canada.

Create multiple tax tiers.  (e.g. GST, PST, HST)

VAT is fully supported.  There are merchant display options to show prices with tax included and enable a separate tax column showing the tax rate being applied.

Integrated shipping gateways that support international origins and destinations:

• DHL International - Ship and track packages from many countries to destinations across the world.

• AustraliaPost - Ship packages from Australia to domestic and international locations.

• CanadaPost - Ship packages from Canada to domestic and international locations.

• UPS Online Tools - Ship and track packages from many countries to destinations across the world.

• FedEx - Ship and track packages from U.S. or Canada to places around the world.

Integrated payment gateways that support international transactions:

• Sagepay (aka Protx) - One of the largest payment providers in the United Kingdom.

• Google Checkout - used worldwide

• PayPal - used worldwide

• InternetSecure - used in Canada and USA

AbleCommerce provides you the ability to specify variables in the address format so that you can control how an address will be displayed or printed for each country. This will allow you to accommodate addressing regulations for the countries that you ship to.

Unit of Weights (Pounds, Ounces, Grams, or Kilograms)

Unit of Measurement (Inches or Centimeters)

TimeZone Offset - adjust all dates and times to the store's timezone.

Enter a list of countries that require the customer to enter a postal code at checkout.

Modify the web.config file to change the globalization culture and uiculture settings.

AbleCommerce supports these popular Payment Gateways:

• Amazon - Include the Amazon Checkout experience or a simple Amazon payment button. (post-order processing not available)

• Authorize.NET - Authorize, Authorize Capture, Capture, Void, Refund, Partial Refund, Recurring Billing

• Chase Paymentech (Orbital gateway) - Authorize, Authorize Capture, Capture, Void, Refund

• Cybersource - Authorize, Authorize Capture, Capture, Void, Refund

• Google Checkout - full level 2 integration, bi-directional payment processing
  Capture, Partial Capture, Refund, Partial Refund

• InternetSecure - Authorize Capture, Refund, Recurring Billing

• LinkPoint - Authorize, Authorize Capture, Capture, Refund, Recurring Billing

• ParaData - Authorize, Authorize Capture, Capture, Partial Capture, Void, Refund, Partial Refund

• PayJunction - Authorize, Authorize Capture, Capture, Void, Refund, Partial Refund, Recurring Billing

• PayPal - supports bi-directional payment processing
  Authorize, Authorize Capture, Capture, Partial Capture, Void, Refund, Partial Refund

• PayPal Payflow Pro - Authorize, Authorize Capture, Capture, Void, Refund, Partial Refund, Recurring Billing

• SagePay - Authorize, Authorize Capture, Capture, Void, Refund, Partial Refund

• SkipJack - Authorize, Capture, Partial Capture, Void, Refund, Partial Refund, Recurring Billing

Create as many payment methods as you need using the built-in forms for American Express, e-check, Diner's Club, Discover, JCB, Maestro, postal mail, MasterCard, phone order, purchase order, Switch/Solo, Visa, and Visa debit (Delta/Electron).  Match any of the credit card payment methods with one or more payment gateways for even more flexibility.  

You can even assign payment methods to selected user groups.  Works great for the purchase order payment method being available to approved customers.

AbleCommerce supports these popular Shipping Services:

• AustraliaPost - generate shipping rate estimates for your packages.

• CanadaPost - generate real-time shipping rates for your packages. It can also provide tracking details.

• DHL International - generate real-time shipping rates and provides tracking support for international shipments.

• FedEx - the integrated FedEx module can generate real-time shipping rates for your packages. It also can provide tracking details.

• UPS OnLine® Tools - the integrated UPS OnLine® Tools can calculate shipping rates for shipments originating from 37 countries to international destinations. It also can provide tracking details.

• U.S. Postal Service - calculate shipping rates for shipments originating in the United States, to both domestic and international destinations. It also can provide tracking details.

Shopping Feeds -

AbleCommerce has two built-in feeds generators that automatically update your feeds at the time intervals you specify.

• Google Base Feed - create and upload product feeds to Google Base.

• Shopping.com Feed - create and upload products to Shopping.com

All shopping feeds support file compression.  Any product can be excluded from a feed.

Integration with AffiliateWiz, tracking software and affiliate marketing software for managing an affiliate marketing program.  Just provide your tracking URL and we do the rest.

Website and ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics, a FREE business service.  Just enter your ID and follow the implementation instructions, and soon you'll be tracking valuable information for making those important marketing budget decisions.