Can I sell NCR Counterpoint kits in my NCR Retail Online store?
Summary:
NCR Retail Online, as well as NCR Counterpoint, do not support the ability to sell kits online. That stated, this article will provide some ideas for selling a "kit like" item in your NCR Retail Online store.
Solution:
Kits aren't technically supported by NRO, nor are they truly supported by NCR Counterpoint (from an ecommerce perspective). Some of our merchants have had success selling the KIT items published from NCR Counterpoint by manually configuring custom options on the kit item, on the NRO side.
KIT items will publish from NCR Counterpoint to NRO, but only the "parent" item will appear.
Although NCR Counterpoint can publish a kit item, it can't publish the items that comprise the kit in a way that will make them automatically appear on the NRO side as options attached to the kit item. But, manually configuring custom options might offer a way to create something very similar online to how kits are sold in NCR Counterpoint. To do so does require some manual effort. Please review this KB article to understand how custom options are configured on the NRO side.
There are some limitations of the work around that should be considered:
1. Although you're adding custom options that actually represent an inventory item in your brick and mortar store, the options chosen online do not import into Counterpoint as individual order lines. Orders containing the "kit" item with options
will come into Counterpoint and an order note notification will let you know that custom options were chosen. At this time, viewing the custom options will require accessing the order from the NRO admin panel and reading the custom options on the items where they were configured.
Also, when configuring custom options, you should NOT create a Sku on each option. Doing so will make that value append to the actual Counterpoint item number in the order line within the order file which will cause an import error. Instead, after importing the order with custom options, the order should be edited and the kit item should be
re-selected
. This will build the kit item and its pricing into the order allowing you to manually select the options chosen by the customer.
2. A
lthough you might sell the individual items in your NRO store that comprise the kit, their inventory isn’t reduced when customers choose the custom options you manually created to try to recreate your kit online.
3. Although some kit options might weigh more than others, there isn't a way to tie a weight to the options. Therefore, if your store uses a shipping method based upon item weight, you'll need to enter a weight on the main item that will help you gain enough money to cover shipping without overcharging the customer for shipping. **Note, shipping can be edited on an order after it is imported into Counterpoint.
3. You can't require a minimum quantity for each option. In other words, you can tell a customer to select two options from a multi-select drop menu option, but you can't make them choose two options. Instead, it would be better to set up individual prompts for what you want them to select and then make the custom option required.
4. Publishing these heavily modified orders back to NRO could cause an exception to occur which could require manual intervention to convert the order from Processing to Complete. This could be especially problematic, if you are not processing payments through Counterpoint.
If that doesn't sound like too much work, Custom Options might be a good fit for you!
To read ways to reduce these kinds of exceptions that will eventually occur, follow the instructions in this article that explain the proper way to edit ecommerce orders in Counterpoint:
To learn the benefits of processing payments through NCR Counterpoint, review this article:
To read how to enable processing ecommerce payments through Counterpoint, review this article:
Article ID: 617
Created On: Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 1:37 PM
Last Updated On: Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 2:06 PM
Online URL: http://help.ncrretailonline.com/article/can-i-sell-ncr-counterpoint-kits-in-my-ncr-retail-online-store.html