Stone Edge Questions

[sprentiss71267]

We are considering Stone Edge. I have a few questions that I am hoping some of you might know the answer to:

Do you HAVE to have the inventory levels upload to 3dcart. We do a lot of custom orders and I am not sure that I want my products to show up "backordered" which might deter a customer from ordering. Instead, after they place their order, they get a customized email from us in 3dcart explaining that their order is on hold and needs to be made by our crafter. I might decide to customize the messages on these products and use the inventory feature, but I just want to know if I HAVE to.

Do you process payment within 3dcart and bring the order over as paid or do you process your payment through Stone Edge?

Do you process shipment within Stone Edge? Does that send automated emails to the customer or does that go back to 3dcart for the sent email with tracking numbers, etc.?

Does the drop ship feature in 3dcart integrate with Stone Edge? In other words, do I set up this feature and bring the order over to Stone Edge as paid, drop shipped, etc. or can you manage that within Stone Edge.

If we do use the inventory tracking in 3dcart, how often does the information synchronize with Stone Edge and vice versa? In other words, if I sell a product in my retail store with Stone Edge point of sale, does it AUTOMATICALLY tell 3dcart to take that item out of its inventory or do I manually synchronize several times a day? Just wondering because if you only have 1 or 2 items in stock and you manage to sell it at the same time (what are the chances?) - someone is going to be disappointed.

What credit card processors are integrated with Stone Edge? Do I need to buy equipment for that or is it leased by the processor?

Do I have to buy the bar scanner that Stone Edge sells or will mine work that I already have?

Do I HAVE to be on a wired network or will wireless work ok for the 2 laptops to communicate with the desktop where the data files will be? If a wired network is better, can I use those ethernet adapters that use the electricity in the building? I have two buildings that are physically very close to one another. Can I use my laptop in the other building if I have a strong enough wireless signal (I guess the adapter thingy won't work if it's another building)?

These are a TON of questions which I can run by Stone Edge, but I was also hoping to hear some tricks from experienced users and how they utilize the program. I saw Barney was on here - can you answer these questions or shall I email you? You could call me also - www.thetinbin.com. Thanks a million for your input!

[widgets]

I didn't check my grammar and structure, if this reads like a bad draft, sorry, I don't have much time.

Inventory can be synced either way. As for keeping 3dcart's inventory count separated on purpose, can't really answer that, because we don't do it that way.

Process orders within stoneedge of course, lots of flexibility, like batch processing, and you can connect your weighing scale to stoneedge.

You can have stoneedge sent the email, or you can have 3dcart sent it. Because stoneedge has this 'status update' feature with 3dcart (one of the reasons I chose 3dcart compare to other carts), you can set stoneedge up in such a way that when you process an order in stoneedge, the order status also gets updated in 3dcart, which then triggers the order status email that 3dcart sends out when an order status changes. Again, you can set it up to have either stoneedge or 3dcart do that.

Managed dropship within Stoneedge of course, more powerful, can't get into the details here because I don't do much dropship.

You need to sync to get the inventory status. I am not really sure with the POS, because I am purely online, but I would imagine your retail store or POS acting as just another 'shopping cart channel', except you have the charging equipment. You need to direct POS equipment questions to Stoneedge, I believe they are selling some on their website.

You don't have to have a wired network for it to work. Not sure for POS systems though.
If you are talking about power-line networking, there is some controversy about using power lines for networking, I can't really think of a business that has utilize that in a business environment.

If your wireless is strong in the next building, then you can certainly use it, or you can use some kind of router booster to expand your signal, so that it might 'spread' to the next building. Really depends. You should try asking those questions on their forums too, more stoneedge knowledgable users there, but not sure how it is now with so much growth and all.

The only thing I can say is, for the mone,y Stone edge is worth it, there is however a huge learning curve and always some bugs, which they will fix, 2 years ago, they remotely help me fix some bug. Not sure how good their service is now.

I can't tell how good they are now, because I am not using it that much (haven't even use their new interface). I am slowly closing down one of my 3dcart sites and starting with another cart somewhere else, just to see how well it works with Stoneedge, but that can take a few months to a year before I even need to use Stoneedge. Stoneedge seems to be improving by leaps and bounds, and even with the current pricing, I think it is very worth it if you have more than 20 orders a day.

[Barney Stone]

Widgets did a pretty good job of answering your questions (thanks, Widgets!), but I am going to answer them again to make sure everything is clear.

Real-time inventory tracking, where the Order Manager keeps everything in synch among your various sales channels, is optional. There are very interesting arguments for and against using real-time inventory tracking, but the bottom line is that it depends on your business model, and obviously yours weighs against it. Note that it is also possible to track inventory for some items, but treat others as always in stock.

Credit card processing is very flexible. You can either do the full charge in the shopping cart, just get a pre-authorization in the cart and let the Order Manager capture the funds when you are ready to ship (that's probably the most popular option among our users), or do all credit card processing in the Order Manager.

You will probably use the Order Manager for shipping. The Order Manager can send tracking emails to your customers and/or send status and tracking data back to 3dCart.

Likewise, you will probably use the Order Manager to handle your drop shipping. It can create the drop ship POs and send them to your vendors. It can split orders among drop shippers and items that you ship yourself as necessary. And its PO system lets you reconcile your drop ship and stocking POs against your vendors' invoices and send the bills to QuickBooks for payment.

Inventory updates for changes that occur in the Order Manager (e.g. new stock received, POS or phone sales, etc.) are sent to your shopping cart(s) automatically, and usually within a minute or two. Updates due to Web sales happen in the Order Manager when you import the orders, which is done manually (just a button click) as often as you like.

The list of supported credit card processors can be found here. No special hardware is required, and we just work with your existing gateway account(s).

Most modern barcode scanners will work with the Order Manager. The only requirements are that the scanner input appears to the computer as keyboard input, and you have to be able to program a prefix and suffix into the scanner.

We do not recommend using a wireless LAN with the Order Manager. In fact, we recommend at least 100BaseT and preferably a gigabit Ethernet LAN. I'm not sure about the LAN over AC adaptors - it would depend on how fast they are and what the error rates are like. If you are stuck with wireless, you could use Remote Desktop, GoToMyPC, Terminal Services or a similar system, which should work fine.

FYI - a little over 100 of our roughly 2,500 users are using 3dCart.

I am glad to answer any other questions you have here in the Forum. Also feel free to give us a call at 610-994-3699.