Introduction > X-Cart Key Features > 

Configuration

Users/Orders Management

All information about orders, including customer order histories, is stored in the store's database. This allows you to easily manage your customers' orders. No matter how long ago an order was placed, you can find it in the database at any time. The order search form allows you find orders by the time period when they were placed and, if you wish, to adjust more search parameters  (like order id, order creation date, order status, name of the customer who placed the order, product title contained in the order, etc). For any order stored in the database, you can view the order details, print out an invoice or update the order status.

X-Cart allows export of users and orders to CSV format. This means that user profiles and information about orders can be exported from an X-Cart store to a specially formatted plain text file where information is stored in a very simple format, with one record on each line, and each field within that record separated by a delimiter symbol (tab, comma or semicolon). CSV representation of user data provides a convenient way to transfer users from one store to another, which allows you to keep your user base when moving your store to another location. CSV representation of order data allows you to easily arrange information about your store's orders in such a way that it can be read by your accounting software.

X-Cart allows you to assign tracking numbers to orders. Orders that are shipped by UPS, USPS, FedEx or Australia Post services and have a tracking number assigned can be tracked in real time. To track an order shipped by these services, you will only need to click the 'Track it!' button on the details page of the respective order, and you will be redirected to the site of the respective postal service where all the necessary information can be obtained.

X-Cart provides a user-friendly checkout procedure that allows your customers to complete their purchase in 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Customers specify their personal and contact information, billing and shipping addresses (Registered customers skip this step: they just log in to their customer account and use the information stored in their profile).

Step 2: Customers select a shipping and a payment method for their order.

Step 3: Customers provide information required to complete payment by the selected payment method.

Order invoices that are issued by your store are based on templates and can be easily customized. E-mail notifications that are sent to store users are also template-based and can be changed.

X-Cart allows you to grant memberships to your customers. It is possible to set up your store in such a way that customers of different memberships will be able to purchase the same products at different prices, to get different discounts, etc. It is also possible to limit access of customers to certain categories, products, payment methods, etc by membership. The number of customer memberships that can be defined is unlimited, and you can name them whatever you like (for example, "Premium", "Wholesale", "VIP", etc).

It is possible to print invoices for selected orders.

It is possible to print shipping labels for selected orders.

If you use QuickBooks as your accounting software, you may be interested to know that X-Cart supports export of data to QuickBooks format. The process is as simple as clicking a button.

Products Management

For products that come in different variations (like t-shirts that come in different colors, sizes or materials, or books that come in hard or soft cover), it is possible to define product options.

X-Cart supports product options of three types - price modifier, product variant and custom text field. Options of the price modifier type allow you to establish the prices of product variations relatively to the base price of the product. Options of the product variant type allow you to establish the prices of product variations independently of the base price and allow you to track the quantity of different product variations in stock. Options of the custom text field type do not affect the product price, but provide a custom input field that your customers can use to describe the desired characteristics of the product.

X-Cart allows you to define an unlimited number of options of any type for as many products as you like.

If certain information that you would like to provide about your products does not fit into the standard fields of X-Cart's 'Product details' form, you can add some custom, non-standard fields to this form and use them to publish this information. The number of custom fields that you are allowed to add is unlimited. Please note that X-Cart will be able to use these fields in product search.

X-Cart allows you to have free prices for selected products. The term "free price" means that the price of a product is defined by the customer who purchases this product. When a product is sold at a free price, an empty input field is provided on its product details page in the Customer zone instead of the price defined by the product provider. A customer can use this field to enter any price that he or she thinks appropriate. The product is added to the customer's shopping cart with the price specified by the customer. The order is placed as usual. The product provider reviews the order, and if he or she finds the price offered by the customer adequate, the store administrator processes the order. All you need to do to allow your customers to purchase a certain product at a free price is use the 'Product details' page in the back-end of your store to set the product's price to 0 (zero).

It is possible to use HTML tags in product descriptions.

X-Cart allows you to add detailed images for your products. The number of detailed images that can be added for a product is unlimited. It is possible to add detailed images to products one by one, or to import images for all your products at once.

Images used in your store can be stored either in the database or on the file system. By default, all images are stored in the database. If your database performance is poor or your database size is limited, you may prefer to move some or all of your store's images to the file system.

In an X-Cart-based store, products exist in categories. Each product belongs to at least one category. If you wish to place a certain product in more than one category, you can specify additional categories for it. Any product can be displayed in as many categories as you like.

Many customers prefer shopping by brand/manufacturer. X-Cart allows you to specify a manufacturer for each of your products. When the products in your store have defined manufacturers, a menu is provided in the Customer zone that allows your customers to view products sorted by manufacturers.

X-Cart allows you to add thumbnail images for your products. The recommended size for thumbnail images is from 50x50 px to 150x150 px.

X-Cart allows you to export product data from your store database to a CSV file and to import CSV-formatted product data from an external file into your store database. This feature allows you to work with large amounts of product data more effectively. Here's how: CSV format is compatible with MS Excel and a number of other spreadsheet editors. You can export information about some or all of your products from the store database to a CSV file and then import the CSV file into your favorite spreadsheet editor program. In this program, the information exported from your store will be presented in the form of a table. You will be able to quickly edit the information contained in the table, save the results to CSV format and then re-import the resulting file into your store. This way, updating of your product information will take a lot less time than it would if you used the standard method of editing each product through X-Cart's web interface. In addition to making the procedure of updating product data faster and easier, X-Cart's ability to export/import data in CSV format has a number of other usages. For example, it can be used to add new products to the store database or to transfer your existing products from one store to another. 

Froogle is an extension of Google search engine dedicated to helping shoppers quickly find products for sale on the Web. X-Cart provides a module that allows you to list your products in Froogle by submitting product information to GoogleBase directly from your store. The module pulls data from all the products in your store database, creates a properly formatted product feed file and uses FTP to submit this file to Google Base. Google Base then places the submitted product information in Froogle. With X-Cart's Froogle/GoogleBase module, submitting product information to Froogle is very easy, so you can perform it often enough to ensure freshness and accuracy of information about your products in Froogle listings.

Store Configuration (Shipping and Tax, Modules, Countries & etc.)

For a customer wishing to place an order, the cost at which the order will be shipped bears significant importance. Stores that ship orders using USPS, FedEx or UPS can be adjusted to receive realtime shipping rates from the respective postal services and calculate an estimated cost of shipping of the order by the selected service before the order is placed. Shipping rates from UPS, USPS and FedEx can be received through InterShipper service or directly from the respective postal services. To use real-time shipping calculation at your store, you will need an account with each service that you will use for shipping orders to customers or with InterShipper.

X-Cart allows you to define an unlimited number of shipping methods for your store.

X-Cart provides you with a flexible mechanism to define your custom shipping rules. You can combine real-time shipping calculations with manually defined shipping rules, do your own shipping markups over carriers' estimate, etc.

X-Cart allows you to state the shipping rates for each shipping method defined for your store. You can define the flat shipping charge, Charge as % of the Total Amount Ordered, Flat Shipping Charge Per Item Ordered, Flat Shipping Charge Based on Product Weight or their combination.

It is possible to define a weight limit (maximum weight that can be shipped) for each of the shipping methods used by your store.

X-Cart allows you to define markups (extra charge, percentage surcharge) for real-time calculated shipping methods. This can be useful when your shipping expenses exceed the value returned by the real-time shipping calculation service (For example, this may be the case if you have to pay an extra fee for packing, insurance, etc). The markups you define are added to the values returned by the real-time shipping calculation services.

With X-Cart, you can offer your customers free shipping for selected products.

If you have any special expenses associated with the packaging or shipping of certain products, you can define a shipping freight (additional handling charge) for each of such products to cover these expenses.

If your store sells a product that you do not wish to sell to customers from a certain location (like state or country), you can restrict customers from this location from ordering this product.

X-Cart can be used to sell electronically distributed products such as books, films, legal documents, etc. A customer who purchases a downloadable product is provided with a link that allows him or her to download the product to his or her computer. The link is valid for a limited period of time.

X-Cart is extremely flexible in the part where you set up taxes and tax rates. It allows you define virtually any tax and tax rate by providing a formula according to which they can be calculated.

X-Cart allows you to set up an unlimited number of taxes and to specify, which of these taxes should be applied to each specific product.

X-Cart can calculate tax and shipping costs based on the customer's location. Technically, it is done as follows: You divide the territory to which you are going to sell and ship products into several destination zones (A destination zone is a unity consisting of territories for which shipping and tax rates are the same). Then, you define taxes, tax rates, shipping methods and shipping rates for each of the defined destination zones. When a customer places an order, X-Cart uses the address that he or she provides on checkout to define the destination zone from which this customer originates. Based on the shipping and tax rates defined for this destination zone, X-Cart calculates the cost of shipping and tax that should be applied to the order.

X-Cart allows you to have non-taxable products at your store along with taxable products.

Payment System Configuration

With X-Cart software, you can specify a currency in which you will accept payments. All prices in your store will be displayed in that currency.

X-Cart supports more than 100 credit card payment gateways, e-check and payment systems. Multi-gateway support gives you the ability to switch easily from one payment gateway to another in case you are not satisfied with the service. For a full list of payment gateways and systems supported by X-Cart, refer to the page http://www.x-cart.com/xcart_payment_gateways.html on X-Cart website.

X-Cart allows you to perform manual (offline) processing of credit card payments. Manual CC processing presupposes that credit card details are provided by customers not to a payment gateway, but to the store itself. The store admin uses the credit card information provided by a customer to process the customer's order. After a payment is verified, the store admin manually changes the status of the respective order to 'Processed'.

Note that X-Cart allows you to define the types of credit cards that you wish to accept at your store.

In addition to offline processing of credit cards, X-Cart provides a number of other payment methods that can be processed offline:

- Phone Ordering

- Fax Ordering

- Money Order (US Banks Only)

- Cashiers Check or Cash Only

- Personal Check (US Funds only)

- Business Check (Drawn on US Bank and in US Dollars)

- Wire Transfer (Our bank account details you can find in help section)

- Government Check (US Funds Only)

- Traveler's Check (US Funds Only)

Security

X-Cart supports SSL technology to ensure that the online store on the server and the browser on the client's machine can communicate in a secure way. When a customer visits store pages where sensitive information is entered or displayed, X-Cart automatically switches to HTTPS/SSL protocol. When this protocol is used, sensitive data is transmitted between the online store and the client's machine in encrypted form.

You can adjust the authorization pages of the Admin, Customer and Provider (X-Cart PRO) zones of your store to provide links to separate pages from which the users of your store will be able to log in to the respective zones via HTTPS. Also you can enable your customers to stay in HTTPS all the time.

Access to the back-end of your X-Cart store is password protected. There is also an intrusion detection system that notifies the store administrator if someone's attempt to log in to the store fails.

Sensitive customer information contained in the order details is encrypted using the Blowfish encryption algorithm.

X-Cart can be used with a PGP encryption program to ensure security of notification emails that are sent to the orders department. PGP uses public key encryption, a system that provides with privacy and authentication both the sender and the recipient of the message.

Note: PGP version 6.0 or above is required.

X-Cart allows you to receive real-time security notifications about all failed login attempts.

X-Cart's Antifraud Service module helps you to minimize the risk of fraudulent payments made at your store. It enables your store to use a fraud screening service provided by our company on a subscription basis. This service screens all new orders placed at your store. As a result of screening, a numeric value called the "Fraud risk factor" is calculated for each order. If this value exceeds a certain threshold, a note is placed in the order details with an explanation of what is suspicious about the order. The order itself gets suspended so you can review its details and decide whether you wish to process it or not.

X-Cart's Stop List module helps you to protect your store from internet fraud. It allows you to forbid access to checkout from certain IP addresses.

You do not need to have much knowledge in MySQL database administration to make database backup copies or to restore the database. X-Cart shopping cart software provides you with a convenient tool making database backup/restoration as easy as a few clicks.