[ic] Using IC to track orders and estimates/costs

[Carlc Internet Services]

> -----Original Message-----
> Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 07:58:23 +0200
> From: "Stefan Hornburg (Racke)" <racke at linuxia.de>
> Subject: Re: [ic] Using IC to track orders and estimates/costs
> To: interchange-users at icdevgroup.org
> Message-ID: <4CBFD67F.7020700 at linuxia.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> On 10/20/2010 10:31 PM, Henry Hartley wrote:
> > I've been put in touch with a gentleman who makes and 
> repairs bows for
> > stringed instruments. He's interested in a web site that 
> will allow him
> > to have customers select various combinations of materials or select
> > certain repairs to be made but the price will be figured 
> out manually
> > and applied to the order. He'd like the system to handle 
> sending e-mails
> > with the estimate to the potential customer, who would then need to
> > approve (or not) the order before the work would actually 
> be done. He
> > also wants to track some of the more traditional customer 
> relations type
> > information, such as purchase history and discounts for every 5th
> > purchase (for example).
> >
> > I don't know all the details but I'd like to be well armed 
> before I get
> > too involved with him. It's been a long time since I did 
> anything with
> > Interchange, although I am still on the mailing list. Has 
> anyone done
> > anything like this -- managing estimates and getting 
> confirmations, etc.
> > with IC? Or is this a case where I might be better off 
> writing a custom
> > app from scratch?
> >
> 
> The key point for an application like this is the design of 
> the database
> structure. Interchange can certainly be used with custom 
> database structures.
> I did this in several successful projects, so there is no 
> need for the effort
> to write a custom application instead of using Interchange.
> 
> Regards
> 	Racke

Racke is correct. I built something similar years ago for a blinds company. I created the pricing database as multiarray so that
as you pick the different pieces, it would calculate the proper cost. If I recall, it was three dimensions (width, length,
thickness/type of blind). You can do this in interchange and in my opinion, is one of the strongest reasons to use interchange
over other carts because you can do very heavy customized work of this type in interchange easily. I seem to remember I also had
it as a loadable csv file (the original multiarray was in .xls format) and they would upload any price changes/configuration
changes via the interchange control panel. But this was back with interchange 5.0, so it's been about 7-8 years ago.

Carl
http://www.carlc.com/ - Hosting Interchange (Mvend) for over 10 years now.