Future store updates planned (backend)

[exxos]

Spoke to Sage a little this morning. Getting somewhat confused currently.

Payments like EPS, iDeal etc have their own fees (higher) but I also need a Euro bank account, which is £24 a year with LLOYDS. But I can't see if Euro payments "bank to bank" have fees or not. These normally vary from £10-£20 a transaction, which is why I don't accept IBAN because of the fees.


EDIT:

Right so this looks like its going to be a nogo with EPS,iDeal etc. While it seems EU payments and free, I need a Euro bank account, which is £24 a year, but also there is a additional charge because of some "middle-man-bank" where I would be charged £20 a month for. So it would basically be a standing charge of about £320 a year just to accept EU payments

This doesn't effect credit or debit charges.. Its hard to compare Stripe vs Sage, as Stripe charge 20p a transaction plus a % fee... Sage charge a % fee and a standing charge which is fixed each month.

Problem with that system is, quiet months where I may only take a couple of orders, I would still have to pay £20 standing charge. But taking the year as a whole, it shouldn't, in theory, work out any different than the Stripe charges.. This is assuming the number of transactions each year I get doesn't suddenly drop. As for example, if I only had a couple of low value orders a month, it wouldn't pay for the standing charge. If that happened all year, it would actually cost me to keep my store open.

Problem overall, is I am on the middle ground between Stripe and Sage's charges. Low number of transactions, Stripe would be better on a "per transaction basis" but higher transactions, Sage would be better. Either way, I can't use Stripe anymore anyway, so don't have much choice really.

EDIT2:

I think what annoys me is Sage state "no hidden fees" but actually there is (which is no surprise) As if you want to take EPS, iDeal etc, there is a £20 a month fee to have a PPRO bank account to use such payments. Plus a PPRO transaction fee. So to me this qualifies for "hidden fees" in my book

It would actually be cheaper just to have a Euro bank account to accept SEPA payments direct from the customer. But problem is the "manual" processing of orders which I just don't have time to do Because my time is limited, I have pretty much zero involvement in running my store. Though years ago I did try to do such things, but it just took up so much time it was unreal

[exxos]

Signup has begun with Sage. Though I am in a que to sign up with worldpay as thats who Sage use.. Odd this comes back to the oddity with the fees (hence the poll in the other thread).

https://online.worldpay.com/pricing

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So I assume Sage could do a "pay as you go" account even though there was no mention of it anyway

Even so, Sage said the fees were 1.5% each

EDIT:

Worldpay called it the simplicity package, so they must do various ones

EDIT2:

Signed up with Worldpay now, somehow think whats the point of signing up with Sage if I had to sign up with Worldpay anyway

[exxos]

I guess I am in limbo for the next several days on the payment system now.

I'm starting work on the store front end, which is mostly ripping out all the JS stripe stuff, and I want to update how the cookies work.. as it was like 3 years ago since I wrote all this code, its going to take some figuring out even before I can even start doing the changes. So this is going to likely keep me busy for a while. I'm also getting busy with my day job this time of year, so I am only really going to have a couple afternoons a week to even work on it all

[exxos]

PLANNED CHANGES :

Removing Item Options:
Item options such as selecting the cable length with the MMU upgrade (15cm,22cm,30cm cables) will be removed and those items will have their own stock code instead. Partly because sometimes people want to order different cables at a later date, and partly because I cannot store this information in the cookie, so people would have to select it again in the basket, this system was just simply a bit crappy and I never had chance to program it because I was under pressure to get my web store online again at the time.


Postage system revamp:
The fixed postage costs are actually going to be removed. At the moment if someone ordered 1 PSU, postage charged would actually be correct, but if the same person ordered 2 PSU's for example, the extra weight and postage costs are not factored into the order. So technically people would actually get the discount on ordering multiple heavy items as a postage costs never increased.On the reverse side of this, some lighter weight items would fractionally be overcharged on postage. The postal system I am currently using is basically a overall average which does work reasonably well. Most of the time...

There is also a small issue that if someone orders over a 2KG package, these cannot be sent by Royal mail, and actually have to go by Parcelforce where the price considerably jumps up to like £50+. This has only happened a small number of times, and we actually send out 2 smaller package to avoid the costs, but again the cost of posting 2 packages was not included in the postal pricing. So I would make for example, a £13 loss on the order because of footing the bill for extra postage costs.

The problem with a general/fixed postal price, Is that when Royal mail change prices, I then have to recalculate every single item in my store, currently 160+ items 3 times (UK,EU,USA post) . A lot of the time I end up undercharging for postage prices, as they have increased, and it can often take me several months before I get chance to recalculate them all.

So the new store will go to a weight system. Where I will just simply weigh every single item, and these values will go into the database. This way I can have a, lookup table for postage prices and will be much easier to maintain. This also means postage prices will be more accurate, so this will benefit myself in some cases, and also benefit buyers with a more accurate postage costs. Of course as a side note, postage costs to also include packaging etc


Backend changes:
Currently the stripe system is fully integrated into my store. All this will be removed. The new store on checkout will redirect to the payment processor site to take the payments. This way if there is any more stupid regulations appearing in the future, these should be updated on the payment processor page, which is all external to my store. This will allow me to change payment processors much more easily in the future should I need to.


Payment methods:
Stripe only supported credit cards ( they may have accepted debit cards but only for only USA run stores) , in any case, I'm hoping the new payment processor will be able to accept credit cards and debit cards. Hopefully this will make things a little easier for people to order. As mentioned previously, I was looking into accepting other payment methods like "eps" and "ideal" etc but this would end up costing me around £300 a year to run the accounts for it all. So unfortunately those additional payment methods are just not viable at the moment.


Current store:
Will remain online as long as possible. Likely it will be the EU transactions which will fail after the 14th next month, but I do not know if outside of EU transactions will fail either, I assume they will not. If the orders stop totally dead, then I will probably just take the store off-line until the new one is ready and assume nobody can purchase anything by stripe any more.

it could also be possible I may break existing store (but I am working on a copy of it elsewhere on the server) as I need to do some changes to the database etc.


Basket items:
The new store script only displays items which are actually in your basket..
So before it would display something like this for every item...

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Now it will just display the buy button and not a zero quantities.. The items added in your basket will still show like below as normal..

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I think this will speed up the rendering of the page somewhat as it is a lot less processing to be done.


Other info:
Change the store layout and make it totally alien and un-usable

[exxos]

A lot of the php and JS has been re-programed now. Before "all" store items were stored in the cookie, but now only basket items are. This was done as it was getting a concern how much data a cookie could take before things broke. I found a couple of odd css bugs as well and fixed. Most of the stripe code has now been removed also.

Most of today was taken up weighing stock items and doing as general stock check as we went along. Part of the new postal price system has been programmed also.

Will be a few more days until that system is finished.. So likely won't be progress posted here for a while now.. but then its basically waiting/working on the new integration of the payment system.

[exxos]

I have been puzzling over the postage prices for the last two days.

This was some cause of confusion as in actual fact packages sent within the EU are actually being charged 20% VAT ?! countries which are in Europe were not in the EU, are VAT free... Why does this just sound backwards ?!

So this basically means, countries within Europe, Who are not in the European Union,such as Switzerland , Prices are actually VAT free.

Then the same package to be sent to somewhere within Europe, and within the European Union, such as France, will actually be charged VAT on the postage.

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EDIT:

Ah small print again..

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So they assuming the government's 20% VAT on items when nothing has even been figured out yet with the EU rates... RM shouldn't be collecting VAT on stuff at this time anyway

So this must have come into effect last march

[IngoQ]

AFAIK: VAT is a EU tax. It is always applied by the country, where the goods originated (in this case the delivery charge in the UK). When you export to outside the EU, VAT does not apply, so it is zero-rated. Whoever buys the goods, and therefore acts as importer is then responsible for paying the respective taxes in his county. Since the delivery is in a way "consumed" outside the EU, I guess the same applies there.

[exxos]

AFAIK: VAT is a EU tax. It is always applied by the country, where the goods originated (in this case the delivery charge in the UK). When you export to outside the EU, VAT does not apply, so it is zero-rated. Whoever buys the goods, and therefore acts as importer is then responsible for paying the respective taxes in his county. Since the delivery is in a way "consumed" outside the EU, I guess the same applies there.

I updated my post above just as well... This isn't import charges, it is actually the price to post the item..

What Royal mail have started doing, is assuming the government's standard VAT rates and charing to EU countries, which really they should not be doing... There are not charging 20% to Sweden (unless they used to and now don't)

[IngoQ]

IMHO VAT can only be zero-rated, if the goods are not "consumed" within the EU. And it seems that postage fees for goods that leave the EU are considered "consumed" outside the EU (at least in part) and therefore not subject to VAT.

[exxos]

I don't get it. I've gone back to 2016 prices and VAT is charged on sending packages to EU then as well. I thought the whole point of being in the EU was not to charge ourselves VAT

Sweden is VAT free and cheaper to send packages than within the EU. On that basis, if France left the EU, packages would be 20% cheaper to send there.. bizzare.