12 replies to this topic

[teleute]

I have a current client in the Netherlands (my first one outside of North America, so it's been a learning experience). They're telling me there is a law that all order numbers have to be sequential. For test orders, I suppose I can just delete them and reset the number afterwards. But they're saying that if the customer makes a mistake, and they accidentally place two orders instead of one, that has to be corrected for in the order numbering. How on earth do people do this? Do you have to manually adjust your db each time a customer makes a mistake? And what if orders were placed in the interim between the mistake and you finding out about it?

Also, does this only apply to web orders? Or are phone/fax orders supposed to be incorporated in this somehow too? Their other business does 95% phone/fax orders, and only a handful of "web" orders that they process manually, so they just manually give an order number to each as they process. But if they try to do something like that here then 1. high volume could make this ridiculously time consuming and 2. customers would get one number from osC, and another from the company later (which is pretty awful). I suppose they could just put those orders into osC by acting like they're the "customer", although it doesn't seem like it would be the smoothest customer service experience.

Anyone else in a country with a similar law? How do you handle it?

Thanks!

[burt]

If a customer makes a mistake order, the shop owner will just mark it as so. The numbering stays sequential.

I have not heard that sequential numbering is "law", I suspect that is BS - but you never know with all the new laws we get each day in Europe.

[Jon1982]

I've never heard of any law like that in Europe; I'd check with your client for some kind of verification before complicating your system spec just to adhere to that law.

[teleute]

Jon1982, on Sep 30 2008, 09:06 AM, said:

I've never heard of any law like that in Europe; I'd check with your client for some kind of verification before complicating your system spec just to adhere to that law.

They're quite adamant about it...no budging.

[Jack_mcs]

If you are saying that if a customer order number is 1 and his next order number must be 2, that isn't possible with oscommerce. If you are saying that if his order number is 1 and this next number is greater than 1, then that is how it works. Consider this, customer A places an order with an order of ID of 1. At the same time, or shortly thereafter, customer B places an order with an order ID of 2. Now cusotmer A decides he has made a mistake and re-orders. He can't have order ID of 2 since it is already taken. For a shop to be able to have sequential order numbers for each customer would require quite a bit of rewriting to allow each customer to have their own order ID system. I truly doubt that any shop does it that way since it presents all sorts of coding problems.

Jack

[teleute]

Jack_mcs, on Sep 30 2008, 12:09 PM, said:

If you are saying that if a customer order number is 1 and his next order number must be 2, that isn't possible with oscommerce. If you are saying that if his order number is 1 and this next number is greater than 1, then that is how it works. Consider this, customer A places an order with an order of ID of 1. At the same time, or shortly thereafter, customer B places an order with an order ID of 2. Now cusotmer A decides he has made a mistake and re-orders. He can't have order ID of 2 since it is already taken. For a shop to be able to have sequential order numbers for each customer would require quite a bit of rewriting to allow each customer to have their own order ID system. I truly doubt that any shop does it that way since it presents all sorts of coding problems.

Jack

No, I'm saying this. Customer X places an order (1), and accidentally places another (2). Then customer Y places order 3, and so on. My client is saying that order number 2 isn't a real order (let's say they realise their mistake, call in and cancel) and so it has to be used for a 'real' order, not just skipped.

[Jan Zonjee]

burt, on Sep 30 2008, 01:12 PM, said:

I have not heard that sequential numbering is "law", I suspect that is BS - but you never know with all the new laws we get each day in Europe.

The Dutch tax office is quite clear on this. Invoice numbers should be sequential, no gaps allowed.
Then again, osCommerce is not a book keeping program (very easy to tamper with ) so I don't think the shop keeper can get away with using osCommerce as such.

[burt]

Jan - very unclear if not a speaker of dutch

Making a wrong order, does not create a gap. It simply creates an order that needs to be treated differently than a real order, surely?

[Jan Zonjee]

burt, on Sep 30 2008, 10:27 PM, said:

Jan - very unclear if not a speaker of dutch

True.

Quote

Making a wrong order, does not create a gap. It simply creates an order that needs to be treated differently than a real order, surely?

To my knowledge you would need to create a "counter invoice" for a wrong order. This would compensate for the wrong order but leave the numbers sequential. Of course standard osC does not have an option for manually adding such a "counter invoice".

Anyway, I would think it would be far better to use a real bookkeeping program to satisfy the tax office (and an accountant). For that I think it would be best to have an option to import orders to the bookkeeping program and probably export the "real" invoice numbers into osC again (for when your customers check their order statuses).

Just my two cents. I'm a chemist, not a bookkeeper

[teleute]

Jan Zonjee, on Sep 30 2008, 02:59 PM, said:

True.

To my knowledge you would need to create a "counter invoice" for a wrong order. This would compensate for the wrong order but leave the numbers sequential. Of course standard osC does not have an option for manually adding such a "counter invoice".

Anyway, I would think it would be far better to use a real bookkeeping program to satisfy the tax office (and an accountant). For that I think it would be best to have an option to import orders to the bookkeeping program and probably export the "real" invoice numbers into osC again (for when your customers check their order statuses).

Just my two cents. I'm a chemist, not a bookkeeper

So they'd potentially have two different order numbers? One from the email they got, and the "real" one? That seems like it would be confusing to the customer, not to mention everyone else...

[Pipeloops]

As a matter of fact the same law is applicable in Germany. Your invoices MUST have consecutive numbers and there MUST NOT be gaps in the numbering, this is required by tax laws.
The problem I am having is with gaps in the numbering. It appears that there are situations (I don't know when that happens) that orders are created with a new number but not stored in the database, and when the next order is created the number is not being reused. This leads to holes in the order list. I don't have problems with aborted or leftover orders that are in the orders table. I can manually set them to "cancelled" and print the required invoices to fill the gaps there (could even be done by a script I guess). But I do have a problem with the missing ones in between, there is no information about them in the database.
Can anyone explain to me how the order numbering works in osCommerce, i.e. when are the numbers assigned (and by what script), and when is the order stored (or not stored or deleted) in the database? I need to find a way to ensure that either those aborted orders are stored in the database or, if they are stored but later deleted in the process, that this deletion does not happen. Then I could easily get my invoice numbers without gaps in it.

Best regards
Reiner

[WoodsWalker]

Back for a second to what Jan brought up ... osCommerce is not optimized for accounting or even bookkeeping. It is usually not optimal to use osCommerce this way, for anyone doing a substantial amount of business.

Allison's client may wish to (and really ought to) keep books and issue invoices from a system separate from their online ordering setup.

We do that in my business, and although there is some duplication of effort, our bookkeeping and communication with the customer is much sleeker and better-looking (aside from being accurate!).

As for the "order number" that the customer receives from the osC shop, that part of the email can easily be deleted so that they do not receive a number in their online confirmation. They should likely simply get a confirmation, and then a proper invoice, marked "paid" in the mail or with their parcel.

Hope this helps,
~Wendy
p.s.: If you want to modify the "Order Number" part of the confirmation email, see:
/catalog/checkout_process.php around line 233,
and/or
/catalog/includes/languages/english/checkout_process.php around line 14.

Edited by WoodsWalker, 10 October 2008, 23:53.

[MrPhil]

OK, I can understand a law stating, to avoid funny business, that invoices be in sequential order 1,2,3,4,... No problem there. The idea is to avoid gaps that are hiding something. This is why legal record books (such as a registry of deeds) have that swirly paint pattern on the edges of pages, to make it obvious that pages have been deleted or inserted. That just makes good business sense, too. Cash registers with continuous recording paper tapes were invented to keep cashiers from pocketing customer payments.

Now, for an individual customer, there is absolutely no way to guarantee that they receive adjacent invoice numbers (n, n+1). Another customer could always "sneak in" between the first transaction and the second transaction. That's life. If they think they should be guaranteed invoice number n+1 after creating invoice n, they're smoking some pretty strong stuff. All you can guarantee is that the second transaction is at least n+1. That's all that the intent of the law is. If they demand anything other than that, they're idiots.