Wait, did you say coreCLEAR?!

exciting! You heard us right! Introducing coreCLEAR!

coreCLEAR is our newest offering in the Coreware product line up and it's one you should be excited about! coreCLEAR is our very own simple and CLEAR merchant processor!

coreCLEAR supports all card types, all ways – swipe cards, chip cards and mobile wallets. Fast payment processing with Next Day Funding and best of all, we’ve got transparent pricing with NO hidden fees! 

new video Watch our video to hear why this is important and why this is a PERFECT option for you!


Register for the Webinar HERE

We'll be releasing more videos in coming days to give you a better idea of what to expect in the webinar and how coreCLEAR can help YOU!



new feature Order History Now Shows Shipping Method

A logged in user can now go into My Account to see the shipping method used on their order. This will hide the shipping address for pickup orders and virtual products.




improvement User Substitution Fields for Templates

We now have a better way to to display names, email addresses, physical addresses, and more directly in the website template itself. This could be useful for many different things, such as if you'd like the customer's address to be displayed somewhere on a page. 

important Please note: incorrectly changing your site template can make your entire site unusable.  If you have any doubts about how to change your site template safely, submit a help desk ticket and we will be happy to assist you.

For the developers out there, some of the substitution values include:

  • %userDisplayName%
  • %email_address%
  • %contact_id%
  • %city%
  • %state%


bug fixes Shooting Sports Catalog Maintenance

We added code to ensure that our shooting sports catalog stays clean in the rare event that a distributor feed includes a placeholder UPC code.

 

Order Up!

Order Status

new video tip At Coreware, we are always seeking to unify and simplify the way that you do business! Well, Utilizing Order Status is a fantastic way to take better control of your orders dashboard! Watch this video to learn how to set them!

You can also read a Knowledge Base article about this here.

improvement new feature This week's new feature brings you the ability to resend an order status email after a certain amount of days have passed. This email will resend until the order status of the order is changed. Set this value to zero to ignore. 



new feature Order Sources 

Order sources allow you to see the source of an order in the orders dashboard. These are automatically created in the code if they don't exist already and are currently only utilized for GunBroker.

The sources are applied automatically. We look at the data we get from GunBroker and see if GunBroker shows a sales tax total. If there is a sales tax total, then we use the source "GunBroker with taxes collected," and mark the order as tax-exempt in coreFORCE. 

If there is no sales tax total from Gun Broker we just use the normal source "GunBroker" and collect tax in coreFORCE.



Miscellaneous improvements 

Added error message for the customer when inventory quantities change. It could be because you added it to their cart a long time ago and came back and tried to check out, or it could be that since they added it to their cart, someone else purchased the last one.

  • Some items are no longer available or not available in the quantities selected. Quantities have been adjusted.

The infusionsoft integration will now keep event registrants in sync even when changes are made via the backend.

The text “In-store purchase only” on the Add to Cart button can now be customized via fragment.  

Updates to Wysiwyg editor and content builder



bug fixes 

  • Minor captcha related bug fixed.
  • Image library background communication fixes.

Did You Say Free Stuff?!


exciting! giveaway announcement coreFFL Webinar!

Okay, so we all know nothing is TRULY free, but if you join us for our coreFFL webinar on April 7th you'll have a chance to win a FREE wireless Teemi scanner!

Win Me!

Who might be interested in this webinar? Well, coreFFL is like a snapshot into the more fully-featured coreSTORE so if you're a coreFORCE user who hasn't yet jumped on board to coreSTORE, coreFFL is a GREAT place to start, offering you unlimited bound books, E4473s, and kiosks

This allows you to separate your work orders from your class 3 items from your other guns so you don't have one jumbled bound book. Additionally, having kiosks where your customers can fill out their 4473s means you get to spend more time interacting with customers and making sales!


Register Here




tip Simple Page Edits

Not all who don't write HTML are lost... Is that how the saying goes? 

Did you know that making simple edits to emails, pages, etc. in coreFORCE doesn't always require knowledge of HTML? You can actually make simple edits using our Wysiwyg editor (say that 10 times fast!)

Simply click the square box in the bottom right corner to open that up! OR you can alt+click (Windows) or option+click (Mac) to open up an editor like you'll find in product maintenance which will display your email or page as written in HTML.

Open Separate Wysiwyg Editor 


Open Wysiwyg Editor (like a word processor)


If you'd like to read more about how to use this and what it looks like, make sure to check out the article on our Knowledge Base! Your one-stop-shop to instant help at any time of the day! 


Simple Page Edits using Wysiwyg!


And if any of you were wondering (because I certainly was): 

Wysiwyg stands for "What you see is what you get" 😁 (Yes, it's a terrible acronym).



improvement Orders Report

Payment method is now a multi-select in the orders report so you can include or exclude any combination of payment methods.



improvement tip Help Desk Changes

  • Forwarded emails can now make it into the Help Desk.

Added a "Mark as Spam" option for tickets. Please note that the ticket has to be open and no notes added yet for this to work. Additionally, users will need access to the Help Desk Ignore Email Maintenance Page as all this option does is add the email on the ticket to the ignore list. 

We also added preferences to control which email headers and keywords will be ignored by the parser. There are a few options ignored by default. This can be set in Manage Client Preferences under "Help Desk Allow Email Headers" and "Help Desk Allow Email Message". Clicking on the blue "more information" icon will provide more information about how to add these. 

The default ignore list options are ignored because they could create email loops. Use this setting with caution. 


 



bug fixes Miscellaneous Bug Fixes


  • Fixed a bug that was allowing in-stock notifications to be sent even if the inventory was already set aside for an open order.
  • Fixed a bug which left old data in the state shipping restrictions for products. Out of date restrictions are now deleted during import. 
  • Bug fixes to merge products, merge categories, and merge facets.

Another Week Another Update!

improvement bug fixes 

The weeks are moving fast and so are your websites!

This week brings with it some behind-the-scenes efficiency updates, tweaks, and a few light bug fixes in an effort to make YOUR systems run as smoothly and quickly as possible.

Having said that, we recognize that efficiency updates aren't always "exciting" so we're also bringing you a new GunBroker feature this week, requested by one of your fellow GunBroker users!

new feature  Delete GunBroker Listings

You now have the ability to delete GunBroker listings (Orders -> GunBroker -> Listings). This offers you a way to clean up some of your listings. Simply select the check box next to the items you'd like to delete and click the "Delete Selected Products" button:


Please be aware that this does NOT delete the listing from GunBroker. This ONLY removes them from your coreFORCE listings.



new video tipNEW VIDEO! MAP Round 2!

We decided that you really can't have too many resources when it comes to learning more about coreFORCE and how to use it so following up with our updated Knowledge Base article on MAP Pricing from last week, we also updated our MAP video. If you either missed last week's What's New or would rather watch a video than read an article, you can check out our new video here. 

And make sure to SUBSCRIBE so you don't miss any of our exciting updates or our new E-Com 101 series 🎬 Coming Soon 🎥 




fix Complex Forms

We've been adding in a lot of functionality for forms recently, and as we added complexity, we noticed that some of the more complex forms, especially forms with "panels" that hide and show based on "next" and "previous" buttons, were not displaying properly in the backend. 

There is now an option to tag a form as "complex" where it will simply display the data in the back-end rather than display it as displayed to the public. This will be set in form definitions in the control tab: form_definition, complex_form, true:



announcement giveaway exciting! Introducing coreFFL!

Are you a coreFORCE user that's been hesitant about jumping into coreSTORE as well? Well, did you know coreSTORE also includes our industry-leading electronic bound book solution? If you've wanted to dip your feet in the water, we're now offering the bound book solution as a standalone product. Did we mention this product also includes UNLIMITED 4473 kiosk stations?! 

In fact, coreFFL gives you Unlimited Bound Books, Unlimited Records, Unlimited Kiosks, Unlimited Stations, and the same FANATICAL 24/7 Support! We will be holding a webinar on April 7th to introduce you to coreFFL. Join this webinar for your chance to win a TEEMI Bluetooth Scanner! Register below!


 Webinar Signup


MAP, ZAIUS, and YouTube OH MY!



announcement MAP Violations! Everyone's favorite subject! 

But really, NO one likes MAP Violations... Not you, not the distributors and manufacturers, and not us

As consumers flock eCommerce, distributors and manufacturers want to be sure that their brand's image remains protected and as such, MAP violation monitoring technology has stepped up in recent years. TrackStreet, for example, is a major bot that checks MAP compliance for manufacturers. This bot apparently has the intelligence to add the products to cart and check the in-cart price. This is just one of the solutions out there for distributors and manufacturers.

Learn more about Web Bots Here

As a software company, all of the data in our Shooting Sports Catalog comes straight from distributors and manufacturers. We are by no means responsible for the accuracy of this data. Regardless, we take pride in the services we offer and we do have in-house resources that constantly work on our catalog data and we do our best to keep information accurate. 

Meet the Team Speaking of in-house resources, meet Zach! Our full time Product Knowledge Specialist! Zach has been working for Coreware for almost 2 years and fully understands the ins-and-outs of product pricing and catalog data. Additionally, Zach has recently gained some SERIOUS traction in the world of Pro Football YouTube channels so make sure to check him out and SUBSCRIBE @ Football FACTS for Fanatics!

exciting! Speaking of YouTube, be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel for all the latest webinars and updates in the world of POS, Ecommerce, and everything in between.  We’ll soon be starting a bi-monthly YouTube series called “E-Com 101” in which we’ll give you insights into the world of online sales with some tips and tricks thrown in.

important As a dealer, the burden of MAP ultimately falls on you and you alone are entirely responsible for following all rules and regulations laid out by your distributors and manufacturers. 

Of course, as a software company, it is important that we provide you with all of the tools you need to follow these rules and regulations. 

tip One of the best ways to do this is to go into Products -> Taxonomy -> Manufacturers and set your MAP policy per the manufacturer's requirements.

These are some of the options for MAP policies that we have added based on your requests over the last two years:

  • [None] - default MAP behavior: MAP price is displayed with a button that says "Add to cart for best price"
  • Strict MAP - as in the video, email for best price (customers can also skip the Email for quote and just add to cart at the MAP price)
  • Strict MAP with code - same as email for price, except the customer gets a unique promotional code they have to enter at checkout.  This is to satisfy manufacturers who require the discount to be applied at the final stage of checkout.
  • Call for price - the only way to get the real price is to call you.
  • MAP is minimum price - The minimum price the dealer can sell at is the MAP price.  No further discounts offered.
  • Ignore MAP - sell the product based on the pricing structure without regard to MAP at all.  Only use this if you are sure that this is ok with the manufacturer.

If there is ever a conflict between what's in our Shooting Sports Catalog and the dealer's Product Catalog, the system will use the HIGHER of the two MAPs to help reduce the risk of MAP violations.

important Quick Steps to MAP Violation Resolution

  1. Immediately fix the MAP price of the item in question.
  2. Optionally, deactivate the manufacturer till the corrections are made by selecting that manufacturer as "inactive".
  3. Contact the distributor that has the wrong price.
  4. Submit a Help Desk Ticket with specific details.


important FINAL NOTICE

If this is your final notice, you need to make sure to set the manufacturer as inactive so you don't get terminated. If you do get terminated, there’s little we can do, but most manufacturers are understanding and will work with dealers so long as the issues are resolved.  Maybe add those manufacturers to your Christmas card list.  It’s good to maintain good open channels of communication with manufacturers.  They may even send you a little swag to display in your store!

You will need to contact the manufacturer and/or distributor to explain the circumstances. 


Need more information or help on setting this up?

If you'd like to read more, we have some additional information in this Knowledge Base article:

Setting up MAP Pricing and Resolving Violations




exciting! new video tip Zaius Integration for coreFORCE

Have you ever wondered how the Amazons and Wal-Marts of the world seem to send you emails containing products you are interested in? It's simple. They pick up the breadcrumbs you leave on their site and build a customer profile based upon your habits while you are browsing. That's the secret to their success. Your customers leave the same breadcrumbs when they visit your site. Why not take that data and give your customers what they want? Zaius can help you do just that.

Watch the webinar for a brief description of how Zaius can help you dominate the E-Commerce Battlefield in 2021.   

If you're interested in this service, be sure and shoot us an email at sales@coreware.com.




new featureexciting! Pay Invoices Without Logging In

Your customers no longer have to log in in order to pay an invoice! Instead, all they need is a direct link that links to their unique contact ID.

The contact who OWES payment on the invoice(s) does not have to have a user account any longer. They can get to this page and make a payment without having a user account.

 If you go to the invoice maintenance page, you will see a link for the contact to use. The link structure is: 


https://www.domainname.com/invoice-payment?code=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

  1. "invoice-payment" is the link to the client's invoice payment page. 
  2. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx is the contact's hash code. This is the contact who needs to pay the invoice. 

There is a hash code (labeled contact code) assigned to every contact in the system. The code can be seen in the Summary tab of the Contact Maintenance page.


This is the page your customer will see:




improvement Shipping Costs Added to Orders Report

The Orders report will now display shipping costs as a column




new feature exciting! Taxes on Shipping

In Orders -> Setup, you now have the option to Charge Tax on shipping. This will be charged based on the customer's address.


new feature tip Help Desk Type Filter

You can now filter by Help Desk Type! To access this, go to your Help Desk and click Filters. 

Drag the Help Desk Type that you'd like to filter by to the box on the right:



improvement exciting! Event Tab in Contact Record

You can now see which events a customer has registered for directly from their contact record in the Events Tab!



new feature FFL EZ Check

There is now a button from the Orders Dashboard, once an FFL Dealer has been selected, to look up the entered FFL. This will tell you whether the FFL is still valid or not.



new feature Fraud Protection Checks

We now have 2 links in the Orders Dashboard where you can do a reverse address lookup and get a whitepages listing for the contact who placed the order. These are useful for verifying the identify of the customer.








Don't Forget it's Tax Day Tomorrow 😀!

Enough about taxes, let's talk about what's new and exciting with Corestore.

BOSS-TAB 4473 KIOSK SETUP
In our previous announcement, we were asked about the setup we had of the 4473 tablets using the Boss-Tab enclosure. This was in fact an IPad Air (latest Generation 3 but minimum specs) and with it we purchased a Bluetooth keyboard from Amazon along with styluses that had a lanyard. 

Bluetooth Keyboard
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015LSEUS8

Styluses
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DTOJO10

We also installed a kiosk app from the IOS app store to prevent customers from just browsing around or using the iPad for other purposes:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kiosk-pro-plus/id445701154

Work Order Enhancements

If you haven't noticed already we have been making many changes to the Work Order module.  Work orders can be used by any store that offers repairs, custom options, assembly, or specialized work on items.  In the firearm business, many stores have gunsmith services and this is where the work order module comes into play.  If you don't see the module listed on the left side menu then make sure you have access to that module by going to Employees and checking off the work order module security options.

Thanks to some great feedback from all of YOU, we have had awesome feedback, and here are the highlights of what has been changed.

exciting! We cleaned up the work order screen and made it not only look better but work better.

1. You can now modify and add your status codes

2. You can now assign a technician to a work order and also change that technician.

3. You can change the price of the part and/or labor

4. You can have up to 10 custom fields on a work order.  To manage your custom fields on the previous screen where the work orders are listed just click the ... menu.

Work Order Dashboard Enhancements

improvement You can now show work orders for a specific technician (just hit the technician drop down) and then click Search.

improvement We now show you the item that is being repaired, which is helpful if one customer has multiple items in the shop.

improvement Manage your own status, add any status code or modify the existing ones, you can also choose your own colors.

Deliveries and Shipments Screen 

improvement You can import individual orders from the web and you can also import multiple orders at once by separating them with commas.

improvement Clicking the Sale Id will unsuspend the sale and take you right into the sales screen directly if you prefer completing the order from the sales screen.

Bound Book Enhancements

exciting! Updated NICS check plug-in with improvements and some fixes.  You can now download the new plug-in directly from the Manage 4473 screen.  To install the new plug-in remove the current one, if you need assistance please contact our support department.

 

Coreshop ECommerce Users

improvement We added a field called: "Do not drop ship" to the items screen which allows you to have an item and mark it that it can't be drop-shipped but it will still show on the web site that it's available for pickup only.

improvement The company name is now imported into the shipping address of an internet order.


Bug Fixes

Bugs are our friends, If there weren't bugs we wouldn't need as many programmers 😁:

fix Suspending a purchase order a second time was converting it to a receiving transaction, this will no longer happen.

fix Importing bound book records will no longer add duplicate entries if the id (first column of the template) field is an id that already exists in the system.

fix Fixed some issues when a work order was being completed it was showing an error on the serial number

fix When Store Config has "Disable Sale Quick Complete" checked, it was not allowing you to complete a Return. 

fix Removed Enhanced Search option in Store Config, it was causing more harm than good.

fix  For Ammoready users we now properly transmit the manufacturer as the brand of the item.

fix 3310 alerts were not being generated at times.

fix Logged in employee name not automatically being added to form  -  

fix Transfer date for firearms was not appearing on PDF output if no associated 4473

fix Suffix not pushing through to NICS)  

fix Birth foreign country not pushing through to NICS  

fix NICS plugin sometimes crashes tab or fails to feed data back to Section B  

fix NICS plugin using the same customer data multiple times  

fix NICS plugin auto-fill not working 

fix NICS autoclosing browser tab, forcing re-login

giveaway We hate ending our news on bugs, so what's more fun than looking at bug fixes?????   You got it a giveaway!!!!  How about this?  In the comments of the news type your name, store name, and email address along with a quote about your experience with Corestore.   You can be funny, creative, witty, or dead honest. We will enter you into a drawing to win $100 Amazon Gift card and a secondary prize of $50 for the second name drawn, and $25 for the third name drawn!!!!!!   How's that for a little help towards your taxes? 😁.  Coreware employees are NOT eligible for this one.  We may use your quote in our marketing, especially if it's nice!


BOSS-TAB

Want to put that iPad or other tablet you have lying around to work?  Check out this solution from Boss-Tab.  They have many different choices to choose from, and with Coreware's awesome flexibility and ability to be run on ANY mobile device, this is a match made in heaven.  Use "coreware" at checkout for 10% OFF.  Below you can see one being used to run our E-Commerce.  What a great solution!  Don't forget to use the discount code "coreware" to take advantage of that 10% OFF.  Follow this L I N K for more details.


Set up Events and Training Classes in Coreshop

This article makes the following assumptions:

  • You have multiple events or classes that you want to offer on an ongoing basis.
  • You will charge a fee for the events you offer.

For one-off or free events, there are more straightforward ways to set up event registration.  This process is for clients who intend to offer a catalog of ongoing events for which customers will pay a class fee.

The first step is to set up the event and product taxonomy for your classes:

  1. In Products > Taxonomy > Departments, create a department for your training classes.
  2. In Products > Taxonomy > Category Groups, create at least one category group for training classes (if you have multiple types of classes, you should set up one category group per type classes; e.g., basic safety classes, licensing classes, preparedness classes, etc.).  Add that category group to the training department.

Click HERE for Steps 3-8

Need more help?  Visit the following link and put in a ticket.  We'll get you taken care of.  https://help.coreware.com.

How to highlight products in the local store

There has been some confusion about how the location filter works.  Clients having a single store location were expecting that filter to only show results from their local store, and hide distributor results, but that is not how it was designed; the filter always shows distributor results because they are available to be shipped to that store for pickup.  Because of the confusion, we made a change to hide the location filter for dealers who have only a single store location.

For clients who have only a single store location, or who have multiple stores, but want to customers to see local inventory first in the search results, you can do one or both of the following:

1. Turn on Location Availability Texts, which will show text like "Available in-store today" prominently on the search results and the product details page.  You can turn this on in Client Preferences.  Click Add, select "Show Location Availability" from the dropdown list, and change the client setting dropdown to True.  Once that is done, you may want to customize the text and appearance of those messages. This is done in Orders > Coreshop setup on the Fragments tab.  Filter the list of fragments by the word "available" and set each of those fragments to "customize."  They will then appear in Website > Fragments as HTML that you can edit.

2. Add a Search Multiplier for your local store location(s).  You can do this in Products > Settings > Locations.  Near the bottom of the page on the Details tab, you will see an item called Search Multiplier.  It defaults to 1.00, which means that the inventory location will not affect the results of a customer's search.  If you want to force your quick ship products always to be displayed first when a customer searches, you can change this number to 100.00.  Note that there are several places where a search multiplier can be added, which may affect your search results in unexpected ways.  To see how the system calculates search relevance, you can use the report in Products > Product Relevance.

Need more help?  Submit a ticket to Coreware support at https://help.coreware.com.