The TOTECS Platform allows you create one or more user login accounts linked to their associated Debtor Account / Card Id in the accounting / ERP system. Each user account has their own shopping basket, favourites, shopping lists and order history. This allows different people from the same company to login and place orders independently of each other. This structure makes it easy for customer accounts who have mutiple store locations and mutiple purchasing staff in each store.
Note: Most ERP systems do not represent all the different people within a customer account who do purchasing. Normally, the customer card contains overall debtor account information such as price level, tax codes, payment terms and delivery addresses for each location / store. By linking online users to customer accounts, you can setup an unlimited number of users per customer account. In some cases, our clients have large corporate accounts with 100+ users linked to the one common customer account code in the Accounting/ERP system.
No, all shopping cart and their contents are persisted over time. This ensures that if the user is logged out or their session expires, they will see their shopping cart exactly as it was the next time they login.
Note: If the user has logged in on another day, their shopping cart is checked and any prices are updated and inactive items are removed.
Yes. One of the most powerful mechanism of TOTECS is how user accounts are linked to customer accounts in the ERP to make sure that when customers login and browse the catalogue, they can see prices that are configured specifically for them.
Customer account pricing is a complex capability for an eCommerce Platform. Generally, the more inventory / customer account pricing rules in play, the slower the product search is on the website. This can be devastating for large distributors who can lose customers because their website is too slow.
TOTECS overcomes this through it's high speed smart Universal Pricing Algorithm developed over many years. Most other platforms integrate the basics such as price levels but fail to handle more complex structures. Making the task more difficult is that each ERP system offers different pricing capabilities and data structures.
TOTECS works differently to other platforms. The Connector software that is installed on the client's ERP server exports customer account pricing data into the TOTECS Universal Pricing data structures. This means the Connector does the heavy lifting of translating layers of pricing rules into a simpler and smarter universal data structure.
When a user searches the catalogue online, the Universal Pricing Algorithm locates layered customer account prices from the Universal Pricing data structures at super high speed and delivers fully priced search results in a fraction of a second. How do we know it works well? Alectro put it to the test having over 500,000 inventory SKUs stored in the platform. See it for yourself and search for some HDMI Wall Plates at www.alectro.com.au
The Universal Pricing Algorithm supports the following layered pricing structures:
Need Further Customisation?
The Connector software contains the Generic Adapter which allows you to configure SQL queries that extract pricing logic exactly how you need it done and translates it into the Universal Pricing data structures.
Every user login account in TOTECS is assigned to an Inventory Permission Role. The role defines rules that govern if the user is allowed to View a product, Add it to Cart, request Dropshipment or Add if it's on Backorder.
The role is configured easily by setting the default state for all products and then adding exceptions. This means you could configure an inventory role to knock out all product and add exceptions rules to allow products based on certain product data attributes (ie, brand, supplier code, product code prefixed with...). To address this question, you would do the reverse and allow all products and add exception rules to knock out the ones not permitted.
TOTECS allows you to create an unlimited number of Inventory Permission Roles thus the possibilities for product catalogue permissions are virtually endless. That said, normally most clients have at the most 20 roles configured.
The product details and search results listings can be configured to either show a 'volume discount' link that when clicked on, shows a popup of the quantity breaks and prices available. Alternatively, quantity break discounts can be displayed directly beneath each product in the category or search results (Ie, Buy 100+ for $4.50 each). The latter makes it absolutely clear to the customer that volume discounts are available.
Yes. The TOTECS User Permissions system contains inventory roles that specify the rules that trigger if a product is active or not for them. Managing this can be tricky if there are a lot of products on contract so there is a smart solution to make this easy to configure.
TOTECS has a default feature that for any product found on a customer account contract, it is considered as active even if the user is assigned to an Inventory Role where the product is inactive. This means that you can create and assign the user to an Inventory Role that disables all products and only those that are on the customer account contract are active.
Note: The category tree and product search dynamically display only categories and products that are active. For instance, if a top level category of Shoes has no products active or on contract for any of it's children category branches, then the entire branch cannot be browsed by that user when they login. This reduces confusion and makes sure customers can only view/order the products they are allowed to.
TOTECS offers a feature called restricted carton quantities that can be switched on using the User Facility Permission role assigned to the user. For any users assigned to role with the switch activated, when they add to cart a quantity of units that doesn't match the carton quantity, a popup message will advise them that they may only order in multiples of X.
Note: Most advanced ERPs have fields that can store Packs Per Carton or Inner / Outer quantities. The product Export can be configured to sync the relevant field data into the TOTECS Packs Per Carton field that is used for carton quantity restrictions.
TOTECS can be configured to either:
Note: TOTECS has a switch that enables the online user to select outstanding invoices and pay them online using Credit Card or direct deposit. If the Block setting is active in option 3, the block is released after they have paid at least one invoice. This feedback loop reduces the onerous job of 'chasing up' accounts who have fallen behind.
This is often a requirement for larger corporate, public or government customers. The Purchaser / Manager Approvals feature allows you to assign Purchaser Users to Manager Users for approvals.
How it works?
Note: If the manager user elects to Modify the order, they can edit the quantities, add or remove products as required.
Conditional Approvals
In some cases, the customer may want extra conditions configured so that orders may be automatically approved up to a pre-approved limit or after 24 hours of no action another manager will be notified for approval.
They can however you will need to advise each person that if they place an order at the same time as another person using the same user account, they will be adding to the same shopping cart which could be potentially confusing.
Generally, it's better to give each person a user account however in some cases, a single user account can be used by people who work and do their orders on different days of the week.
TOTECS has a fixed layout B2B Trade interface that works in all browsers going right back to Internet Explorer v6. This interface is robust and contains virtually all the B2B features and workflows available in the platform.
Individual user accounts can be switched to login to the Trade Interface instead of the Content Managed website interface.
Note: The Trade Interface may not display properly on future browser versions. Active development of the Trade Interface has ceased however bug fixes are still applied as they arise.
TOTECS has a feature where customer account ids, each representing a cost centre code can be assigned to a user. This user can then create shopping baskets and switch between them for any of these cost centre accounts.
When a visitor arrives at your website, prior to the website displaying, TOTECS had created an Unregistered Guest User session. This special type of user is linked to a customer account id in your Accounting / ERP System often with the name set to 'Online Ordering Retail Customer' commonly configured with an id WEB_RETAIL. This customer account in your accounting/ERP system is linked to a Price Level corresponding with the RRP price or consumer sell price set against every product. The customer account also specifies the payment methods that consumers may use such as Credit Card or Paypal whereas commercial customers may also Pay On Account or use Direct Deposit.
Consumer Websites
As a consumer browses the product catalogue, they can add products to cart and proceed to Checkout where they can either proceed as Guest (if active) or complete a user registration. When they register, the contents of the visitor shopping cart is copied to their new user account shopping cart so they can proceed to checkout without needing to fill their cart again.
Public Catalogue Only Websites
For wholesalers who simply want to display a catalogue website without any add to cart functions for visitors, the same process applies and the WEB_RETAIL is used to control what products are displayed to public visitors. In some cases, wholesalers do not want to allow public visitors any access to their product catalogue which can be configured into the website.
TOTECS provides the Region Switching feature which can switch the Unregistered Guest User account to a different Region Profile.
Region Profiles control:
Region Switching for State Based Regions
The Region Switching feature was not only designed for handling international customers but customers from different states.
For instance, a large national consumer website may have different prices set for different regions around Australia. Often the prices differ due to the logistics and handling costs. TOTECS can be configured to ask the user to enter their postcode which can be mapped to a Region Profile. The Region Profile ensures the user sees the product catalogue for their region, the specific prices set and if they proceed through checkout, the freight rules for the region will factor in any extra costs.
User registration is a process whereby a visitor enters their details into the eCommerce website and creates a User Account. An alternative terminology for the same activity is Sign Up. On your TOTECS website, you can label it however you like. Ie, Sign Up, Register, Create Account etc.
In TOTECS, you can setup multiple User Registration Profiles where each profile could be configured for different types of user accounts. For instance, you may require the user to enter an ABN if you want to offer trade account registration whereas it is not provided as a field for consumer registration.
Each user registration profile contains the customer account id in your accounting/ERP system that the user is linked to after registration. For instance, a consumer user can be linked to customer account id WEB_RETAIL which is assigned to Price Level 1 (RRP) whereas trade account customers could be linked to customer account id WEB_TRADE which is assigned to Price Level 2 (Trade - RRP less 5%).
Where The User Registration Form Appears
User registration forms can be placed anywhere in your TOTECS website however the most common workflow is that it appears on the Login page or when a user has added products to cart and proceeds to Checkout.
Registration Approvals
TOTECS offers the ability to set the approvals mode for a given user registration profile. Normally for consumers, they are automatically approved and logged in so they can complete the checkout process to finalise their order.
Alternatively for trade account customer registrations, you may want a customer service person to examine and approve the user registration before they can login. In this case, once the registration form is completed, the user is advised 'the registration will verified and login details emailed after approval' (this message is completely configurable).
For an example of a website that offers both consumer and trade user registration, visit www.qcc.com.au
When a visitor arrives at your website, prior to the website displaying, TOTECS had created an Unregistered Guest User session. This special type of user is linked to a customer account id in your Accounting / ERP System often with the name set to 'Online Ordering Retail Customer'. This customer account is then linked to a Price Level corresponding with the RRP price or consumer sell price for each product. It also specifies the payment methods that consumers may use such as Credit Card or Paypal whereas commercial customers may also Pay On Account or use Direct Deposit.
In some cases (for instance a wholesaler), a business may want to restrict the range of products that unregistered consumers are allowed to purchase. To accommodate this requirement, you can setup a User Inventory Permission Role for the Guest user account and setup an exception rule to knock out the products that are not available. With this in place, a public guest arriving at the website may only browse the categories that contain active products. Likewise for keyword search.
TOTECS offers both workflows. If Guest Checkout is active, then the user has the option to skip the user registration. There are some points to be aware of.
The psychology of Guest Checkout is that the system does not setup a user account, track the user activity and send eMarketing material. User details for Guest Checkout are not stored in the system but instead simply stored against the order submitted.
A TOTECS eCommerce Website can handle both B2C and B2B workflows.
There are two ways to handle this.
The answer depends on how IT savvy the Government division and agency are.
1. A common request is eCommerce Punchout where the Purchasing officer can punch into your online catalogue, build an order, checkout which punches back the order requisition into the Government / Agency ERP system for approval. A secondary step could be to add EDI capabilities to automate the Purchase to Remmitance processes through SQUIZZ.com
2. You could issue usernames to each person within the Government Department / Agency and they can simply login and place an order. The only drawback of this approach is that the user often needs to manually create a Purchase Order in their ERP system thus causing double keying which may not be desirable.
TOTECS is designed so that users are mapped to customer/debtor accounts in the Accounting / ERP system. Certain systems support central customer/debtor accounts which means that children accounts can be assigned to a common parent. A common practice is to set the child customer/debtor account to match the GL Code of the division / location in the Government agency.
With central customer/debtor accounts in place, online users in TOTECS can be setup for each purchasing officer against their respective division / location within the Government agency you are dealing with.
As each user logs on and places orders, they are posted against the child customer/debtor account assigned to the user. When the order is shipped, the invoice is normally posted to the parent customer/debtor account for the government agency so that invoices can be batched in a single statement.
We have a set of responses that address key eCommerce requirements and overall system requirements. Please get in touch with us to discuss your requirements.
Yes. Many companies prefer their Reps to be out in the field dropping in on customers. The Repspace functionality has been specifically designed for 3 purposes:
TOTECS frees up time for Reps and gives them extra information such as warehouse stock levels, secret cost prices and discounting tools.
The Repspace features in your eCommerce website makes it much faster and efficient for staff to search your product catalogue and build orders for customers.
The multiple baskets feature allows customer service personnel to create and save many shopping baskets at the same time. The fast hot switching between accounts and baskets makes it a dream to build and place orders.
Yes, they can set % off discounts if you grant them permission in their assigned User Facility Permissions role.
Firstly, immediately change their user password and either delete their user account or reassign it to another person.
Note: Shopping baskets that a Rep user has created remain assigned to the Customer Account even if the Rep user has been deleted.
No, TOTECS's billing model is activity driven. Each click correlates to a Server Request and you pay for the server requests consumed by all your online users. This means you can setup an unlimited number of users on the platform. See Pricing for more details.
A HTTP or HTTPS punchout URL is given to the customer to be added into their Punchout supplier profile. Embedded in the URL is a Username / Password for authentication when a user attempts to punch into your online catalogue from their ERP system. Normally, the URL contains a return URL so that TOTECS knows where to punch the order back to.
OCI Punchout Order Requisition Data - Once the user completes the Checkout process, the order data will be punched back to the customers ERP System encapsulated in the OCI protocol format. OCI is the most common eCommerce Punchout protocol for transmitting order data.
SQUIZZ.com provides end to end Universal EDI capabilities. Each side is responsible for their connections via the Connector software. The Connector software contains Data Export / Imports that are configured to push and pull EDI documents between parties. The document formats can be xXML, xCBL, XML, CSV and XLS. The Connector performs the role of Posting or Retrieving data to and and from each parties ERP System and pushing the documents through the Connected Relationship between parties on SQUIZZ.com.
This depends on how savvy the customer's IT team are and the complexity of their requirements. The budget covering labour to implement eCommerce Punchout varies between $10 - $15k / customer relationship.
A much more cost effective solution is to take advantage of Social eCommerce and Universal EDI capabiltiies in SQUIZZ.com which allows you to connect once and trade with all other businesses connected on the platform without the pain of integrating each customer relationship.
Yes. Often an upgrade to the customer's system may require slightly different Punchout workflows, data mappings and EDI protocols. It is advisable to get in touch as soon as you become aware of this happening so there is plenty of time to work through the details with your customers incumbent ERP team.
No. The Connector software contains Adapters for each Accounting/ERP system that your project is integrated with. When you implement a new ERP System, a separate Adapter can be configured and tested prior to Go Live. All Punchout configurations remain as is and we simply verify this when the Adapters are switched. From the customers perspective, nothing will have altered.
TOTECS provides a feature to setup Express Checkout profiles for each customer / debtor account in your Accounting/ERP system. This means that when the user proceeds through checkout, the order details information screen can be skipped and the details on the customer account are used automatically. The customer doesn't even need to confirm the Ts and Cs. The checkout process can be reduced to 2 clicks.
TOTECS eCommerce Punchout features work for all ERP systems because TOTECS does the heavy lifting so to speak.
All TOTECS websites / online stores are HTTPS enabled so the Punchout to TOTECS is secure. Security varies from customer to customer depending on if they receive the OCI request as a HTTP or HTTPS URL.
EDI documents transmitted through SQUIZZ.com contains HTTPS and relationship level encryption in place which forms a highly secure conduit for documents to transfer.
Yes, TOTECS platform provides it's clients with the opportunity to integrate multiple websites using one ERP framework. TOTECS platform gives you control to display different products on different websites even though the data is coming from the same ERP system.
While working on each website, we look for all the minor details e.g. branding and other requirements in the form of objectives that will drive more traffic and more sales to your website.
Product catalogue can be made available to the general public where the users can browse the product catalogue online. However, the general public will not be able to see the list prices for which they need a username and a password. TOTECS platform setup product content areas in a way that refrain the catalogue from showing product pricing.
Account customers can only log in with the assigned username and password which is set in the TOTECS Connector Account Export to ensure that username and password combinations are unique.
All the leads coming to your website or through phone calls are important and can be converted into the future sales. TOTECS platform masters in establishing a regular cycle of sending mail-outs to the target audience. Furthermore, the prospects can be divided into segment target groups by industry or customer groups.
The TOTECS platform keeps track of all the actions that a prospective customer takes on your website. We can track which product is purchased the quickest as well as the frequency of item purchased. Our reports are developed to give our clients the complete information on an individual product, product code, product quantity and sales that specific product generated. To access this service, you must register on the TOTECS platform.
Can we promote a new product through different product deals and vouchers on our integrated website?
Yes, the TOTECS Platform offers deals to promote new and existing products. We can also offers product deals to promote targeted categories at a certain time of the year, ie Christmas, Easter, new financial year, etc. By creating the product data which is required to satisfy the deal type, the TOTECS Platform can setup a test deal for that specific product and test results inclusive of any promotion or voucher codes.
With the TOTECS Platform, clients can easily export all its customers’ data from shopping or customer's cart. The information of the data can be attained through TOTECS Forums on TOTECS website which can be accessed by registering on the platform.
The information of the customers includes: summary statistics of the number of baskets, items in the baskets and the total amount of basket including or excluding GST. Furthermore, basket summary also provides you with the internal login details i.e. who logged in at what time, what products did they choose and the total amount of the products.
If your website is open to the public users to browse the product catalogue, it is essential that the category codes are logically coded to boost SEO rankings. We, at TOTECS, derive the logical codes for each category making sure that whenever a prospect searches for a product on the internet, your products are the first ones to appear on search engine. The codes can be implemented on the product catalogue and for each category separately depending upon the requirements of our clients.
To highlight the products of interest, we advise our clients to use the types of iconic flag to highlight the products. The flags can be new releases, clearance, bundles and all other offers which clients want to highlight on their website. These flag items can be presented in different formats on your website i.e. it can be highlighted on the homepage tabs, menu items or can be linked to a subpage.
To provide your customers with up-to-date stock information, it is very important for your ERP system to be accurate and up-to-date. Without the accuracy and timely data, users might view incomplete or misleading information on the company’s website. TOTECS ensures data on your website is up-to-date and accurate to show the real picture of the stock visibility.
We assist our clients on how to implement data for the users to view product stock levels from low to high, low stock limits and out of stock products.
Explore a range of helpful tools designed to support your business.
The TOTECS Cloud is hosted at Equinix Sydney which is a state-of-the-art tier 1 Data Centre. TOTECS operates in a highly controlled environment with enterprise level redundancy to make sure that our client's websites are not only fast but totally fail safe.
The Equinix Sydney Campus is the most interconnected group of data centres in Australia. It's the only place where companies can set up direct links to both of the continent’s largest peering points, as well as key submarine cable systems, and get on-demand and direct access to multiple cloud providers and multiple networks via the Equinix Cloud Exchange.
The TOTECS Cloud stack operates in a secure virtualised environment across 9 virtualised layers on state of the art servers under management by Servers Australia. The virtualised environment has been designed to load balance across all levels to handle peak demand.
We, at TOTECS, know how important it is for you to have all your data and details backed up regularly. The TOTECS cloud performs live snapshots of databases twice per day. We have a daily backup of all your data, products, content, transactions, shopping cart and sales volume.
TOTECS strive to provide the greatest customer service to its clients and to keep this ambition on the go, we backup our clients’ data on daily basis and its with us from day one till the time we are in business with our client. We keep the back up in order to keep your business running. The backup can be provided to the client upon request.
If a client decides to leave the TOTECS platform, we will keep the backup of the website until the time client’s account is deactivated on the TOTECS Platform. If the client deactivates its account from the TOTECS Platform, we will stop backing up the data on the website and send the data until the date of deactivation in an email.
A service issue can be reported by either submitting an enquiry on the TOTECS website here, by calling the office on 1300 123 500 or by emailing at service@totecs.com. For more serious issue we recommend that you report the issue over the phone.
The time it takes for an issue to be fixed depends on the severity of the issue on your business and how complex the issue itself is. Most smaller issues can be fixed while talking on the phone or right after reporting the issue.
We take our uptime very seriously, so if your website is down we recommend that you call the office on 1300 123 500 as soon as possible and we will investigate it straight away.
Please call 1300 123 500 and this will be diverted to our afterhours line. We ask that it is only used for critical issues or website outrages. For critical issues, time spent investigating the issue will be invoiced.
To keep your e-commerce business up-to date, with new features and bug fixes, TOTECS delivers Software Release Upgrades regularly. With these releases, the focus is on fixing bugs and issues and enhancing features of the platform to make your and your customers’ journey on your website a smooth one. Our last TOTECS platform release is 12.04 with new features and improvements which is available on our YouTube channel and you can read about it all on TOTECS Platform Release 12.04 news.
TOTECS continuously releases upgrades to its Software for a smooth running of your business. Every time we release an upgrade, we will notify our clients with the details of the release, and they don’t need to do anything as the release is automatically implemented to all our clients’ portals. We also help our client understand the releases, how we have fixed the bugs and what are the new features offered in our Youtube videos and newsletters.
All TOTECS upgrades are released to provide a solution to any bugs reported in the previous upgrade. However, sometimes our clients’ face issues with the new upgrades which can be fixed by calling our service helpline. If its not a general issue and a bug issue, timings may vary as fixing a bug requires more R&D and may also be fixed in the next software upgrade.
At TOTECS, we focus on delivering the right value for the right amount. Creating a Master Web Design starts with commercial & implementation planning, platform deployment, connector installation & integration, layout selection & brand application, building the data, workflows and content, testing the website and finally going live. Depending on the plan, you can get a website without upfront cost by signing up to Build Now Pay Later.
Monthly hosting at TOTECS starts at only $775 per month plus usage. In this minimal amount, you can avail all the web features by TOTECS (usage charges apply to certain features such as mailouts) on the unlimited website (per platform deployment) with unlimited online orders, unlimited products and unlimited storage.
Starting from $10,000 excluding GST, TOTECS offers customized integrated websites which are developed with expert guidance and advice. We analyse Accounting/ERP database and workflow structures, analyse customer pricing rules and data structures, specify required integration data export and data import endpoints. We also configure and implement export in the Connector Generic Adaptor and consider any advanced integration, data or workflow requirements. Lastly, we setup exports scheduler and test the customized website.
TOTECS Forums is an online discussion site to hold conversations in the form of posted messages. These discussion forums are a detailed way to understand the complex issues of TOTECS Platforms.
From a list of numerous of topics, you can always find the answers to the difficult questions and issues which are based on your business on the day-to-day basis.
If you are unable to find a relevant topic, you can always start a new topic by logging in to the TOTECS portal with your unique username and password.
TOTECS Forums are armed with a list of topics on the tips and advice of data, content managed websites, marketing, stores, users, inventory, general, bugs and releases, web implementer, designers’ discussions, different connector application, make/model parts database application and accounting/ERP systems.
All the discussion topics in TOTECS Forums are thoroughly observed and answered by our technical team to provide our clients with the best possible and timely solutions. We make sure that each topic provides new and exclusive information to the readers and we focus on keeping our responses concise to flawlessly explain the functionality of TOTECS Platform.
TOTECS partners can be individuals or companies, big or small who have undergone rigorous training on the platform. Our Project Managers work with clients to choose Partners fit for the skill level required to ensure that the most cost-beneficial outcome is derived.
Each partner has a set of core competencies graded across 6 levels based on years of experience and demonstrated skills. Few highlighted Partner skills include: CMS Website Implementation, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Foundation/Sass, Data/Excel/My SQL, Creative Consultation, Website Design, Content Authoring, SEO, eCommerce Strategy Consultation, eCommerce support etc.
To join TOTECS Certified Partner Program, you have to fill a form on our website which can be accessed by clicking here. There are six different levels of pricing for Certified Partner at TOTECS. Starting from Level 1 at $80 and ending at Level 6 at $280. If you would like to book a job please contact us or to find out more about Partner program, please feel free to enquire here.
