As part of this release we have made changes to the way OMINS and Easylister reserves stock, you can still set the default option under promotion group settings but this can be overwritten on a per product basis (see image).

There are now a number of additional attributes and options available for auction pricing:

Standard Listings (remains unchanged)

Single item Buynow only

Quantity Buynow (fixed pricing)

Stock Control: Alot of work has gone into how omins/Easylister handels stock for this new system, the quantites on your auctions will automatically increase and decrease to match the stock you have available. This happens all automatically.

So for instance you can have 2 auctions for one product each set to 10 stock and have a stock level of 20. Lets say someone buys 1 of this item from sella (or your ewebstore website) you will now have a stock level of 19, OMINS/Easylister will then automatically reduce one of these quantity listings to 9 within a few minutes so the total you have listed is 19. if you get new stock in and increase the stock level in OMINS/EL within minutes the both your auctions will be back having 10 quantity. This is all automatic and handeled by the system.

We have decided to discontinue supporting this feature but don’t fret you can still auto topup it just requires you to turn on a feature in Trademe instead!

Trademe now have a feature called auto-billing – this can be activated through the My Products setting menu. We felt that there was no point maintaining a feature that is already provided.

It will also allow you to continue listing even if your account goes into debt and will bill your credit card once a week for the overdue amount.

To activate the feature please follow this help guide – you don’t need to do activate or use My Products just that one feature.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/help/701/auto-billing

Cheers

With the new year comes some new updates….

First off we have upgraded our accounts system to ASB’s business banking. This means that payments made (with the correct reference) to our EasyWholesale account are now applied automatically.  This means that if you are with ASB bank, or you make a cash deposit over the counter at an ASB branch at any time of the day, the payment will typically be available to use in EasyWholesale within 30 minutes.  Do note however that payments or transfers made from a bank other than ASB will still be applied the following day (approx. 1am) due to inter-bank processing delays.

Up and coming:
We will soon be offering new options for EasyLister and OMINS users wanting to use their own webstores by integrating with either OpenCart or Smallfish cart systems. If you are considering expanding your online profile or revamping your online store, we highly recommend one of these cart systems.  If you are keen as beans get in touch with us and we are happy to discuss your options, provide advice and assist with the set up and design.

On the horizon:
A complete re-model of the stock and ordering system for EasyWholesale will be implemented in the next few months, along with a ‘feedback’ system of sorts for vendors. We appreciate all your support while the system grows and works through any teathing problems. We have listened to all your comments about the great and the not so great aspects and hope to address all of these with the next upgrade.

Here at Snipesoft we want to make this stressful time as simple as possible – any invoices made in OMINS after midnight 31st of September will automatically have the new 15% GST rate applied. Dont worry the old rate of 12.5% will still be there – you just need to change it using the dropdown box on the invoice.

If you have any special requirements please email us the week beforehand and we will be happy to accomodate

Some of you have been asking ” What rate of GST do I use?”  The IRD states – When there is a GST rate change (in this case from 12.5% to 15%), the GST rate you use depends on when the transaction occurs (the time of supply). The time of supply is when the supplier issues an invoice or receives a payment, whichever happens first. Like every good rule there are some transactions where this differs.
For specifics see  http://www.ird.govt.nz/changes/gst/businesses/supply/ In particular the rule regarding GST on imports may be important.

The IRD has some useful info links for those who may be feeling a little lost or just give them a call on 0800 377 774

http://www.ird.govt.nz/changes/checklist/

http://www.ird.govt.nz/changes/gst/businesses/adjust-rate/budget-gst-decision-tree-q1.html

As a new feature we have also put up a complaint form where you can post a complaint when you think a OMINS client is sending a promotional emails without prior opt-in authorization or if a promotional email does not contain a working opt-out link.

We reserve the right to restrict email features for clients who are abusing the OMINS email system.

As an aside, we also wish to point out that many OMINS users do not use promotional emails at all, and if you have a problem with emails please follow the opt out instructions and report any client that do not seem to be using the OMINS email systems appropriately.

You can view the policy document at the following link:
http://www.snipesoft.net.nz/policies/email/

Often you want to know how many items a tab (“section”) contains.  For example, how many sales does this product have?  How many auction rules are set up?

Previously you’d need to go into each tab to find this information out.  To avoid this, we’ve made a small change which now shows the count on the tab itself so you can see at a glance how many items are in that tab.

Just a small change, but a nice step forward for usability.

quick guide to setting up a new product:

http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=276

A guide to auction length and timing of auction using OMINS:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=280

The new auto adjust (advanced feature) instructions:

(this shows how to create new highy dynamic buynows and $1 reserves that can will automatically adjust prices and the number of items listed based on sales or average prices)

An couple of examples of a buynow setup and a $1 reserve setup, these also contain examples of the new auto ajust features in context:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=281

We have also added a new trademe tip, The 25% Theory:
http://snipesoft.net.nz/support/viewtopic.php?t=277

However, with a recent explosion in interest for OMINS, we just don’t have the time to properly support Easy Lister or it’s users.  Therefore, we have had to make the tough decision to put the release of Easy Lister on temporary hiatus.

Can’t you release Easy Lister without support?
We could, but we’d rather not.  Great support is an important part of being a Snipesoft customer, and if we don’t feel we can live up to that we’d rather wait until we can.

What should I use now that Easy Lister is delayed?
Of course, we’d love for you to try out OMINS and see if it is right for your business.  Please feel free to contact us for more information and a free trial.

When will Easy Lister be released?
Due to the growth in interest for OMINS, we are currently looking into expanding our team.  This will allow us to continue to support current and future OMINS clients, and may also allow us to re-open Easy Lister development.  Watch this space!

OMINS customers that want to update their prices can either use the bulk pricing updater, or else we can run a script to quickly update your entire product catalogue.  Send an email to support to request this.

Of course, this will only affect you if you set the reserve price manually.  Products that use the advanced pricing inheritance feature for reserve prices won’t be affected.

23 June – Reserve fee to apply in general categories

A 25c reserve fee will apply to auctions where you choose a reserve price that is higher than the start price, effective from 1 July 2008.

This change is designed to offer a better buying experience by encouraging sellers to be transparent about reserve prices. As a result, buyers will know that any bid has the chance to be successful.

No fee applies when you keep the reserve price equal to the start price, or when listing a car or other vehicle.

Therefore, one of our top priorities when designing OMINS was how to deal with this data.  How to make it easy to store, but more importantly how to make it easy to retrieve when you want it.

The most obvious solution to this problem was building OMINS around powerful search functionality.  Allow the user to not only quickly search for data anywhere in the system, but also allow them to construct advanced searches based on almost any condition!

Furthermore, once the user has constructed a custom search they can then save this search and recall it later.  As only the search conditions are saved, and not the data itself, recalling the search will always return the most up-to-date data.

After implementing this model, the benefits became apparent very quickly. We found we were able to easily use it as a base of many other features in OMINS, a couple of which are outlined below.

Reporting:

Because they are built using the search functionality, we are able to quickly create or adjust reports as needed.  It also allows us to provide standard reports which can be further refined or expanded by the user based on almost any criterea he or she wants at any time – live!  The end result is a very powerful, system-wide reporting system.

For example: Want to see the profit report for all your products?  No problem.  What about just the products that are currently in stock?  Easy.  How about only products that sold in the last week of February?  Piece of cake.

Emails:

Once again, emails are made very powerful in OMINS thanks to the search functionality.  They can be constructed and sent out based on almost any event in the system!  This is accomplished by using a previously saved search (see above).

For example: A user could create a new saved search that found all customers in the system who have bought a product off TradeMe in the past week.  They can then create an email thanking those customers, attach this email to that saved search and schedule it to run weekly.  The end result is a simple “thank you” email going out automatically to all of your TradeMe customers.  Easy, but powerful.

A few further examples of emails provided standard in OMINS:

• Daily tracking number mailout for all sales sent that day.
• Scheduled payment reminders to customers who haven’t yet paid.
• If a previous customer has been bidding on or watching one of your TradeMe auctions, OMINS can send a link to that product on your website allowing the customer to buy it directly without waiting for an auction.
• Many more.

For the techies:

All of this powerful search functionality wouldn’t be possible without good infastructure to support it!  That’s why we built OMINS on enterprise-level software such as the MySQL database server.  This gives us infinately more power, performance and flexibility over entry-level software like Microsoft Access.

Of course, as we’ve said before, being web-based helps a great deal too.   Desktop software just doesn’t allow for the kind of flexibility or power needed to provide these features.

Summary

As you can see, by taking advantage of search we have been able to make OMINS both easy to use and very powerful.

Not an OMINS user?  Leave us a comment telling us how you manage your business data!