Ecommerce Orders

Ecommerce in MemberZone is for one-off purchases through your online store. These are separate from your clubs, memberships or programs: customers browse your products, add items to their cart, and buy them without signing up for anything recurring. The store complements your memberships, giving customers who aren't ready to join (or members who want something extra) a way to buy from you.

MemberZone uses your business's own word for what you offer (club, membership or program); this guide says club.

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Getting to Ecommerce

Store orders appear with every other order in Fulfillment > Orders (filter Type to Store to see only them). The store itself is the Shop on your public storefront (/b/your-page/shop, or /shop on your own domain), with a page for each category and tag, run from Storefront in the sidebar:

• Storefront > Store settings - turn the online store, and shipping for store orders, on or off.
• Storefront > Products - choose which of each location's products are in the store, with their categories and tags.

See Storefront Products and Store Settings.

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Who Can Purchase

Guest Checkout

Customers can buy without creating a MemberZone account. They enter their information and payment details at checkout, and an account is created for them automatically after payment, with no password, and they're signed in on the spot. Their confirmation email lets them sign in again later. Guest customers appear on People > Contacts with the Customer contact type.

When the email already has an account. A rewards customer, an imported member or a member of another business often has an account without a password. Checkout no longer turns them away: as they type their email, it tells them the order will be added to their existing account (no password needed), and the order goes on that account. Because anyone can type an email, checkout doesn't sign them in or show anything from the account; the confirmation page says We added this order to your existing account and their confirmation email has a secure sign-in link. A blank name, phone or birthday on the account is filled from what they typed, and the card they pay with is used for this order only: it never replaces the default card on the account. Their checkout sign-in form also offers Email me a sign-in link for accounts without a password.

Existing Members

Club members can also buy from the store in addition to their regular club orders. If a member wants something outside their club allocation, they can buy it as a one-off order. When a member is signed in, their best fulfillment discount reward is applied automatically.

Age Check

Businesses that sell age-restricted goods (wineries, wine bars, breweries, cideries, meaderies, distilleries, cigar lounges and cannabis dispensaries) have every store order age-checked: the customer must be of legal age. That's 21 for every US business. For a business in Canada it's the age in the province where the order ships to or is picked up (for alcohol, 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec and 19 elsewhere; for cannabis, 18 in Alberta, 21 in Quebec and 19 elsewhere; for tobacco, 18 in Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec and Saskatchewan, 21 in Prince Edward Island and 19 elsewhere).

• Guests enter their date of birth at checkout.
• Signed-in customers and members are checked against the date of birth on their profile. If their profile has none, checkout asks for it once ("You must be {age} or older to order. We'll save it to your profile so you only enter it once.") and saves it with the order.
• Orders your team places need a date of birth on the customer's profile, or entered for a new customer. The age checked is the one at the location the order is placed at.

An order without a date of birth, or for someone under the age, is refused ("Customer must be {age} or older."). Other business types are not age-checked.

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Store Setup

Turning the Store On or Off

The online store and shipping for store orders are both on until you change them under Storefront > Store settings:

• Online store off - the Shop tab and the Home tab's shop preview are hidden, members lose the Shop link for your business, and customers and guests can't place store orders. Anyone who reaches checkout sees "This store isn't taking online orders".
• Shipping for store orders off - the store is pickup only: Ship to me is hidden and customers can't place a shipped store order.

Orders your team places for a customer ignore both switches (see Staff-Placed Orders). Your clubs, memberships and programs are not affected.

Selling Products Online

Products from your inventory can be sold in the online store. Turn on In store for a product on Storefront > Products (or Available for store on the item under Inventory > Items) and it appears in your public store. Each product in the store shows:

• Title - The name of the product
• Description - Details such as tasting notes, origin or ingredients
• Images - Product photos that appear in the store
• Price - The per-unit price
• Stock level - How many are available for sale (managed through your inventory)

Only products that are in the store are visible to customers. Items used only for club orders stay hidden from the public store. Customers browse by category and tag, each with its own page; a category you hide has no chip or page, but its products stay in the store. See Your Store's Pages.

Adding Products

Products are your inventory items: add or import them under Inventory > Items, then put the ones you want in the store from Storefront > Products, one at a time or in bulk. With more than one location, the change can follow the product to your other locations by SKU. See Storefront Products and Store Settings.

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Checkout Flow

Customers browse your store and add items to their cart with one tap, change quantities from the product tile or the cart (which slides out from the side), and pick pickup or shipping in the shop, which keeps that choice as they move between pages. Checkout in the cart opens the checkout page.

The Four Steps

Checkout is a short stack of numbered steps, one open at a time:

1. Contact - a guest enters their name, email, phone and, for age-restricted businesses, date of birth, or signs in instead. A signed-in customer sees "Signed in as {name}" (and is asked for a date of birth once if their profile has none).
2. Delivery - Pick up or Ship to me (the choice only shows when both are available). Pickup shows the pickup location's name, address and phone. Shipping asks for the address (a signed-in customer picks or adds a saved address) and then the shipping speed from the speeds you offer.
3. Payment - a saved card on file with your business (the default is preselected) or a new card, processed securely through Stripe. The card is charged only when the order is placed.
4. Review & place order - optional order notes and the terms checkbox, then Place order with the total on the button.

Continue moves to the next step. A finished step folds into a one-line recap (for example the email, "Pick up at {location}" or the ship-to street and speed) with an Edit link to reopen it. If something in an earlier step stops being valid (an item sells out, the address changes), checkout goes back to that step.

A cart of only digital items has nothing to deliver, so it skips Delivery: Contact, Payment, then Review & place order.

The Order summary sits alongside the steps on a computer, with each item, a promo code field, the subtotal, any member discount or promo, the processing fee if you pass one on, each tax line, shipping and the total. On a phone it's a bar at the top that folds open to show the same summary, and Continue (or Place order) stays fixed at the bottom of the screen.

Items That Can't Ship, and States You Don't Ship To

On a shipped order, the Delivery step lists any item that can't ship ("This item can't be shipped" or "These items can't be shipped"), each with Remove. If the customer's address is in a state you don't ship to, Delivery says so ("This business does not ship to {state}. Please select a different address or choose local pickup."). In both cases, when one of your locations offers pickup, Delivery also offers Switch to pickup.

If pickup comes from a different location than the one the cart was built at, switching asks first ("Pickup orders come from a different location's stock, so your cart will be emptied and you'll go back to the shop to add your items again.") with Rebuild cart or Keep my cart. Switching from pickup to shipping works the same way.

What Checkout Still Does

• Guest or signed in - guests check out without an account; one is created for them after payment and signed in on the spot, or, when their email already has an account, the order is added to it (see Guest Checkout).
• Members-only items - only active members of your business can buy them. Anyone else sees "Members-only items in your cart" with Remove beside each one (or can sign in with a member account).
• Date of birth - for age-restricted businesses (see Age Check).
• Store paused or shipping off - with the online store off, checkout shows "This store isn't taking online orders". With shipping for store orders off, a shipped cart is told shipping is unavailable and to choose pickup in the shop.
• Promo codes - entered in the order summary; they stack on top of the member discount.
• Member discounts - a signed-in member's best fulfillment discount is applied automatically.
• Saved cards - signed-in customers can pay with a card already on file with your business.

Order Confirmation

After the order is placed, the customer lands on a confirmation page: "Thank you for your order!", the order number, where the confirmation email was sent, the delivery details (pickup location, or ship-to address and speed), the items with their prices, and the totals with Total paid. Two buttons follow: View order in your account and Continue shopping (back to your store). The customer also receives a confirmation email.

Address for Pickup Members

Ask pickup members for an address is a setting on each club, membership or program, not on the store. It sits on the program setup's Pickup, shipping, or both? screen, under Pickup ("Useful for taxes and the occasional one-off" delivery), and applies when someone joins that program choosing pickup:

• Off (default): Pickup members can join without entering an address.
• On: Pickup members must give an address too. Useful if your state requires an address on every alcohol transaction, or if you want an address on file for every member.

It doesn't change which states you ship to; those only apply to shipped orders.

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Order Lifecycle

Store orders move through these statuses as they're placed, prepared, and completed:

Status	What It Means
Confirmed	The order has been placed. Inventory is reserved at this point: the ordered items are held at the fulfillment location so they can't be sold to someone else before you fulfill it.
Ready for pickup	For pickup orders: you've prepared the items, and the customer has been told their order is set aside and ready to collect.
Ready for shipping	For shipping orders: the items are prepared and the order is ready for a shipping label.
Awaiting shipment	A shipping label has been created and the package is waiting for the carrier.
Fulfilled	The order is complete: picked up by the customer, or shipped.
Cancelled	The order has been cancelled. Reserved inventory is released back to available stock.

Payment is tracked separately in the Payment column: Paid, Not charged (for example an order waiting on a payable link), Charge failed, or Refunded.

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Order Details

Each store order includes:

• Order number - A unique identifier for the order
• Customer - Who placed the order, with a link to their contact record
• Date - When the order was placed
• Total amount - The total charge for the order
• Customer fee - Any processing fee passed to the customer (if configured)
• Order status - The current lifecycle stage (confirmed, ready, fulfilled, and so on)
• Payment - Paid, Not charged, Charge failed, or Refunded
• Fulfillment method - Whether the customer chose Pickup or Shipping
• Shipping address - For shipped orders, the delivery address
• Line items - The specific items and quantities ordered
• Attribution - For orders staff rang up, Placed by {name} and, when staff recorded it, Heard about us: {answer} (see Staff-Placed Orders)

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Ecommerce Fulfillment

Store orders are fulfilled alongside your club orders and use the same shipping integrations, Shippo and Vinoshipper.

Processing Orders

• Open an order to see its details and current status
• Mark as ready when you've prepared the items
• Generate shipping labels for orders that need to be shipped (using Shippo or Vinoshipper)
• Mark as ready for pickup for orders the customer will collect
• Mark as fulfilled when the customer has received their order

Bulk Operations

You can select several orders and process them together; the same bulk operations available for club orders apply to store orders. This helps when you have several orders to ship or several pickups to prepare at once.

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Managing Ecommerce Orders

Viewing Orders

Fulfillment > Orders shows every order (club, release and store) in one table with columns for Member, your club, Tier, Period, Type, Status, Method, Payment, Total and Date. Search by member name, email or order number, and narrow the list with:

• Type - Store for store orders (other types: Subscription, Release, Enrollment, Imported)
• Status - for example Confirmed, Ready for pickup, Ready for shipping, Awaiting shipment, Fulfilled or Cancelled
• Fulfillment method - Pickup, Shipping or Digital
• Payment - Paid, Not charged, Charge failed or Refunded

Importing Orders

To bring in orders from another system, open Fulfillment > Orders and choose Import orders from the table's toolbar. This is the only order import; there is no separate store import page. See Migrating from OrderPort for importing pre-paid orders and past order history during a move.

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Inventory Impact

Store orders and club orders share the same inventory at each location. Here's how store orders affect your stock:

• Reserve at confirmation - When an order is confirmed, the ordered quantities are reserved at the fulfillment location. This increases the reserved quantity and decreases the available quantity for those items.
• Release at fulfillment - When you fulfill the order, the reserved quantity is decremented. The items have left your inventory.
• Release at cancellation - If an order is cancelled, the reserved inventory is released back to available stock.

Because store and club orders share inventory, keep an eye on your available quantities during busy periods. Items reserved for store orders reduce what's available for club orders, and the other way round.

Shipping-ready inventory: For items to be included in shipping orders, they must have shipping enabled and a weight set. Items missing either can only be fulfilled by pickup. See the Shipping Configuration guide for details.

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Shipping at Checkout

Shipping at checkout starts from your shipping options. For the speed the customer picks, a signed-in member gets the best shipping option from their active tiers; everyone else gets the store's shipping options from Storefront > Shipping.

Free and Flat Rate

• Free - "Free".
• Flat rate - the flat amount, charged with the order.

These don't depend on the address or the carrier.

Cover Up To and Customer Pays: live carrier quotes

When a speed is Cover up to or Customer pays and the customer's address is in a state you ship through Vinoshipper or Shippo (your Default carrier, or the state's carrier under Carrier by state), checkout gets a live carrier quote for each speed as soon as the address is complete:

• The Delivery step shows each speed's price with a note such as "UPS Ground · About 5 business days". A speed the carrier couldn't quote keeps its usual wording.
• The customer pays their share with the order: the full rate for Customer pays, or anything above your cover for Cover up to ("Free" when your cover pays it all). The order summary and total include it.
• Continue and Place order wait while the quote loads ("Calculating shipping…").
• If the price changed between the quote and the order going through, nothing is charged: the quote refreshes, the customer sees the new shipping ("Shipping for this order is now $X. Please review your total and place the order again.") and stays on Review to place the order again.

Quotes ship from your default shipping location and use standard boxes: physical items only, about 3 lb each, packed in 2, 3, 6 or 12 item boxes. Digital or virtual items (fees, tickets) never add a box. Quotes are reused for 10 minutes, so editing the address doesn't keep asking the carrier. For a standard-speed quote, the location's default carrier service is used when the carrier offers it (see Default Carrier Service per Location); expedited and next-day speeds take the fastest rate.

When there is no live quote

Without a quote (a state you don't ship through Vinoshipper or Shippo, manual shipping, or the carrier couldn't price that speed), shipping works as before:

• Cover up to - "Up to {amount} covered"; any carrier cost above that is charged when the order ships.
• Customer pays - "At fulfillment"; the carrier cost is charged when the order ships.

The total the customer sees is always what they pay that day. The cart shows your usual shipping wording, because it has no address yet; the live price appears in checkout.

While shipping for store orders is off, customers get no shipping figure; your team still can, for an order they place.

After the Order: Shipping Re-quotes

A store order charged a live quote is re-quoted when its shipping address, its items, or its pickup, shipping or location changes. The difference is charged to the customer or refunded, and the preview shows it before you confirm, for example "Shipping re-quoted at the new UPS Ground rate."

• Switching to pickup refunds the shipping, unless you tick Don't refund shipping (keep $X).
• An increase can be forgiven with Waive shipping (don't charge $X). Once waived, that order isn't charged shipping again.
• If the carrier can't re-quote, the customer keeps the price they paid and you see "We couldn't get a new shipping quote, so the customer's original shipping price was kept."
• A pickup order switching to shipping gets a fresh quote when the address can be quoted.

When you create the label, the order's sidebar shows "Customer paid $X at checkout" with the carrier service, and the Shipping Options sidebar marks the quoted rate Quoted at checkout and starts on it. If you choose a pricier rate, MemberZone warns that the customer isn't charged again and your business covers the difference. See Shipping Configuration.

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Tax at Checkout

The order summary shows tax as soon as it can, worked out the same way as the charge. Without a tax provider, it uses the rates on Settings > Taxes & fees.

If you use a tax provider (VinoShipper for the states it ships, or Avalara or ShipCompliant as your tax engine), a shipped order is taxed by that provider once the customer has entered a full address. With Avalara or ShipCompliant, a pickup or digital order is taxed by your engine at the street address of the order's location. Either way the summary shows the figure the order is charged. A shipped order whose address isn't complete yet previews with your state rates. If the provider can't price the order, checkout stops before payment (at Delivery, or before Payment for a digital-only cart) with a plain message:

• An item isn't synced to the provider: "One of the items in this order can't be shipped right now. Choose pickup, remove it, or contact the business."
• The provider is unavailable: "We couldn't calculate tax for this order right now. Please try again in a few minutes." This can stop a pickup or digital order too.

Switch to pickup is offered with the message when a location offers pickup. To clear the first case, fix the item and sync it again (see Taxes & Fees).

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Staff-Placed Orders

You can place a store order on behalf of a customer, for example when someone calls in or buys in person:

1. Click Create order on Fulfillment > Orders, or open the customer on People > Contacts and choose Create order or invoice.

2. Pick the customer (skipped when you start from their profile), choose Products, and build the cart: same product list, same pricing rules, same shipping. For a shipped order on Cover up to or Customer pays to a state you ship through Vinoshipper or Shippo, the form gets a live carrier quote for the ship-to address (a saved address, or the one you type for a new customer), shows it in the summary and includes it in Charging now. Placing the order waits for the quote; if the price changed meanwhile, nothing is charged and the quote refreshes so you can check the total and place it again.

3. Under Collection, choose Charge card on file now or Send a payable link (the customer is emailed a link and the items are held until it's paid).

   The summary's tax is the tax the order is charged: from the ship-to address for a shipped order, and from the location for a pickup or digital one. If your tax provider can't price the order, a red notice explains why and the order can't be placed: an unsynced item is named (for example "Estate Red isn't set up in ShipCompliant (Brand name is required), so ShipCompliant can't calculate tax for shipped orders. Fix the item and sync it again from Inventory."), and an outage reads "Your tax provider couldn't calculate tax for this order, so it can't be charged yet. Try again in a few minutes." The place button also waits while the tax is still loading.

4. In the Attribution section, fill in what applies. Everything here is optional:

   • Ordered by - the staff member who rang up the order. It remembers the last staff member you picked in this browser. Without the View Staff permission it shows as unavailable.
   • How did they hear about us? - the customer's answer, from the same list customers see at checkout. Pick None to clear it. It starts blank on every new order.
   • Recommended by - appears when the answer is Staff recommendation: the staff member the customer says recommended you. This can be someone other than the person ringing up the order.

5. Click Charge & place order (or Send payment link). The order is recorded with placed by staff set to the staff member you chose, so per-staff sales reports attribute correctly. See Edit a Member for how the placed-by-staff attribution shows on the customer's orders tab.

Staff-placed orders follow the same fulfillment flow as customer-placed orders; they just carry the attribution. They go through even while your online store is off, and can ship while shipping for store orders is off. Customers ordering online are not asked how they heard about you; only orders staff ring up carry an answer.

Reporting on how order customers heard about you

Open Reports and run How order customers heard about us (under Orders & Fulfillment) for a count of store orders by answer. You can also ask Zoe, for example "Store orders this month by how the customer heard about us" or "Which store orders named Jordan as the staff recommendation?" The order's answer is separate from any answer on the customer's membership, which the How did you hear about us members report covers.