vinESB 2.2 User’s Guidewineryconnect.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/vinESBUser... ·...

vinESB 2.2 User’s Guide

April 18, 2018

WineryConnect Cornell Technology Farm

500 Technology Farm Drive, Suite W01 Geneva, NY 14456

855-681-7253 http://wineryconnect.com

http://wineryconnect.com/


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Overview ............................................................................................. 3

Basic Concepts ..................................................................................... 4

Slightly More Detail ............................................................................ 6

Preliminary Questions ........................................................................... 7

Overall ............................................................................................. 8

Frequency and Direction .................................................................. 8

Product ............................................................................................ 8

Uniqueness .................................................................................... 9

What to sync? ................................................................................ 9

What is updated? ............................................................................ 9

Gift? ............................................................................................ 10

Clothing? ..................................................................................... 10

Customer ........................................................................................ 11

Uniqueness .................................................................................. 11

Default detail ................................................................................ 12

Notifying customers ...................................................................... 12

Customer Group Categories............................................................ 12

Order ............................................................................................. 13

Sales Tax ..................................................................................... 13

Administration .................................................................................... 14

Integration As A Service ................................................................... 14

Magento Manual Sync ...................................................................... 15

Nexternal Manual Sync ..................................................................... 17

Operation .......................................................................................... 18

Step 1: Create Product ..................................................................... 18

Key Details ................................................................................... 19

Step 2: Enrich Product (Optional) ...................................................... 22

Step 3 (and Step3a): Create Customer ............................................... 25

Key Details ................................................................................... 27


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Step 4: Place Order .......................................................................... 30

Key Details ................................................................................... 31

Step 5: Reporting ............................................................................ 33

Sales Summary ............................................................................ 34

Product Mix Report ........................................................................ 37

Order History ............................................................................... 37

Discounts ..................................................................................... 38

Product Inventory ......................................................................... 39

vinESB Omnichannel Commerce Reporting ....................................... 39

Quickbooks Integration ....................................................................... 41

Overview

WineryConnect is a technology and services company focused on wineries.

Headquartered in the Cornell Technology Farm in Geneva, NY,

WineryConnect specializes in building what we call Winery Intelligence. Our

ongoing mission is to help wineries work smarter, and not harder year over

year as the winery grows and changes. For more information on the full

scope of products and services offered by WineryConnect, please visit our

web site at http://quantumloopsolutions.com.

Over the past five years WineryConnect has worked with wineries to select

the best technology systems to support operations and to learn best

practices in using those systems through the seasons in adherence with

state and federal regulations. The result is a set of Technology, Training, and

Support systems which cover what we call “Seed to Smartphone.”

WineryConnect broadly supports wineries from growing grapes through

making wine, through selling in-person in the tasting room and at festivals,

through selling online with wine clubs, through rewarding customers for

promoting wine socially. Training and support are provided 24/7 by the

Grape Squad – our dedicated winery technology experts.

From working with growing wineries who've had a wide variety of IT systems

over the years, we noticed two major challenges when deploying and

operating them. The first is that staff generally end up shouldering the

burden of manually keeping data in sync across the different systems. Our

http://quantumloopsolutions.com/


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solution here is a technology platform we’ve built called vinESB. vinESB is an

Enterprise Service Bus which means it helps software systems talk to each

other. This kind of automation is usually only available to big companies with

dedicated IT staff, but because vinESB is a managed service, we can offer it

affordably.

WineryConnect provides 6 core benefits:

1. First a reduction in data re-entry and number crunching means a

reduction in manual effort. In some cases this will be a straight cost

reduction, for instance if you take advantage of the Quickbooks integration

included with Revel you don’t need to pay a bookkeeper to enter daily sales

data into Quickbooks. In other cases staff will simply be freed up to engage

consumers and make great wine instead of sitting at a computer.

2. The Grape Squad offers one number to call for winery specific Training

and Support.

3. By automating sales operations across online and POS and back into

accounting, WineryConnect positions wineries to scale revenue efficiently.

4. By providing a bird’s-eye view of operations WineryConnect improves

business insight for wineries, and these insights by the way are accessible

anywhere and at any time.

5. vinESB not only connects business solutions, it serves as an archive of

all customer interactions outside of our partner systems.

6. And finally one of the key things this means is that you are free to

change business systems as your winery grows and changes over time.

Basic Concepts

Our fundamental goal is to enable you to sell online, mobile, and in your

tasting room based on one set of data for Products, Customers, and Orders

without having to manually keep things in sync. We currently support two

online selling platforms (Nexternal and Magento) and one Point Of Sale

(Revel) for mobile and tasting room sales support.


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At its simplest level vinESB looks like this:

Briefly, we currently integrate Products and Customers both from the Online

Store into the POS and from the POS to the Online Store (we sync both

directions). We integrate Orders from the online store into the POS and from

the POS into vinESB and Magento (we don’t yet sync Revel orders into

Nexternal). Intuit invested substantially in Revel resulting in a tight

integration between Revel and Quickbooks which we have proven works for

wineries. The remainder of this document will get into additional detail on

how these integrations work.

Before we get into more detail, however, we should note that in addition to

saving manual effort, having one set of data for Products, Customers, and

Orders means that we can run reports which look at customer purchase

history across online and POS sales to do things like find out who bought


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more than $500 in wine in the last 3 years and loves Riesling. Custom

reports can be developed on request. Having all this data automatically

synced into Quickbooks means your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet are

always up-to-date.

Slightly More Detail

A few more points are important to understand.

First is that Products are uniquely identified by vinESB using SKU, so it’s

important that when Products are created in the POS they are assigned

unique SKUs. This is how vinESB will know which Products in the Online

Store match which Products in the POS.

Second is that Consumers are uniquely identified by email address. A special

case here is when an old customer was created some time ago in the POS

without an email address (the POS does not require an email address where

the Online Store does) and then creates a new account for themselves in the

Online Store. A process for dealing with this situation will be detailed below.

Orders are synced internally based on Order ID, and vinESB includes an

internal monitoring process which will report on all orders synced including

the Nexternal Order ID and the Revel Order ID for each order.

Finally there are several second-level data elements which are integrated

along with Products, Customers, and Orders. Products fall into Categories

and have an Inventory level, Customers can be part of Customer Groups,

and Orders potentially include Tax, Discounts, and/or Shipping Fees. The

way these are integrated will be described in more detail below.


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Note that if the WineryConnect Reward Club module is installed, it will

monitor Orders across the Online Store and POS, and it will automatically

update Customer Group for customers that qualify for your club and for

customers whose qualification expires (in addition to automatically

communicating with the customer about those events). See the

WineryConnect Reward Club User’s Guide for more information. Customer

Lookup and Keg Management vinESB modules are also available.

This additional detail about vinESB is shown in the following diagram:

Preliminary Questions

The Grape Squad will fully set up vinESB for you and train your team

(vinESB has no interfaces itself which your team will need to use – the

integration is automatic, but we will train them on best practices for using


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Nexternal and Revel, understanding how vinESB integrates the two – as

described below). That having been said, there are a few points which will

come up as part of setup which you should be aware of as the Grape Squad

will need these details to complete setup.

Overall

The first point is that your Online Store will be synchronized with a particular

Establishment in Revel. During setup, our integration will query Revel to

read in the configured Establishments, and then we will set the

Establishment to integrate with in the following configuration screen:

Frequency and Direction

All main entities being synced (Products, Customers, and Orders) as well as

most next-level detail entities (inventory level, customer groups, etc.) can

be configured to sync on a daily basis, twice daily, or on an hourly basis.

Most can also be configured to sync only in one direction or the other (from

POS to online store or vise-versa) Default is to sync everything on an hourly

basis and in both directions.

Product

Products are synced both from from Revel into the online store (the normal

sequence for most products which start life in the Point Of Sale or Production

Control systems) and from online into Revel (for eGift cards and similar

which might be created online). By default when a product is created in one

system it is synced into a “staging area” on the target system.

When a product is created in Revel, it is synced into a hidden “Revel”

category in Nexternal. In Magento these products are created with no

category assigned by default.


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o Note: there is an option in Magento to automatically create

categories and subcategories to match Revel categories and

subcategories, and to automatically put new products from Revel

into the matching subcategory in Magento, but usually this is not

desirable. Categories and subcategories in Revel are used to

control the way cashiers access products and this is generally

very different from the way online shoppers access products.

When a product is created in Nexternal or Magento it is synced by

default into a Nexternal/Nexternal category/subcategory in Revel (this

must be created as part of vinESB setup).

Uniqueness

vinESB uses product SKU to maintain uniqueness. When a product is

created in one platform without a SKU vinESB will automatically

generate a dummy SKU for those products. The only time SKU

becomes critical is in the case where an existing online store with

existing products is being paired with an existing Revel instance with

the same products already in it. In these cases vinESB will depend on

SKU matching to correctly associate products.

What to sync?

A key early question is which products to sync to online. The simplest way to

do this is by Revel subcategory. By default all products sync to vinESB (to

support common reporting and analytics across online and POS sales).

Selected subcategories in Revel can be selected to sync online (particularly

in Nexternal integrations) via configuration in vinESB. If desired, individual

products in Revel can be configured to not sync online by unchecking the

“Display on 3rd Party” option under advanced inventory options on the

product. This can be done by spreadsheet upload to mark a range of

products, or you can use the Copy To feature in Revel to change the Display

on 3rd Party flag and have that change apply to multiple products.

What is updated?

On initial sync in either direction (POS to online or online to POS) all product

details are synced. vinESB does not currently synchronize updates to

product details with the exception of inventory levels. When a product

(including child products in the case of Revel Matrix Inventory items) is

purchased in Revel, the new inventory level can be synced to online. If so


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configured, this will cause inventory which is at zero or negative quantities in

Revel to be shown as Out Of Stock online. This is a key question to ask early

on as very often inventory levels in Revel are not accurate and items will

incorrectly be shown as Out Of Stock if this feature is turned on. Please let

your Grape Squad representative know if you want vinESB to synchronize

ongoing inventory level updates out of the gate or if you want to turn this

element on later.

Purchases made online will naturally update inventory levels in Revel when

those purchases are synced into Revel.

Gift?

If you plan to sell eGift cards online you will be pleased to hear that these

are integrated into Revel appropriately. So when an eGift card is purchased

into Nexternal that purchase is pushed into Revel as a gift card purchase

which, in turn, will be pushed into Quickbooks as a liability. When eGift cards

are redeemed online, those purchases will be pushed into Revel as gift card

usage (Applied Deposits) and pushed into Quickbooks as a reduction in

liability. Make sure your Grape Squad representative has configured Revel to

support gift cards if you plan to sell these online. We do not currently have a

way to support gift cards that can be used either in the tasting room or

online.

The following Revel reports detail gift transactions:

1. Reports -> Other Reports -> Gift Cards

2. Reports -> Other Reports -> Gift Transactions

Clothing?

If you plan to sell clothing online and in Revel you need to be aware that

Revel, Magento, and Nexternal all deal differently with parent/child

relationships between products (a t-shirt sold in multiple colors and sizes, for

example). In Revel this is called Matrix Inventory and your Grape Squad

representative can help you set this up such that cashiers can just select the

parent product (the t-shirt) and be presented with available child options

(color, size). Very often this isn’t an issue in the gift shop as individual child

items are barcoded for easy checkout. Online however you typically will want

customers to be able to select just the parent item.


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In Magneto this capability is called a Configurable Product and a special set

of configurable attributes need to be set up and applied to child products

before those child products are available to be associated with the parent

product. The key trick here is in getting products which originated in Revel

as simple products to be treated as child products in Magento. Currently the

only way to accomplish this is to export those child products from Magento,

change their assigned attribute set in the exported spreadsheet to be

Configurable, delete the original child products in Magento, and re-import

from the spreadsheet (making sure the Revel ID and other information

pushed up from Revel remains intact).

In Nexternal child products do not exist as separate products. There is no

harm in syncing these child products up from Revel if desired, but they will

remain hidden and not be used in Nexternal. Instead in Nexternal child

product SKUs must be added as attributes of the parent product. Again ask

your Grape Squad representative or your Nexternal representative for

assistance in getting this set up.

In any event, actual purchases of child products online (particular size/color

combinations) will be pushed into Revel correctly as long as the SKU defined

online matches the SKU defined in Revel for those child products.

Customer

Customers are synced both from Revel to online and from online to Revel. As

with products, all customer details are synced when a new customer is

created, but detailed information (phone number, address, etc.) are not

currently kept synchronized on an ongoing basis due to complexities in

determining which system has the most reliable new updates to detailed

information. We are working on adding this capability.

Uniqueness

vinESB uses product email address to maintain uniqueness. When a

customer is created in Revel without an email address (which is

required by Magento and Nexternal) vinESB will automatically

generate a dummy email address for those customers. The only time

email becomes critical is in the case where an existing online store

with existing customers is being paired with an existing Revel instance

with the same customers already in it. In these cases vinESB will

depend on email matching to correctly associate customer records.


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Default detail

Magento and Nexternal require much more information than Revel to create

a customer. Given this, vinESB can be configured to pre-populate that

additional information with default values (a dummy address and phone

number, for example).

Notifying customers

With a new integration where customer accounts may be created online

based on existing Revel accounts you will want to discuss with your Grape

Squad and Nexternal representatives when and how to notify customers of

their new online accounts and credentials. This will also be the case on an

ongoing basis for customers added to Revel and then synced to online.

Customer Group Categories

It sounds redundant, but given differences between how Revel, Magento,

and Nexternal handle Customer Groups (called Customer Types in

Nexternal), vinESB has established three categories of Customer Group:

Revel Only Customer Groups

Revel supports an ability for individual customers to be assigned to

multiple groups (so a customer might be Family and also a Case Club

member or Wine Club member). Neither Magento nor Nexternal

support this capability – in those systems a customer can be assigned

to one and only one customer group. As such vinESB supports the

notion of Revel Only Customer Groups. Customer Groups added to this

category can be assigned to customers in Revel but vinESB will ignore

them – it will neither add customers to these groups nor remove them

from these groups.

Shared Customer Groups

vinESB keeps Shared Customer Groups in sync between Revel and

Online. A given customer can only be in one Shared Customer Group

at a time and vinESB will keep that group assignment in sync across

online and Revel. Specifically when the WineryConnect Reward Club

module is in place, vinESB will automatically assign customers to the

correct reward club customer group and sync that into all systems.

Nexternal Only Customer Groups

One of Nexternal’s most powerful features is it’s robust wine club

module. When a customer has subscribed to a wine club in Nexternal


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they are assigned to an appropriate wine club customer type. This is a

much different assignment in that it is generally tied to that

customer’s credit card and always to their subscription details. As

such, vinESB cannot modify these assignments based on Revel or

Reward Club activity or anything else.

o Important: As such, club customer types in Nexternal need to

be configured in vinESB to ensure that vinESB never takes

subscribers out of their subscriptions. If and when wine club

customer types are added or changed in Nexternal they need to

be appropriately updated in vinESB configuration.

o In vinESB we support having one Revel customer group for Wine

Club such that regardless of which wine club customer type the

customer is subscribed to in Nexternal they will be assigned one

common customer group in Revel.

Order

Orders are synced from Nexternal down to Revel (and can then be synced

from Revel to Quickbooks). Orders are also synced from Revel to vinESB and

Magento for common reporting across online and POS operations. We have

not yet implemented the final leg to sync orders from vinESB to Nexternal.

Sales Tax

vinESB will query Revel to retrieve Sales Tax items which have been

configured. In the Online Store multiple Sales Tax Items may exist, and

different sales tax may be charged for each order based on where the order

is being shipped to. All this detail is maintained in the Online Store, and so

you will use the Online Store reporting to determine what sales tax you need

to remit to each state (unless you are using Nexternal’s integration with

ShipCompliant and they are handling this for you).

Given that Revel does not need this level of sales tax granularity, our

integration pushes all sales tax into a single Sales Tax Item in Revel for your

reference. This Sales Tax Item is configured in the following screen:


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Administration

vinESB is self-administering and once it is set up it will automatically sync

data between the POS and the Online Store on a schedule you decide on

(hourly, twice a day, or daily) for each data element (Products, Customers,

Orders, Categories, and Customer Groups).

This having been said, vinESB does support manual syncing of data which is

useful during initial testing and then at any point where you may not want to

wait for the scheduled sync.

Integration As A Service

vinESB supports what is known as Integration As A Service. This means that

each winery signing up for vinESB gets their own dedicated URL tied to their

own private database which we host in the “cloud” so that a winery named

Vinakor Vineyards would have a vinESB URL like

VinakorVineyards.VintrinsicConnect.com. When logging in here they will see:


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This is the default Magento admin panel (vinESB is built on the Magneto

open source eCommerce platform). From here you can view all the native

Magento interfaces to report and analyze sales data, view customers and

products, and so on. In this configuration, however, all this will be combined

between Revel and Online. vinESB offers a bird’s-eye view of your commerce

data.

Two menu areas in particular have been added by vinESB. First the manual

sync menu is at the top of the System menu:

Magento Manual Sync

For Magento eCommerce sites, this manual synchronization is initiated by

the following screens:

First a data element is selected:


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Next a source is selected in the From field:

Finally a target system is selected, and Start is clicked to initiate the

synchronization:


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Nexternal Manual Sync

For Nexternal eCommerce sites, this manual synchronization is initiated by

the following consolidated screen:

Note that in the Nexternal manual sync screen it is also possible to reset the

“watermarks” for integration. This controls how far back vinESB looks for

changes. Each time vinESB successfully syncs any given data, it updates the

watermark for that data type. So if you want to re-sync customers, for

example, you would reset the Revel and/or Nexternal watermarks for

customer (depending on which system you were syncing from).

The second major menu area to be aware of is under System >

Configuration where the first sections control Nexternal and Revel syncing.

The Grape Squad will set up and maintain this on your behalf, so this is

covered in detail in the vinESB Setup Guide used by the Grape Squad.


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Operation

Here we will cover basic scenarios for day-to-day operation of the integrated

commerce system, including POS and Online Store operations.

This diagram shows a high-level view of the scenario we will cover:

Step 1: Create Product

In an integrated environment we will typically create product first in the POS

(for instance after bottling a new vintage). We have implemented integration

in the other direction (to be able to sync new product from the Online Store

down into the POS), but for the sake of simplicity we are focusing on one

direction here using the example of a newly bottled vintage – the 2017

Riesling.

In Revel there are multiple ways to create product (in the iPad POS using

Manage Item Mode, via spreadsheet upload, and via several paths in the

online administrative interface). These are all equivalent and will work. The

important thing, as mentioned above, is that a unique SKU be assigned to

the product. You can do this by using the unique barcode as a SKU, or you

can create a pattern for the SKU to guarantee uniqueness (for instance using

a short text representation of the varietal, the year of the vintage, and part


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of the unique barcode for a type of wine as in RIES_17_1234). Note that

Revel will also automatically generate unique SKUs for you if you want it to.

To do this simply export your product catalog in Revel and it will give you

the option to generate unique SKUs when exporting (or ask the Grape Squad

to do this for you).

In this example we will show creating a product using the Revel Quick Add

New Product feature:

As shown, we have created the 2017 Riesling in the Wines/White category

(which will control where that product is shown in the Revel POS), we have

assigned it to the Product Class PREMIUM WHITE (to ensure it is properly

reported on in the Revel Product Mix report), we have given the product a

cost and a price as well as an initial inventory amount (we bottled 1000

bottles in this example). Most importantly we have given the product the

unique SKU we have discussed.

Key Details

Inventory Levels

This is one of the key values in having POS and Online systems integrated –

to keep inventory levels in sync between the systems. By default initial

inventory levels will be synced from Revel to Online, then as orders come in

online inventory levels in Revel will be naturally adjusted (when the orders

are synced into Revel), and finally vinESB will also sync inventory updates in


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Revel (purchases and adjustments) up to online. In the early stages of

adopting vinESB, however, some wineries prefer that we turn this

integration off. The reason is that if inventory levels are not accurate in

Revel (showing 0 or even negative inventory) those items will be shown as

Out of Stock online inappropriately. Of course once inventory levels are

correct this is one of the big benefits vinESB brings – that items which are

out of stock will automatically be shown as Out of Stock online. In Magento

you can also set a low-watermark such that when you only have a couple

cases of a given wine on hand in the tasting room this wine can be shown as

Out of Stock online to make sure orders can be fulfilled. We are working to

add this capability to our Nexternal integration.

Online Categories

Generally only selected categories/subcategories in Revel are available for

sale online. In vinESB we can configure what gets displayed online at the

subcategory level in Revel.

Automatic Categories

In the rare case where you want online categories to match Revel categories

vinESB can push product into the appropriate online category and make it

active. In most cases vinESB will push product into a hidden category

(named “revel” by default). You can then follow step 2 to enrich the product.

This will happen on a periodic basis based on configuration (once an hour,

twice per day, or daily) or we can force it to sync immediately using the

manual sync mechanism as shown here:


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The most common way for product to be created at this point is for it to be

created in Revel and synced up to online. We also support creation of online

products which will be synced down into Revel. For instance you may create

an eGift certificate online in Nexternal and we will sync that product down to

Revel to be able to properly account for sales of that item. Product which are

synced from Nexternal down to Revel are placed in a Nexternal/Nexternal

category/subcategory within Revel.

Product Attributes

Another key point which will need to be discussed during setup is which

attributes should be synced in both directions (from POS to Online Store and

from Online Store to POS) and which attributes should only be synced in one

direction (e.g. from POS to Online Store). Commonly, for example, you will

create a Product in the POS (after bottling, for instance) with basic

information needed by the POS (e.g. SKU, cost, price, simplified name,

simplified description or no description), sync that product into the Online

Store, and then enrich the product listing in the Online Store for online

Customers (e.g. with a rich description, multiple images, etc.). You may also

want your Online Store pricing to differ from your POS pricing.

NOTE: We do not currently support attribute level product updates to

Nexternal. This will be added in the next release.

WineryConnect will discuss these issues with you during the Onboarding

Process, and then configure attribute integration behavior in the following

screen:


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This attribute configuration can also be done at the Product level. For

instance, you may want pricing to be synced between the POS and the

Online Store in general, but for a particular product you want pricing to be

different in the Online Store, and not be updated when price in the POS is.

In these cases we will use the following Product Configuration screen to set

this up:

Step 2: Enrich Product (Optional)

In most cases step 2 is to enrich the product online as required to sell it. It

is possible to create items in Revel, even using Revel’s Manage Item Mode

where you can create an item, describe it, and take a picture of it all at


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once, and have vinESB sync those items up to Nexternal ready to sell. In

most cases you will want to add professionally taken photos and/or rich

descriptions to products online which are very different from any images and

descriptions used in Revel. We will not delve into the details here of how to

enrich products in Nexternal and Magento as that is out of scope for this

document. Briefly, however, here is a quick glimpse of some of this

functionality in Magento:

And here is a quick glimpse of similar functionality in Nexternal:


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An important point to highlight here is that in most cases online product

categories are different from POS product categories, and you will not be

using the integration’s capability to sync product categories. Instead, when a

product is initially synced from Revel to the Online Store it will have no

category and as such will not be available for purchase online. Once you

have sufficiently enriched the online product listing adding whatever

description, pictures, and additional attributes you have (e.g. wine type,

residual sugar, food pairings, Alcohol % by volume, etc.) you will need to

associate the product to an active product category in the Online Store to

make it visible. For instance in Magento here is the screen where that is

accomplished:

And here is where this is done in Nexternal:


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At this point the product is fully configured and available for sale in both the

POS and the Online Store.

Step 3 (and Step3a): Create Customer

Now we need a customer to purchase the product. Again there are many

ways a customer can be created in Revel (via the POS, in the online

administration, via spreadsheet upload, or via integration with our Savor

social platform where customers can create their record in the POS by

signing your Savor Guestbook). Likewise, there are many ways a customer

can be created (or can create themselves) in the Online Store.

Note that vinESB does not currently synchronize updates to customer

information between systems. This is a more complicated process which we

are currently working to build into vinESB. At the current time we only sync

new customers between systems (with all detail) and then update customer

group/customer type assignment between systems when it is changed

(depending on Customer Group/Customer Type rules described below).

For this example we will focus on one path – creating a customer with an

email from the Revel online admin using the Quick Customer function as

shown here:

As you can see we have created a Test Customer with an email and put

them in the Family customer group. At this point this customer will be

synced to online (again automatically based on a schedule or via a manual

push). In the Magento integration the customer will receive an email with

their new login and an auto-generated password so they can log into their


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new online account. If the option to auto-subscribe them to the newsletter is

turned on they will also receive an email confirming their new newsletter

subscription.

The customer can then log in online and update their account information

and that updated information will be synced down into Revel. Note that at

this point we are not syncing customer address information between the

Online Store and the POS.

As mentioned early in this document, a tricky and somewhat common

scenario here is when a customer who has been coming into the tasting

room for years and hasn’t specified an email address in the POS and then

creates an online account for themselves. Unfortunately there is no way

currently for vinESB to automatically recognize that those two customer

records (the old POS record and the new Online Store record) belong to the

same customer. In this case to combine these records will require the

following manual steps:

1. After the new Online Store record has been synced into the POS,

inactivate the new account.

2. Update the old account in the POS to have the email address used by

the new online account.

vinESB will now be able to automatically associate the new Online Store

record with the old POS record. The only down side here is that if the


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customer created an order with their new online account before these

manual steps are executed, that new order will be associated with the new

account in the POS, but the (presumably much larger) purchase history

associated with the old POS account will be preserved, and subsequent

online purchases will also be associated to this account.

Key Details

Customer Groups/Customer Types

One area to note in particular is how vinESB handles Customer Groups in

Revel relative to Customer Groups in Magento and Customer Types in

Nexternal. Revel supports multiple Customer Groups per customer (so a

customer can be an Employee and also Family. Revel will automatically apply

the best discount for the customer based on the groups they belong to.

Magento and Nexternal, however, only support one Customer

Group/Customer Type per customer. As such we have had to develop some

mechanisms to handle this situation.

Revel Only Groups

Any groups which are only in Revel (which could be assigned as additional

Customer Groups for any given customer) need to be flagged as Revel Only

groups in vinESB. vinESB will ignore these in Revel – it will not remove

customers from these groups or add them to these groups.

Default Customer Group

In Nexternal a Customer Type is required. This is the Consumer Customer

Type by default. As such we have added a Default Customer Group control in

vinESB. If a customer is added to Revel without a group, they will be

assigned the Default Customer Group when they are synced to online.

In the screen shot below you can see that Wholesale, Retailer, Savor, and

Removals are defined as Revel Only groups and Consumer is set as the

default Customer Group.


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Nexternal Wine Club

Another special case is Customer Types in Nexternal which are tied to wine

club membership. There are two issues here. First, vinESB should never take

a customer out of a wine club Customer Type. These are paid subscriptions,

and just because a cashier in the tasting room changed the Customer Group

for that customer in Revel does not mean they should be removed from their

online subscription. In addition, Nexternal uses multiple Customer Types to

support variations in wine club subscriptions (pickup vs. ship, for example).

In Revel most often one Wine Club customer group is preferred as there is a

single discount which applies to wine club members.

Both of the above issues are handled by one set of controls in vinESB. In the

screen shot below you can see that in addition to the Revel Only groups and

Default Customer group, a set of Nexternal Wine Club customer types is

defined along with a Default Wine Club. Customer Types defined here will

not be touched by vinESB, and customers assigned to any of those customer

types will be assigned the Revel Customer Group selected under Default

Wine Club (in this case the Wine Club customer group).


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Shared Customer Group/Types

Revel Customer Groups not defined as Revel Only Groups, along with

Nexternal Customer Types not defined as Nexternal Wine Club, are shared

between Nexternal and Revel. When customers are assigned to any one of

these in either system vinESB will copy that assignment to the other system.

In Nexternal the customer will simply be assigned to the selected customer

type. In Revel the customer will be assigned to the selected customer group,

and in addition they will be removed from any other Shared Customer Group

they have belonged to. In other words in Revel a customer can only be in

one Shared Customer Group at a time.

Note that the WineryConnect Reward Club module will also change customer

type/customer group assignments based on reward qualification criteria you

set (total milliliters purchased, number of bottles, or dollar amount). The

Reward Club will also update customer notes in Revel so that Revel cashiers

can see expiration dates for the Reward Club. There are some additional

nuances around how this assignment happens which are covered in the

WineryConnect Reward Club User’s Guide.

“Dummy” Customer emails

Another point worth noting is that Customers with no email address in the

POS (as noted above the POS does not require customer email addresses,

bu the online store does) can still be synced to the Online Store. This will

support full transaction reporting in the online store (integration of Orders


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from the POS to the online store has been developed but has not yet been

released) using the additional transaction reporting available there. In this

instance, given that the Online Store requires an email address, vinESB will

automatically generate a unique “dummy” email for these customers.

WineryConnect will work with you to decide whether customers without

email should be synced to the online store or not, and what the email suffix

for such “dummy” emails should be and then will configure this for you.

NOTE: We do not currently support attribute level customer updates to


Auto-newsletter subscription

With the vinESB auto-newsletter subscription option you can decide that if a

customer gives their address to a cashier in the POS that they clearly are

interested in communication from you and as such they should be

automatically subscribed to your newsletter when that customer is synced

into the Online Store.

NOTE: We do not currently support auto-newsletter subscription to


These configuration items (among others) are set in the following screen:

Step 4: Place Order

Obviously this step is executed by the customer in the Online Store and so

there are no details which need to be covered here around that interaction.


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The key thing to cover here is that orders from the Online Store are not

synced into the POS until they are final (fully paid). So follow whatever

fulfilment process you use with your Online Store to complete the order and

it will then be automatically synced into the POS.

One additional note – we do not currently sync order updates between the

Online Store and the POS. Revel does not allow us to update orders via their

API. In the rare case where an online order needs to be updated after it is

placed (and fully paid for such that it is integrated into the POS), those

updates (presumably adding a discount or removing shipping fees) will need

to be manually made in the POS for that to reflect the changes.

Similarly, vinESB syncs order data from Revel up to vinESB where we have

access to a flexible range of reporting options across online and POS sales

data. Yet again, the orders will be automatically synced or can be manually

pushed (generally only during testing and evaluation).

Key Details

vinESB Employee

The Grape Squad will set up a vinESB employee in Revel so that we can

configure vinESB to push orders into Revel as that employee. The reason we

do this is so you can use the Employee filter in most Revel reports to see

online orders only. Several Revel reports do explicitly include a Web Orders

Only filter, and this functions in the same way.

Payment Type

Online orders are pushed into Revel with a payment type of Credit+ Other.

Revel payment types have been mapped directly into vinESB to support

reporting on Revel orders within vinESB.

Order Type

At Nexternal’s request, we built an ability to map the Nexternal Order Type

into the Revel Order/Dining Option. This way Wine Club orders can be

reported on in Revel by filtering on Order/Dining Option.

Gift Certificates

We are currently working on a mechanism to better handle gift certificates

sold online and then redeemed by consumers online. Will update this

document when these changes are complete.


32

Taxes

Taxes collected online will vary by state and sometimes even by county.

Nexternal has a well proven integration with ShipCompliant, and if you take

advantage of this option ShipCompliant will manage this for you. You can

also manage this yourself and there are many options in Nexternal and

Magento to do so. In any event the idea is, same as order fulfillment, that

this is handled in the online store using the facilities supported by the online

store.

vinESB will sync all sales tax collected online into a single Individual Tax in

Revel just for reference purposes. This is configured via these controls:

Discounts

Discounts are defined very differently between Revel, Magento, and

Nexternal. In general discounts given in the tasting room are very different

from discounts given online in any event. As such we have made no effort to

synchronize the definition of discounts across systems. Instead we simply

synchronize the actual discounts given. To do this we take whatever

discounts were given online and fit them into Revel’s discount model which is

to have Order level discounts and Item level discounts. So in Magento, for

instance, a Catalog Price Rule discount will be sent into Revel as an Order

level discount whereas a Shopping Cart Price Rule discount will be sent in as

an Item level discount. There are some detailed scenarios where what is in


33

effect a discount can be given in Nexternal and Magento which don’t fall into

these categories. In these cases we have mapped these as Item level

discounts in Revel. In all cases vinESB will include what it can in terms of

discount description.

Shipping Fees

Both Nexternal and Magento have extensive control over shipping fee

calculation including direct integrations to carriers to compute the base

shipping fee driven by individual bottle weight (which we will soon be

importing into vinESB from vintrace and auto-populating in Nexternal and

Magento). The important thing to note here is that vinESB will pass

whatever is calculated here into Revel as a Service Fee on the order.

Step 5: Reporting

The final proof that the full integration works is to run reports in the POS

and see the online order data. In the example we are working through here,

the new customer ordered 24 bottles of the new 2017 Riesling as shown

here:

This order was synced into the POS. The following set of screen shots will

show different reports (and different sections of different reports) to

highlight where different information from the online order shows up in

Revel. Note that there is a new filter in most Revel reports which will allow

you to see only the online order activity or to see both online and POS order

activity.


34

The first thing which is interesting to note is that when the new customer

checked out online they entered more complete information about

themselves. In the following screen shot we can see that this new

information (phone number) was synced down into Revel.

We can also see that the WineryConnect Reward Club module kicked in and

added this customer to the Vintage Member group (based on their purchase

of over 12 bottles) and updated the Customer Notes section to reflect their

club expiration date as Club expiration date: ###04/17/2020###. See the

WineryConnect Reward Club Quick Start Guide for more information on how

this works.

Sales Summary

Moving on to the transaction itself, the following is the top of the Sales

Summary report in Revel:


35

Here you can see the following:

1. A total of 1 transaction is shown

2. The Total Product Sales of $576 matches the Magento Subtotal of

$576

3. The Total Service Fees of $53.12 matches the Shipping and Handling

of $53.12.

4. The Total Discounts of $144 matches the 25% Family Discount of $144

shown in Magento.

5. The Net Sales of $485.12 is not shown in the Magento order summary,

which adds tax to get to the Grand Total, but $485.12 is the Grand

Total less tax.

Moving on to the bottom section of the Revel Sales Summary as shown

here:


36

Here you can see the following additional items:

6. Total Taxes and Surcharges of $4.25 matches the Magento Tax

7. Other Payment type (which also equals Net to Account For and Total

Payments) matches the Magneto Grand Total and Total Paid.


37

Product Mix Report

Moving on to the Revel Product Mix Report we see the following:

Here again the following items match:

1. Total Sales matches the Magento Subtotal.

2. Item Discounts matches the Magento 25% Family Discount (and

Discount Amount at the item level).

3. Total Sales inc. Discounts (and Grand Total with Discounts) matches

the Magento Row Total at the item level.

Order History

Under Order History we see the order itself (Order # 100000600 in

Magento) came into Revel as Order 2852 and we can see the following

matches:

1. The Created Date and Updated Date on the Revel Order matches the

Order Date in Magento.

2. Customer in Revel matches the Magento Customer.

3. Updated By shows as the Online Order user. This is a special user

which has been set up in Revel and configured in vinESB to clearly

identify orders created by the integration.

4. Subtotal in Revel matches Subtotal in Magento

5. Service Fee Total matches Shipping & Handling in Magento

6. Tax in Revel matches Tax in Magento

7. Final Total matches the Magento Grand Total

8. Under Order Items we see that 24 bottles of 2017 Riesling were

correctly added to the order


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9. We see that the price of these items matches at $24.00 (though this

could be changed separately online)

10. We see the Discount Amount was calculated by vinESB to be

$6.00 per bottle with the Discount Reason of “25% Family Discount.”

This is done because in Revel this kind of discount is applied as an

item level discount whereas in Magento this is a total discount on the

order of $144. So vinESB divides that discount by the 24 bottles in the

order to arrive at the $6.00 per bottle discount.

11. Service Fees again matches Shipping & Handling in Magento.

12. Under Payments, the $489.37 paid matches the Grand Total and

Total Paid in Magento and has been filed under the Other payment

type in Revel.

Discounts

Under Other Reports > Discounts in Revel we see the following:

Here again:

1. Item and Quantity match Magento

2. Date matches Order Date in Magento

3. Reason matches the discount name in Magento

4. Amt matches the discount given online

5. Order Payments matches Total Paid in Magento


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Product Inventory

Finally, in the Product Inventory report we see the following:

Where we note that the original 1000 bottles of 2017 Riesling has correctly

been reduced to 976 (or a total inventory value of $ 4557.92 based on a

cost per bottle of $4.67).

vinESB Omnichannel Commerce Reporting

When we started WineryConnect back in 2012 our vision was to “close the

loop” for merchants selling online, in a physical location, and mobile (at

festivals and such). This is what’s come to be known as Omnichannel

commerce (this phrase didn’t exist when we started). We have now achieved

this vision. vinESB automates Omnichannel commerce, resulting in reduced

effort and an ability to scale online revenue, but just as importantly vinESB

is in a unique position to offer a bird’s-eye view of your all your commerce

operations when configured to sync order data from Revel up to vinESB.

We built vinESB on top of the open source Magento framework intentionally

to be in a position to take advantage of the vast library of Magento reporting

extensions, and also to be in a position to develop our own reporting and

analytic extensions to interrogate the open Magento SQL database. Browse

the full Magento Marketplace here: https://marketplace.magento.com/

As an example, a company called Amasty (https://amasty.com/) sells a

range of Magento extensions like their Advanced Customer Segments

module which for a one-time $119 fee allows you to “Segment your

https://marketplace.magento.com/

https://amasty.com/


40

customers and guest visitors by various parameters. Export segmentation

results for careful analysis and take advantage of targeted marketing

campaigns.” Here is an example segmentation rule from the module user

guide:

Another possible example is Amasty’s $129 Advanced Reports module which

includes capabilities like this:


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Quickbooks Integration

Intuit invested substantially in Revel (see

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2015/08/revel-systems-

ipad-apple-intuit-roth-unicorns.html) resulting in a tight integration between

Revel and Quickbooks which we have proven works for wineries.

WineryConnect has gone further here. We hired a seasoned winery

bookkeeper, who also happens to be a Quickbooks Pro Certified Advisor (an

elite group of consultants certified by Intuit at the highest level) and a Revel

reseller as well. In fact Shelly worked with the team at Revel that developed

the Revel/Quickbooks integration. Shelly White has done winery

bookkeeping for decades in the Finger Lakes and she wrote a 60 page

manual for us on how the Revel/Quickbooks integration works for wineries.

Please request a copy if this is of interest.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2015/08/revel-systems-ipad-apple-intuit-roth-unicorns.html

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2015/08/revel-systems-ipad-apple-intuit-roth-unicorns.html

Date post:	07-Jul-2020
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