Actinic Catalog 4 review

Most e-commerce software will email the shop owner with customer orders, and if these include credit card details then a proprietary encryption system such as PGP will be employed. Once received, these emails will then need to be processed manually. Actinic Catalog, on the other hand, arrives with a full order-processing system as part of the application, so at the press of a button orders are downloaded from your Web site (using the built-in encryption) and offered for delivery, despatch, invoicing and payment processing.

Also new to this version is the ability to create back orders if your stock is insufficient to fulfil the order, plus the stock monitoring facility will keep your Web site updated with how many of a particular item you have available. You can even choose to suspend customer ordering of out of stock products if required.

Taxing business

In order to deal with UK and EU tax situations correctly, e-commerce software must cope with one of several possibilities. To illustrate let's keep things simple and say the sales of merchandise and despatch of product will both be UK-based. First of all the customer could also be based in the UK, which means they'll be charged VAT as normal.

If the customer is based outside the UK, but inside the EU they'll still be charged VAT as normal, unless they're a business-to-business customer and can produce a tax registration number - then they can be charged VAT free. Incidentally, your software should ask for this number before allowing tax-exempt goods within the EU.

If the customer is outside the EU, in other words the rest of the world, then life is simpler still - they don't need to be charged VAT at all. In theory then, your e-commerce software should at least calculate tax based on where the customer lives and is buying the goods.

Actinic Catalog's VAT facilities are excellent, but getting them to work will involve some setting-up before the software can perform correctly. First of all Actinic offers a simple tax calculation, you get a choice of two types of tax, with options for a description, prompt message and tax rate for each. If you want to operate properly within the UK and EU, however, then you'll need to get a little more sophisticated.

Catalog's advanced tax calculation system means your Web shop can calculate exactly how or whether VAT should be levied, according to the location of the customer. Plus, you can allow for tax exception situations, and ask for the customer's VAT registration for confirmation of this at the checkout phase. To cope with the EU you can also display the cost in Euros and at least one other currency, and you can show prices as either tax inclusive or tax exclusive.

In order to handle all this functionality, Actinic Catalog has to get a little complicated when it comes to setting up tax regimes, and even the help system combined with the on-line manual doesn't make every last detail clear. You'll need to set-up tax zones, decide whether to apply tax by delivery address or invoice address, create tax percentage bands and so on.

Catalog's shipping cost calculation options are similarly sophisticated, using a combination of location zones, postage/delivery classes and weight range bandwidths to cope with extremely varied situations. You can also charge delivery based on total quantity or total value, or just charge a standard amount across the board if you wish.

Again to cope with EU VAT requirements, tax on the delivery charge can be calculated on a pro-rata basis across the entire order if you choose. Plus you can charge a 'handling' element, which can be based on a percentage of the shipping charge should you want to get clever. This is a very comprehensive interpretation indeed, and the only missing option is the ability to interface to an external file provided by your delivery supplier.