How do manual shipping addresses work?

 

WebAlliance offers an option that allows users to manually enter a shipping address rather than selecting a pre-configured Ship To address from your ERP system.

This is an optional setting, set as a site-wide default. Individual user accounts each contain an option (set by an Admin) that overrides the site default.

RetailUser accounts, and guest accounts (if checkout is enabled), will always be required to enter a manual shipping address.

Site-wide Default

If you'd like to enable this setting for your website, please contact Aldrich Web Solutions.

User-specific Setting

In each user account, see the "Security & Access" tab. The setting called "Allow Address Entry" has 3 options:

  • Use the site defaults (see above)
  • Allow Address Entry (always allows this user the option to manually enter a shipping address)
  • Disable Address Entry (never allow this user the option to manually enter a shipping address) 

For WebAlliance Manual Addresses, Address Autocomplete is available via Google Maps. For more information, see the "Autocomplete and Validation" article.

Can I find the user-specific setting for each user in bulk?

Absolutely. Use the User Profile List to view all information known about each user's profile.

In the column called AllowAddressEntry, you'll find one of 3 status indicators: SiteDefault, AllowEntry, DisallowEntry. The User Profile List is only a snapshot; you can't make the edits from that list. However, the User Profile List will provide a list of individual user accounts to be addressed. Simply visit the User Detail page for the user you want to edit and change the setting described above.

How do manual addresses import to my ERP system?

Manual address entry relies on the customer's billing address as the default ship-to.

Since a ship-to must be supplied for an order to import into P21, and a manually entered address does not have a ship-to in P21, WebAlliance uses the ship-to id of the billing address of the customer and overrides the destination address info for the order.

This allows the customer’s order to import and is the same as a one-off address setup in the system.

TIP - The manually entered addresses are also saved in the website's Admin at the User Entered Addresses Report. Use that report to get an overhead look at all your website's carts which use manually-entered addresses.

What if the customer billing address is not a valid ship-to?

In P21, it is possible to disallow shipping to the customer’s billing address.  This is typically fine unless manual address entry is enabled.  The ultimate issue, in this case, is that WebAlliance has no idea what ship-to it must select for a valid import since the billing ship-to won’t work.

For these types of scenarios, you can use the Custom Address Ship To Overrides tool.  You can find this tool under Orders>Custom Address Ship To Overrides in the site Admin panel.

Using this module, the site admin can specify for each customer what ship-to should be used for a manually entered address.  Note that P21 has no ability to create a ship-to automatically from a manually entered address due to tax issues, etc.  P21 imports simply don’t allow for creating a new ship-to therefore an existing ship-to must be utilized.

This utility allows selecting that ship-to.  You can see more about it this tool in the Custom Address Ship To Overrides article.

How does sales tax work for manually entered addresses?

ERP supplied Ship To addresses are attached to a sales tax rate. If a user is taxable, the WebAlliance system will calculate a sales tax based on that rate.

However, because these manually entered addresses are not supplied from your ERP, there is no tax rate attached. Therefore, some tax rate information will need to be supplied via an available third-party Sales Tax integration. Check out the Sales Tax Overview article for more information, and please contact Aldrich Web Solutions with any other questions about how these tax rates work.