REC & REC+

About This Guide

This guide explains how to configure your site settings in detail. Access to these settings on your website is via Site Settings in the Admin Centre.

Ecommerce users need to complete all settings whereas CMS users only need to complete non-ecommerce settings.

Basic Terminology

You can access a guide to understanding basic ecommerce and web terminology here.

Contents

System Settings

1. General
2. Company
3. Ecommerce
4. Display
5. Prices & Tax
6. Delivery
7. Stock
8. Security
9. Leads & Alerts
10. SEO

GENERAL 

This section contains: 

• core details
• how registrations and signups are dealt with
• how search works and which results are displayed
• form settings
• control and publishing of testimonials
• which business card information is shown and whether users can edit it
• miscellaneous settings, caching, URL shortening and IE compatibility (for old versions)

Core  Details

Take Site Down For Maintenance - this will take your site offline and is normally only used when scheduled maintenance is taking place.

Use as a Marketing Website - removes all cart and checkout features so that users can see your products but not buy them off the site. It turns your site into an online catalogue rather than an ecommerce store.

Only Allow Enquiries on Products - replaces all add to cart buttons with a Submit Enquiry button via which users can enter their contact details and a message which is then emailed to you. Using this feature disables the cart and checkout on your site.

Country - select your country from the drop down list. This is used by a number of programs to determine which version of Google to use for the Marketing Console and Google product feeds.

Language - select the language you are using on the site. This affects the character encoding used to display cyrillic characters such as accents, cedillas etc which are used in certain languages.

Registration

Require Google Recaptcha During Registration - this is recommended to stop spam registrations.

Turn off User Security Questions - Tick if required. These questions can be used to retrieve your details using security questions but are seldom used in practice.

Send Email Notification to Users When They Register - tick to send a welcome email to users when they register. This setting uses a template which can be previewed in Admin > Email Tasks > System Email > Registration - New.

Enable Profile Images for Users - allows Users to set a display name and image that will show if they leave a comment on a Blog post.

Force Users to Validate Their Email - Legacy Setting - Only applies when users register through /register.php

Require setting a group on new admins - When using access control settings, use this to help ensure your new admins have a group set.

Spam Prevention

The following settings do not prevent users from registering with you, but will not be added to your newsletter list to help keep it clean.

Don't add standard role based emails - Ignores any newsletter signups from emails starting with abuse@, hostmaster@ etc.

Don't add additional role based emails - Same as above, but prevents using emails starting with hello@, accounts@ etc.

Ignore common catchall addresses - Not Recommended - Prevents newsletter signups from email addresses that are often used by spammers, such as @btinternet.com. Only recommended if you're fighting a problem with spam addresses in your newsletter signup list. In which case, we would suggest looking into https://neverbounce.com.

Enable Spam Checks on Expert Answers - Enables spam checking on expert answers

Newsletter

Enable Newsletter Signup on Registration/Checkout - Show a tickbox on Registration & Checkout, allowing users to signup to your newsletter.

Enable Newsletter Signup on Checkout confirm screen - Show a tickbox on the Checkout Confirm screen, allowing users to signup to your newsletter.

Check the Newsletter Signup Checkbox by default - since the introduction of the GDPR this would normally be left unticked so that users are giving positive consent by ticking it themselves.

Enable Double/Confirmed Opt-In Newsletter Signup - since the introduction of the GDPR this would normally be left ticked so that users receive an opt-in email to confirm their signup.

Enable Opt-In SMS Signup - gives customers the option to opt in to receive SMS messages

Enable Opt-In Direct Main / Postal Signup - gives customers the option to opt in to receive direct mail

Addresses

Do Not Require Addresses at Normal Registration - Tick this as default so that visitors signing up to the site via the Register link (rather than the checkout process) do not have to enter their address.

Only allow billing address – This only allows users to add a billing address in the checkout process. The delivery address is hidden and automatically defaults to the billing address. This is useful for higher value ecommerce sites to avoid fraud by only allowing shipment to the billing address.

Force users to select a county for a specific country – Select a country from the drop down list for which the user has to select a region as well as a country. Typically useful for United States, as it forces users to select their State which is often required for calculating tax.

Search

Show these Results on Search - select what is included in the search results from the dropdown. For example, CMS sites may only want to include Pages or blog posts, whereas ecommerce sites may wish to include categories and products.    

Show these Results on Advanced Search - for ecommerce sites only where Advanced Search is in use.

Sort Advanced Search Results - set the sorting of Advanced Search results to Default, Alphabetical or Reverse Alphabetical

Blacklist Inappropriate Words/Phrases - this stops 'rude words' from appearing in the tag wall and is a system maintained list. Other words can be added if needed by contacting support. This will also apply for tag list words, helping to remove them from Google.

Hide Popular Search Terms - normally ticked. Stops the display of what other people commonly search for.

Show Top User Queries in Search Autofill Dropdown - normally ticked

Enable Recommended Products When No Search Results Are Found - normally ticked

On Normal Search, Search through Options and Attributes when searching for products - normally unticked

On Normal Search, Search only on Product Codes - normally unticked. This can also be used with the Levenshtein Distance system setting in the Ecommerce tab, which will account for typing errors in product codes or product names during search and return the most likely product.

When using the "Super Search" Sidebar App, Only show Products around the store that relate to that selection - normally unticked. This is used for auto parts and similar sites.

Forms

Switch off old form processor files - Tick this to turn off the default contact form if you are replacing it with a new contact form set up in Form Builder.

End form response sessions on Thanks page - Tick this to tie form responses to completed shopping carts for customised checkout processes using Form Builder.

Delete form responses when their related cart items are deleted - Tick this if using Form Builder for customised checkout processes. It will delete any captured form data when the cart item it relates to is deleted.

Add Custom Form Input – Adds an additional form to the original site contact form which you can customize and name to whatever you need for example if you want to ask a specific question when customers contact you. Complete customisation of forms is available via the Form Builder add-on licence.

Custom Form Input Name - Used in conjunction with the above setting.

Testimonials

Guests can post Testimonials - normally unticked. Allows guests to post testimonials.

No. of Testimonials to show per page - defaults to 100

Business Cards

Show Business Card contact info? - Tick to show your contact info on the Business Card app, including telephone number and address, rather than just contacting through the site. 

Allow Users to Add/Edit Business Card Info

Miscellaneous

Admins can view Draft Pages/Products/Blogs through Direct Links - normally ticked.

More modern page URLs - This will remove the .html from the end of pages and make them lowercase

Use simpler add screens where available - Currently only applies to Add Page - Strips down the Add Page screens to just the few core fields and automatically sends you to the edit page.

Auto redirect to the modern URLs - This will automatically redirect old .html URLs to the new lowercase URLs, useful for converting existing sites.

Default new page layout/template - Set the default layout file to use when creating a new page.

Enable Extended User Groups - this is a special feature typically only used for customised applications. Normally unticked.
(Normally, you would have up to 3 User Groups to categorise users, this allows a maximum of 8. Please note, the Extended User Groups do no yet work with Email Manager, Downloads or Access Permissions)

Enable User Account Managers - When enabled, each user in user manager can be assigned to a specific admin as their "Account Manager". A note field will also appear against them which you could use instead of the comments on a user a single field to store ongoing details for this account. 

Cache

Redis is a caching system for making websites with large traffic volumes work faster.

Enable Redis - normally only ticked for high volume ecommerce sites

Default Cache Expiration (Seconds) - Change how often the cache refreshes.

URL Shortener

Select which URL shortener to use when making social posts from the available choices of:

- None

- Tinyurl (no longer available, we now use the standard Twitter url shortener) - normally ticked

- Bit.ly

IE Compatibility

This is a legacy setting that was needed to resolve IE issues.

Force all IE Version to Compatibility Mode/IE7 - normally unticked.

COMPANY

This section deals with:

• Setting up company name, address, telephone number, contact email address and company registration number
• Adding a slogan and uploading a logo
• Entering your favicon displayed in browser tabs and mobile touch icon
• Setting your social sharing images and Twitter card images

Company Details

Company Name – Enter your company name here. By default this will appear in the header bar on every page but can be set not to appear via Website Theme Manager under Admin & Reports > Design > Edit Colours. Please note that not all templates implement all the fields currently shown here, in which case go into Templates to make changes.

Slogan – Enter your company slogan or catchphrase here. but can be set not to appear via Website Theme Manager under Admin & Reports > Design > Edit Colours. Please note that not all templates implement all the fields currently shown here, in which case go into Templates to make changes.

Logo – Logo uploads have moved to Admin > Logo Manager, visit here to update your logo.
Upload your logo by clicking browse then selecting the logo file. The logo size should fit into your overall website header design scheme. The logo will appear in the left side of the header bar, above the company name and slogan if they are shown, as well as being available to use in your order / invoice document template. but can be set not to appear via Website Theme Manager under Admin & Reports > Design > Edit Colours. Please note that not all templates implement all the fields currently shown here, in which case go into Templates to make changes.

Contact Email – enter your contact email here. This is important as all standard emails from the site including orders and enquiries will be sent to this address. You can enter multiple email addresses by separating each address with a semi-colon surrounded by spaces

 e.g.  john@mycompany.com ; janet@mycompany.com

Hint: If you set up custom forms in Form Builder you can set up specific email addresses where you wish responses to be emailed to.

Company Registration Number – Enter your company registration number here. This will appear on the invoice.

Site Images

Favicon - Upload a favicon which will be displayed in visitors’ browser tabs. Convert a PNG to ICO

Mobile Touch Icon - Like the favicon but larger for mobile device bookmarks & homescreens.
Recommended size: at least 200x200px. Must be a square image.

Social Sharing Image - Default image shown on social networks for your site.
Recommended size: 600x315px or 1200x630px. You can test with Facebook's Sharing Debugger tool.

Twitter Cards

Enable Twitter Cards - Twitter by default uses the social sharing image set above, however they also offer "Twitter Cards" to stand out more specifically for shares of your site on Twitter.
Test your site with the Twitter card validator tool (sometimes takes a couple presses to work).

Twitter Card Large Image - You can set a specific large image to show when your site is shared on Twitter.
We recommend 1200x630px for this, though it seems the size can change.

Company Address

Company Address – Enter your address here. This will appear in the footer bar.

Telephone Number – Enter your contact telephone number here. By default this will appear in the header bar on the right but can be set not to appear via Website Theme Manager under Admin & Reports > Design > Edit Colours. Please note that not all templates implement all the fields currently shown here, in which case go into Templates to make changes.

Opening times

Enter your opening times from Monday - Sunday
For these to appear on the website requires a design change in the templates using the array: 

{{ dump(company.opening_times) }}

ECOMMERCE

This section deals with:

• How product options are handled
• Setting 'manufacturer' and download category display options
• Removal of items from wish lists
• Cross-sell and up-sell options
• Auto-populating meta description data
• Setting the number of products being displayed
• Product ratings
• Checkout options
• Abandoned cart timings

Products

Only add options to cart if they have a monetary value - normally unticked.

Show bundle components in cart? - Requires the BOM/Bundles feature. Shows bundle components in the cart when a bundle is added to cart.

Display Product Options – Use drop down boxes or radio buttons for displaying product options. Dropdown is typically used.

Force Select of Product Options - tick if you want buyers to have to select options when ordering products.

Enable Legacy Make/Model/Year System - enables the make/model/year search, exports & filter functionality in product manager. This is now a legacy system, usage of "Vehicle Search" system is recommended instead.

Use the Auto-parts default name mode only - This disables the alternative autoparts mode with name changes and the export will no longer take these name changes off the product names

Include inc. VAT prices in import/export - Adds inc. VAT prices into product imports/exports. You will need to fill out both the inc. and exc. vat prices.

Enable Vehicle Search - enables the Make/Model system based on Product Filters

Show the floating Vehicle Search button and form - Displays a button in the lower left corner of the screen, allowing quick access to the Vehicle Search System

"Vehicle not listed" form URL - Link to a page containing a form for a user to fill in if they click the "Vehicle not listed" link in the floating Vehicle Search form

Label for Manufacturers – Change the text label for Manufacturers e.g. to “Brand”

Default Product Download Category - Select a default download category which will be used when adding downloads directly on the Product page in Product Manager, as opposed to via Downloads Manager. This can help to save time and keep all your product downloads in one place.

Remove Wishlist Item when a User buys one after clicking on it - tick as default, you would normally want purchased wish list items to no longer show.

Cross & Upsell Settings

The following settings help you to increase your sales by displaying other product recommendations etc on the product page together with the main product. We strongly recommend you take the time to use all these features.

Show Full Related Products Layouts on Product Pages (Instead of Carousels of Smaller Products) - normally ticked.

Show Associated Products – tick to display associated “cross-sell” products on product pages. You can set products to be linked in the Association Manager. For example, if you sell laptops then you would show laptop cases, memory upgrades etc as associated products. Normally ticked.

Show Alternative Products – tick to display alternative “upsell” products on product pages. You can set products to be linked in the Association Manager. For example, if you sell a 20 megapixel canera then you would show 30 and 40 megapixel cameras etc as associated products to encourage the visitor to trade up to a better product. Normally ticked.

Show “People who bought this also purchased these” – tick to display other products which people bought together with the current product on the product page. Recommended you tick this. The system works out what the products are which need to be displayed. Normally ticked.

Show Best Sellers – tick to display best selling products on the product page. Recommended you tick this.The system works out what the products are which need to be displayed. Best Sellers are based on the most viewed products by the system.

Show Latest Products – tick to display the latest products added to the system on the product pages. The system will automatically display these by date added.

Featured Products – Tick to display featured products on product pages. Products are set as “featured” via the Status field on the product record. Often ticked.

Show Special Offer Products - Tick to display special offer products on product pages. Products are set as "special_offer" via the Status field on the product record.

Show Google Searched Tags (People who bought this product, searched for *tags*) - Tick to display the words by which people searched on Google when they buy this product. This helps to increase your SEO. Normally ticked.

Show Site Searched Tags (People who bought this product, searched for *tags*) - Tick to display the words by which people searched via your site search when they buy this product. This helps to increase your SEO. Normally ticked.

Show Recently Viewed Products - This keeps a history of products the user has recently viewed to display back to them.

Auto-populating meta description data

The next 3 settings determine whether to automatically add useful SEO data into the product meta description to supplement the product title when it doesn't already contain them.

Show Product Name in Meta Title of Product Page 

Show Product Code in Meta Title of Product Page

Show Product Manufacturer in Meta Title of Product Page

Use Categories? - Tick if you wish to organise products into categories. Typically this is ticked.

Use Departments? - Tick if you want to organise categories into “departments” so you can create a department store. Typically this is unticked.

Show Manufacturers On Product Pages - Tick to display  manufacturers on  product pages. We recommend you set up all products with a manufacturer (or brand) even if it is your own brand. This is used if you upload products into Google Merchant Centre for the Google Shopping channel.

Enable simple enquire pop-up - otherwise the user redirected back to the thanks.php page - normally ticked.

Allow Group Prices to Override Cheapest Price - normally unticked. The price given to users is normally based on the cheapest price. This allows you to ignore the cheapest price and use the group price instead, ordered by the users group index or group name matching their membership code.

Enable product images to be selected on options - Normally ticked. This allows the product image to be changed when you select different product options. NB This may require a template change to be visible on the page.

Show Commodity Code and Country of Origin fields on product record - Enables display of Commodity Code and Country of Origin fields on Add/Edit Product. Note: Requires a template change to show these values on the Invoice template.

Prevent direct URL access to addons - Prevents users from being able to go directly to addon products. Will show a 404 screen if they try to.

Number of Products to show on:

Page Manager Pages - minimum setting would normally be 12 and increments in 4's normally (dependent upon template layout). Some sites with a large number of products have this set as high as 48.

Category / Department / Manufacturer Pages - typically 12, some sites have this as high as 30.

Search Pages - typically 12, some sites have this as high as 30.

Hide pagination when only 1 page of results is found - normally unticked.

Sorting discontinued products to the end of product listings - Send products marked as discontinued to the end of product lists.

When no products are found on search, find similar products using the Levenshtein distance system. This helps overcome typos when searching and looks for a product title or product code which is most likely what the searcher intended.

If in use, which column should we use? Select either product code or product name.

Google Shopping

Enable Legacy Google Product Feed CSV IDs - We now use an improved way of generating the combination IDs in the Google Product Feed. Normally unticked, however sites with these feeds already set up in Adwords should keep the Old/Legacy IDs.

Show Categories as Custom Labels in the Google Product Feed - This can be overridden if you add custom labels to products through attributes

V2 product feed product split - Split the V2 Product Feed out by All products & variations, Only top level products or by Google Products Variation options

Enable Costs in Google Product Feed - v1 & v2 feeds supported, needed for Google Shopping Auto Discounts.

Enable Google Shopping Auto Discounts in Google Product Feed - Requires Google Shopping Auto Discounts to be enabled. v1 & v2 feeds supported.

Enable Google Shopping Product IDs in GA4 conversions - This will add the Google Shopping Product ID to the GA4 conversion event instead of just the top level product ID which is the default

Enable Google Shopping Auto Discounts To Variation Level - By default we attach discounts as a % based on the price they want to discount to directly to the top level product, enabling this restricts that to the exact clicked variation in Google Shopping

Default % discount for Google Shopping Auto Discounts - E.g. set as 10 to have Google be able to discount up to 10% off the retail price (inc. VAT)

Variations & Sage

Enable Product Variations - Variations allow you to map different combinations of options on a product such as Size & Colour, to different product codes and different stock levels. 

If a product has variations, we use the variations stock for the product instead of the other stock fields, however these fields are kept in sync with the variations as you make changes to them. 

Hide Product Option Fields Used In Variations - Hides any fields in the Options section of Add/Edit Product that are also fields in the Variations section.

Use Variation Prices - Use Prices on Variations instead of Options

Enable "Sage field requirements" - If you're integrated with Sage, you may need to enforce some requirements in the system to match Sage, such as their 30 character limit on product codes.  
Note: When you set this then costs and stock quantity can only be set via the API link to Sage and these fields will be greyed out when you edit a product

Enforce unique product codes - Require that all Product Codes be unique values. Product codes are used to reference the same item between systems and therefore should always be unique

Delay sending product events - This option allows you to hold off sending the new and updated product events to 3rd party sites such as Multi Store or Sage. This let's you build up the product first and get all it's options etc. setup before you send it over to other systems. It does this by adding a new button (text for this new button can be changed under this setting).

Product Ratings

Select the colour of stars you want on product ratings – either yellow, green, red or blue. Typically yellow is used.

Hide Product Ratings – Ticking this option will hide product ratings from appearing on all the product page, whilst still allowing users to add a product review. This can be useful if you are building up your ratings first because you are a new site.

Show New/Pending Reviews - By default new (un-approved) reviews show on the front end right after users leave them. You can disable this if you'd like to check each review before it's shown with this setting.

Allow users to upload image on Product Reviews - Allow customers to upload image files when leaving a review (e.g. showing your product in action). IMPORTANT: Enabling this feature can enable users to upload potentially explicit or copyrighted images which can then be displayed on your site. As such, it cannot be enabled at the same time as "Show New/Pending Reviews" and we suggest that you update your general terms of use of your website, your GDPR policy to explain how the images are stored and processed and the Reviews Terms of Service template which can be found in Page Manager > review_image_upload_terms_and_conditions. Contact your legal advisor for exact phrasing.

Checkout

Allow Guest/Fast Registration - when ticked it allows first time users to quickly checkout without being signed up to the site. We recommend ticking this.

Require customers to enter both their First and Last names - we recommend this is ticked because couriers often require first and last names for security vetting requirements.

Enable Account Type Switch - Allows users to select whether their Billing or Delivery Address is a Personal or Business Address.

Auto-generate Membership Codes - When ticked membership codes are automatically generated by the system. Defaults to enabled.

Turn off the auto confirm emails sent to customers when a new order arrives - When ticked it turns off the automatic confirmation email sent to the customer when they place an order. Typically left unticked.

BCC Order Confirmation - enter an email address to send a blind copy of the order to a third party, such as a reviews site. 

Do Not BCC Order Confirmation Emails for the following Groups - Don't send the BCC Order Confirmation email if the user placing the order is in any of the selected groups.

Affiliates Earnings should be Calculated with Delivery Added – tick if you want earnings to be calculated with the delivery price included.

Affiliate For Life - Tick to assign all subsequent orders to the affiliate from which they first originated. This is a powerful tool for Referral Marketing. For example, if an affiliate gains you a customer, then every order that customer places in future will be added to the affiliate’s commission total.

Hide the Amount being Donated to Charity - this applies when you have charities set up in Charity Manager, tick as required.

Show Product Carousels on Checkout Page - typically this is unticked. 

Switch off the Checkout Splash Page – Normally ticked, this prevents a “splash” or small advert pop-up from appearing when you click to go to the checkout page. It was intended to be used as an upsell space or to provide important information, for example, if you wish to advise buyers you are on holiday or deliveries are being delayed. The splash page will also not show if the page has no content on it.

Switch on the Terms & Conditions checkbox on Checkout - Turn this on to force buyers to accept your terms and conditions on the Checkout page before being able to proceed. Read here for full setup instructions.

Accept a Single Phone Number during Registration - tick as required.

Force postcode entry on checkout - Require that the user placing an order enters postcodes for their Billing and Delivery Addresses.

Email users on failed payments? (Supports SagePay & Authorize.net)

Users will already see a warning in their browser when a payment fails but this can be ticked to also send them an email.

Hide delivery address if it's the same as the billing address on Checkout. (Shows a tick box to the user to change the delivery address) - tick this if required (may need  template changes so view the checkout page to make sure it's ok). 

Request Customer VAT & EORI Numbers - Only applies to companies registering on your site outside the UK you need to collect these for shipping.

Enable Checkout Address Matching Checks - Enabled Address Matching Checks on a per user basis

Users Previous Orders Screen

Allow users to set confirmed complete on orders - Lets a user mark their order as completed e.g. after it's been delivered.

Allow users to set return required on orders - Lets users request returns, this emails you to say they have made this return request.

"Best Sellers" Sidebar App

Limit - Limit how many best sellers will be selected.

No. of Products Shown - Choose how many products to show at once. Typically set to 10

Abandoned Carts

Abandoned After How Many Hours - set the number of hours after which an abandoned cart email will be sent to users who created an order but did not complete it through to purchase.

Alert Admins when Abandoned Cart Value is over this value - email admins when a cart over the specified value is abandoned.

Cancelled Orders

Alert Admins when Cancelled Order Value is over this value - email admins when a order/cart over the specified value is cancelled.

DISPLAY

This section deals with:

• General display settings
• Header search auto-fill
• Rotation speeds for banners and content sliders 

General

Enable Website CSS in CKEditor - tick to allow CSS to be used in page content, used for more bespoke page designs.

Show the Menu floating at the Bottom/Footer of the Screen - Normally unticked, this is an obsolete feature which shows a black bar that stays at the bottom of the browser window with “quick link” icons in it.

Use Albums on Image Gallery - Allows use of albums to organize photos in the image gallery.

Allow Users to Add Tags - tick to allow users to tag photos in your gallery.

Allow Users to Add Another Tag Box - tick to allow users to add their own tags in albums

Use American Style Dates (MM/DD/YYYY) - tick to change to an American date format

Show Download Categories on the front end? - Tick to display download categories on the web page used to display downloads.

Show Tel No. & Company Name on User Manager instead of Membership Code & Joined Date - Tick as required. Showing telephone number and company name is usually better suited to telesales operations especially when using Prospect Manager.

Consolidate Delivery and Billing Addresses in Order Manager - Ticked by default so that when the delivery and billing addresses are the same it will only show one address.

Show Membership Code instead of User ID - select whether you want to show membership code instead of user ID in areas such as Order Manager, which de-clutters having different numbers visible for sites driven by membership codes.

Show Smart Types on Order Manager - Show User Smart Type badges as a column on Order Manager.

Header

Turn Off the Header Search Auto-Fill - normally unticked. Predicts relevant answers when a visitor types in the search box and displays these in much the same way as Google Instant. 

Turn Off the Header Menu Animations - normally ticked. This is an obsolete function which allowed you to use Flash to animate the logo in the header on page load. Flash is no longer recommended for use.

Animation

Banner Rotation Speed – Set how long each banner is displayed before it is rotated (in seconds). Normally set to a minimum of 4 seconds.

Content Slider Speed – Set how long each slider is displayed (in seconds). Normally set to a minimum of 4 seconds.

Expert Answers

The Expert Answers section will only appear if you have the paid Expert Answers feature enable. Please contact us to discuss enabling this feature.

Require Users to enter a Phone Number - Require Users submitting a question to enter a phone number.

Admin Message Bar

You can add an optional message bar to the top of all admin screens here. E.g. if this is a Replica site to warn admins to only change products on the Master site.

Message Bar Text - The main content of the message.

Message bar background colour - The colour of the message bar background (Text colour will be automatically worked out to best contrast this colour)

PRICES & TAX

This is for use only by ecommerce sites to enter your tax information. 'Tax' also means 'VAT' in the UK. This deals with:

• Setting whether your business is tax registered
• Rules used for determining how tax is calculated
• Tax rates
• Displaying prices 
• Selecting the type of rounding used for prices and tax
• Coupon spend and auto-allocation
•  Selecting invoice styles and what information is displayed on invoices

Tax

Are You A Tax Registered Company  - Tick this if you are need to include tax on your prices.

Tax Registration Number – please enter your tax registration number here. This will appear on your orders and invoices.

Calculate VAT based on the user's region? -  Normally ticked so users whose address is within your active Tax zone(s) will pay Tax on their orders (e.g. VAT is payable for all users buying products within the UK and, at the time of writing, the EU). Find out more information on setting up regions via Despatch & Delivery Manager.

Calculate VAT based on the user's group? - normally ticked to use the tax settings set up in user groups. For example, putting a customer into a non-taxable user group will mean they won’t be charged tax. This is useful for situations such as EU-registered businesses not having to pay tax on their purchases if they are VAT registered. In that case, you would set up a user group called “EU VAT Registered Business” and add the customer to that group with it set to not charge tax.

Calculate Tax on Delivery – normally ticked so the system will split out and display the tax amount from your delivery charges (it inherits the same tax rate as the products in the visitor’s cart). 

Calculate VAT based on Delivery Address rather than Billing Address - normally ticked to use the buyer's delivery address to determine whether they are within your active tax zone. Leave unticked to use the billing address.

Apply region and/or group based tax rules to tax on delivery? – normally ticked to extend the region and group based tax rule to delivery, if they are being used.

Use the VAT exclusive field on the product record to calculate prices? - If you're displaying prices inclusive of VAT then leave this unticked, otherwise tick this if you are displaying prices exclusive of VAT

Tax Rates

Standard Rate - set your standard rate of tax (e.g. 20)

Reduced Rate - set your reduced rate of tax (e.g. 5)

Use regions based VAT rates? - This allows you to override the VAT rate for users with billing/delivery in specified regions (for example US Economic Nexus laws)

EU IOSS VAT

Enable EU IOSS VAT - For more information, see here.

EU IOSS VAT ID/Number - For more information, see here.

Displaying Prices

Turn on currency converter - Tick if you want the currency converter button to be displayed. This allows the visitor to convert prices into a different currency on the product page and in the shopping cart. The currency rate is taken from the European Central Bank (ECB).

Re-download currency rates every hour - Update the Currency Rate cache every hour, if left unticked the cache will be refreshed every day.

Currency Adapter - Allows you to swap between getting currency rates from the European Central Bank (ECB) or Currency Layer. ECB is the site default, while Currency Layer is an external service and will require an API Key from them to function (the API Key can be entered in Admin > Connect > Utilities).

Show me Product Price Comparisons on Add/Edit Product - if ticked, this will try to find prices for comparable products on ebay for comparison purposes. 

Use Multiple Prices on Products - Tick if you want to use quantity break pricing on products whereby the price is cheaper the more people buy, as well as being able to create customer group pricing, where you can set different prices for products dependent upon the type of customer they are, for example, trade customers will see a different price when they log in when they are assigned to a “Trade” group.

Enable development cost tracking - Ticking will enable an extra field on Add/Edit Product, called "Development Cost". Filling this in will allow you to measure how long it takes for your product to become profitable

Show product prices inclusive of Tax - tick if required, otherwise the price will be displayed without tax.

Show delivery prices inclusive of Tax- tick if required, otherwise the price will be displayed without tax.

Show the highest VAT rate/percentage at checkout - tick to use the highest VAT rate possible, use in conjunction with EU IOSS VAT.

Separate groups of thousands with a comma (Except on Cart) - Will automatically add thousands separators in most places.

Hide decimals from displaying in prices (Except on Cart) - Will automatically hide decimal values in prices in most places.

Price List App

Run the "Update Price List" Email Task on the following days - Used in conjunction with the "Update Price List" Email Task, you can select which days to notify people of price changes.

Show Product Filter Tags on Price List CSV - Useful for Trade/Dealers to see which tags fit the car if using them to handle Make/Model/Year.

Show Product Filter Tag changes on Price List Changes email task - Adds to the above setting and alerts for changes in these tags. 

Show difference between "Your Price" & "Retail Price" as a percentage - This adds to the above where we show a column showing the % saving trade customers get.

Price & Tax Rounding

It is possible to set different methods for rounding tax. 

Type 1 general rounding - normally ticked, 0.5p and over is rounded up, less than 0.5p is rounded down.

Type 2 floor rounding - rounds down penny decimals.

Type 3 Truncated - Rounding cuts off after the specified number of decimals. For example if the number produced in calculations is 6.2455555 and you have set the system to truncate to 4 decimals the number will become 6.2455.

Coupons

Minimum level of spending to qualify - select from one of the options below:

• Total of Everything
• Total Before Delivery
• Total Before Delivery & Tax (if tax is set to not show on prices)

Enable support for auto applying coupons at checkout - tick this to allow coupons to be automatically applied on the checkout page which match the coupon criteria and have been assigned for use by the user.

Order Value Range

Calculate min/max based on - set whether the below settings should include or exclude delivery

Min Order Value - set minimum order value allowed when placing an order.

Max Order Value - set maximum order value allowed when placing an order.

Leave both fields blank to allow all orders to go through. Min Order Value is useful where you want to ensure visitors spend a minimum amount to justify processing the order.

Invoice Table Style

Select the invoice style you wish to use:

• English Style - shows prices and tax on a line-by-line basis and is normally selected for UK-based companies.
• American Style - shows prices without tax and displays the tax amount as a summary line.
• Custom Template - only tick if you have a bespoke invoice design.

Invoice Display

Invoice Numbers Prefix - Enter an alphanumeric prefix which will appear on your invoices. This is useful where you have multiple websites or other sources of sales and you need to differentiate between your invoice numbers from different websites or non-web channels.

Hide Prices On Invoices - Tick to stop prices displaying on any of your invoices. This lets your invoice act as a pure shipping note.

Show Prices on Invoices as Excluding VAT - tick as required.

Add customers telephone numbers to the invoice? - tick as required.

Display Products and their Options as single lines on invoices - tick as required.

Sort items Admin order view & invoice by product code - when enabled, will sort products on the Order Details and Invoice screens by product code.

Generate Invoice PDF with Order ID instead of Invoice ID in the filename - when enabled, will use the Order ID in the filename instead of the Invoice ID

Reports

Default the Order Info Reports & Report Builder to exclude VAT & manual orders - Defaults the Order Info Reports & Report Builder to exclude VAT & manual orders.

Free Samples

Max free samples - If you offer free samples, you can limit the number of free samples a customer can order in a single cart.

DELIVERY

This section deals with:

• Selecting whether to use the standard system for working out delivery charges or integrating into third party carrier services
• Allowing users to leave delivery comments or enter their own purchase order numbers
• Allowing per user delivery charges
• Using a postcode lookup service for quicker address entry in checkout 
• Setting how delivery estimator displays
• Setting up free delivery parameters

General

Delivery Adapter - Set as Default to use the system to calculate delivery charges, or select your delivery partner from the dropdown list of integrations which then fetches their delivery charges for use in the checkout process. 

• UPS integration is built directly into the system 
• Postmen, EasyShip, ParcelMonkey & ShippyPro integrate into multiple carriers to give you a greater choice of who to use 

Offer Delivery Note Comment - tick to allow users to enter some extra detail during Checkout e.g. where to leave their delivery if they are out

Offer User Order Number - tick to allow users to enter their own separate Order Number for this Order during checkout, for example purchase order numbers.

Per User Delivery Changes - This lets you set a fixed delivery charge at a per user level & set a free delivery threshold for each user too. Tick if required.

Calculate delivery price bands based on item total less discounts/coupons - e.g. Next delivery band at £30, item total is £30 but with a £5 discount making it £25. Before this setting is enabled we'll treat the band as £30, but with this enabled we treat it as £25.

Enable Delivery Options - Allow users to set whether to receive partial or complete shipments on orders that contain a mix of in stock items and ones that require backorders.

Show Delivery Options for the following Smart Types - restricts which user smart types the option displays to. 

Address Finder / Postcode Lookup

To lookup addresses and postcodes during checkout, select one of the adaptors to connect to a paid service:

• ideal-postcodes.co.uk
• getaddress.io   
• Google Maps Javascript API (Google Places Autocomplete)

Delivery Estimator

Turn On Delivery Estimator? - Tick to display this in the checkout process.

Hide Country in Delivery Estimator? - Tick to hide the country from the estimator tool

Free Delivery

Free Delivery (This will override ALL of your Delivery Services) - Tick to give free delivery and override your delivery services. This can be targeted towards certain user groups and delivery zones using additional settings below which work when this is ticked.

Free Delivery on Orders Over - enter a value in this field if required.

Ignore coupons on the order when calculating the free delivery value - If this is enabled, any money off coupon will be ignored and the full order value will be used when calculating if the order should receive free delivery.

Free Delivery if User is in Group - Select a customer group to qualify for free delivery.

Free Delivery if User is in Zone - Select a delivery zone to qualify for free delivery. This is useful if you want to give free delivery to your own country only and to use the normal delivery settings for other countries.

Google Products Search - Free Delivery? - Tick if you want to set your Google products feed into Merchant Centre so that all products have free delivery set. Normally this is unticked and the system will calculate shipping for you based on your delivery settings.

Remove Delivery Methods At Checkout? - Only tick this is you do not want to charge any delivery costs and also do not want to show the delivery methods box on checkout. This is useful for sites who do not ship physical goods but use the system for people buying services, such as training courses or renting houses.

STOCK

This section deals with:

• Setting the system to use stock control
• Setting how out-of-stock products are handled
• Setting alerts when stock runs low or runs out
• Hiding out-of-stock products from the Google product feed

Use Stock Management? - Set to Yes to use stock management otherwise set to No. When in use you will need to keep proper control of your stock levels in Product Manager.

Show when Products & Options are Out of Stock - This will disable options out of stock, unless backorders are set. Set to Yes if you want visitors to the site to see messages when you are out of stock and for product options to be greyed out if they are out of stock. Otherwise set to No.

Allow back orders - Set to Yes to override the out of stock messages and allow the order to proceed. This will become a backorder which you need to fulfil when stock is replenished. Otherwise set to No.

Stop Back Orders Via Stop Selling Qty Field - If your site is set to take backorders you can now stop certain products from being sold by entering a "0" into this field.

Alert Me when the value of items on Back Order reaches - Want to know if you have too many orders held up awaiting back orders? Get a daily alert email if the value of order items awaiting backorder goes over this value. 

Alert Me when Stock reaches - Enter a quantity to receive an alert when products reach this level so you can re-order stock with your suppliers or manufacture new stock.

Stop selling and alert me when stock of an item reaches - Enter a quantity to receive an alert when products reach this level so you can stop selling stock and treat it as out of stock. This is useful for brick and mortar retailers who need to keep display products on shelves for example.

On minisites, show products in and out of stock - Tick this if you want your mini marketing sites which show products to display whether they are in or out of stock. This is an obsolete feature.

Hide Out of Stock Products in Google Products Feed - Tick to stop products you don't have in stock from being sent to Google Merchant Centre.

SECURITY

This section deals with: 

• password strength and expiration
• adding an SSL certificate to the site as part of moving to HTTPS
• setting up your CSP header

Passwords

Password Meter - select the level of password strength you wish to enforce during user password entry:

Mode	Effect	How It Displays
Disabled	Do not display the password meter Allow passwords less than 8 characters to be entered
Enabled	Display the password strength meter Minimum 8 character passwords must be entered Password strength tips shown
Enforce Strong	As above except you cannot continue unless there are upper- and lower-case characters plus a symbol	As above, but if you try to proceed a warning will appear stating what is missing.

Expire Passwords For Old User Accounts - removes passwords for admins who have not logged in for 3 months and users who have not logged in for 15 months. Read more.

SSL / HTTPS Security

Use SSL - tick to redirect specific secure pages on your website to use HTTPS such as Login, Checkout and Registration.

Use SSL Everywhere - tick to force all other website pages and resources to use HTTPS

Use Strict Transport Security (HSTS) with HTTPS - enforce the strictest level of security only once you have successfully migrated the site to HTTPS and tested it is fine.

Front End HTTP Header Security

Block access to site over external Iframes - Protects against targeted attacks such as ClickJacking.

Enable Strict Referrer-Policy - Experimental! - Protects user privacy by not sharing the url they were on with external sites.

Enable XSS protection header in browsers - Experimental! - Tells browsers to block obvious XSS attacks. We have internal protection against these however using this can act as a good layer in front.

Use Secure & SameSite Cookies - Experimental! - Tick this to apply extra security to cookies. Secure cookies make sure that they are only loaded over HTTPS, while SameSite cookies make sure they are only used when in the context of this site.

CSP (Content Security Policy)

Enable Content Security Policy Header - tick to use this.

CSP Header - enter your generated Content Security Policy here.

Audit Alerts

Email Addresses - You can now set an email address (or multiple, comma separated) to be alerted when specific core changes happen on the site, such as changes to site settings, connect panel changes, user level changes, user imports, custom scripts, user access control changes and more. 

This feature helps towards PCI 4.0 Compliance under section 11.6.1

Rate Limiting

Whitelisted IPs - The IP Addresses you list here will not be subject to rate limiting (such as logging in too many times in a certain time frame)

CSRF Protection

Enable CSRF Protection - This adds another layer of security/protection to your site. 

Please note if you have a custom login form or changes to it you may need a designer to add the CSRF token to the form with {{ csrf_field() }}

LEADS & ALERTS

This section deals with:

• Receiving alerts when prospects read emails sent to them via Prospect Manager
• Displaying user tag groups on the user record and in user search
• Displaying user groups and user tag groups in Prospect Manager search
• Setting up SMS notifications
• Setting up Pushbullet notifications
• Turning on the pay-per-lead system
• Form Score settings for your forms / leads etc.

Email Alerts

Notify Prospect Owners When Clients Read Emails - tick for prospect owners to receive alerts when prospects read emails sent to them via Prospect Manager.

Don't notify me if a user opens an email multiple times in - don't receive multiple notifications if a user keeps repeatedly opening an email in the specificed time frame.

Enable Expert Answers Followup Emails

- If you're using the Expert questions & answers system, enabling this will send an email to users who sent a question but didn't purchase after 2 days on their question being answered to see if there's anything that can be done to help them with the answer or purchase. 

Prospect Manager

Select status to use for Prospects accepted by email - If a user accepts a prospect by clicking a link in the email, what status should the prospect be set to?

Page to redirect a client to once they have accepted a quote - If a user accepts a prospect by clicking a link in the email, which page should we send them to? e.g. A "Thanks" page

User Manager Records

Show up to 3 Tag Groups on the user record - tick to use this and then select up to 3 tag groups to display (for example: user position, industry vertical, decision maker)

• 1st Tag Group
• 2nd Tag Group
• 3rd Tag Group                

User Manager Search

Show up to 3 Tag Groups on the user search function - tick to use this and then select up to 3 tag groups to include

• 1st Tag Group   
• 2nd Tag Group 
• 3rd Tag Group 

Prospect Manager Search

Show User Groups 1-3 in Quick Search - tick to use the 3 standard user groups that users can be assigned to on their user records

Show up to 3 Tag Groups in Quick Search - tick to select specific user tag groups that can be selected in search.

• 1st Tag Group                          
• 2nd Tag Group                            
• 3rd Tag Group                            

SMS Details

You can send out SMS alerts via a paid SMS service provider.

Adapter - select one of the SMS providers below:

• Clickatell - deprecated, we recommend using another service
• Twilio
• TextMarketer         

SMS From Name / Sender ID.  - Normally this will need to be setup with the adapter you've chosen first and then entered here.

Admin Mobile No. - enter the mobile number of the administrator who will receive SMS alerts.

Send me SMS alerts of new emails sent from the contact form - tick to receive these.

Send me SMS alerts of new orders - tick to receive these.

Send SMS alerts to users about their new orders - tick to send SMS notifications to users who have entered valid mobile numbers during checkout. This is especially useful to avoid emails that get caught in spam filters.

Send SMS alerts only to users in the UK - tick to only send to UK users, otherwise they will send internationally and charges for SMS sending may cost more.

Use advanced mobile number detection - Use this to support US and International mobile numbers.

Pushbullet

Receive real-time alerts via the Pushbullet system on your desktop/laptop and mobile phone.

Notify on New Order - tick if required.

Notify on New User - tick if required.

Notify on Returning Gold User - tick if required.

PayPerLead

The Pay Per Lead System applies when the website is being used as a way to generate and distribute leads out to companies who have signed up to receive them from you. 

Use The Pay Per Lead System - unticked for normal business and ecommerce sites. Contact us if you wish to use this service.

Form Scores

Here you can set the CES, CSAT & NPS score default max values, these are used over in the Reports > Form Scores report for the percentage score calculations.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (Meta Data)

These fields control the standard metadata for you site which is indexed by search engines and shows up in search results. You can set up custom metadata for individual pages and products which overwrites this standard data.

Website Title – enter the name of your site or business. Keep this to 70 characters or less.

Website Keywords – This is now obsolete as a ranking factor so it is not necessary to enter keywords here any longer.

Website Description – enter a short “sales ad” up to 150 characters long selling your company, what you do / sell and your phone number.

Website Footer Tags – These tags will appear in the SEO tag wall to get it started, but we recommend leaving this blank as the tag wall will soon fill up on it’s own.

Over time the system automatically generates these footer tags with the top 50 most relevant search terms used to find your site by visitors typing into search engines. These tags then create virtual pages inside search engine indexes with a wider spread of keywords than you will normally achieve. When people click on those pages in search engine results, the system will dynamically generate a relevant page displaying your products and content. This has been proven to add 20% to sales revenues totals.

Site Name

Find out more on Google Search Central

Override site name - defaults to Company Name

Enable website schema markup - includes site search action

Robots.txt & Indexing

Hide URLs containing "/product-filter/" from Search Engines - ticked by default

Index Search / Tag Pages - ticked by default

Index Login / Register Pages - unticked by default

Index Cart / Checkout / Thanks Pages - unticked by default

OTHER SETTINGS USED WITHIN REC+

The following programs contain their own settings or values.

Site Definitions - these hold small pieces of content that typically appear on pages during system processes, such as the checkout. 

Edit Colours - this contains general website colours and settings for what to display in the header (NB these may not be used in some templates)

Blog Settings - provides controls for your blog posts and using the disqus commenting system

Page Manager - provides controls for what content appears on each page and which page apps are is use

Advanced Search Manager - provides controls for what is used when advanced search is used on a site
Customize User Area - control what is displayed when a user logs in to their account

API Settings - controls for using the API 

Cookie Manager - controls for how cookie information is displayed

Connect - credentials are stored here for integrations you have with supported 3rd parties

SMTP & Email Settings - credentials for sending emails