Plugin [DBTech] DragonByte eCommerce 4.1.0.1

Update highlights

eCommerce now has the ability to send HTML-based invoices, via an application called

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. In order to use this feature, you must have this application installed on your server (and no, support for how to install it on your server is not available as this varies from server to server ?).

You must also have the exec feature enabled on your server, same as if you were using ffmpeg for the XFMG.

In other news, an issue was discovered with the rich metadata for products (Google Rich Results) that would have produced a warning email from Google. The metadata has been updated to reflect the new requirements from Google.


Complete Change Log

Feature: Option to use WkHtmlToPdf to generate HTML invoices, which also support RTL text
Fix: Fixed an issue with Google Rich Search Results

This version further improves the recently added functionality for the various criteria forms in XenForo by adding inverse user criteria for Created Products, Licenses Purchased and Amount Spent.

Multiple improvements have also been made to the layout thanks to Liam W: Browsing the product list sees less wasted space, it is easier for mobile users to tap to navigate to the product information screen, and the default icon's alignment has...

This update features some important changes in relation to VAT and PayPal.

If you sell your products via PayPal, and use accounting software like QuickBooks to manage your bookkeeping, it would previously have been difficult to utilise the VAT features in eCommerce while maintaining records in your accounting software. Transactions would either fail to import or be imported with incomplete data.

This happened because eCommerce would specifically tell PayPal how much sales tax to add separately to each transaction, bypassing any sales tax rates you set up in your interface.

There is now a new setting for controlling whether the order cost sent to PayPal is inclusive of tax. If this setting is turned off, PayPal will use the sales tax rates as defined in your PayPal account settings to apply sales tax.

If a valid VAT ID was added to the order, eCommerce will tell PayPal to not add any tax to the order, unless the person placing the order is from the same country as your business.
If both the seller and the customer is located in the same country, VAT should always be added and each party will be able to reclaim the VAT from the tax authority.

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The next version (v1.4.0) will have even more updates with regards to VAT. The tentative feature list:
Sales tax ID will be stored in the address book, rather than the order. This means recurring customers won't have to keep re-entering their VAT ID every time they place an order.

If VAT is enabled in the tax settings, addresses with VAT IDs will be placed under moderation and appear in the "Approval Queue" in XenForo. You can then look up the VAT ID and see whether the user entered their correct business address.

A new user group permission will be added to allow chosen user groups to bypass the address moderation requirement, if you do not wish / need to use the address moderation feature.

If an address is under moderation, a notice will appear on the checkout screen letting them know they will still be charged VAT until the address is approved.

Addresses with approved VAT IDs will not be editable and customers will not be able to delete them from their address books. This is to prevent older order records from being rendered incomplete.

Addresses will become searchable / editable in the AdminCP.
The goal of this update is to ensure that your business is compliant with all tax authorities and their varying record keeping requirements.

I'm aiming to make the update as frictionless as possible for your existing customers. All past sales tax IDs will be imported into the corresponding address entries. The existing form field for entering a VAT ID during checkout will simply be changed to apply to the currently selected billing address, rather than the order itself.

As always, it's not possible to provide an ETA for this update.

Complete Change Log

Feature: Add new setting for controlling whether tax amount is included in the amount sent to the payment processor
Change: Update sales tax calculation to only exclude sales tax if VAT is enabled and the user is from a different VAT country
Fix: Fix product description not saving
Fix: Fixed an issue where add-on products would generate an alert if the user is watching the category

This release is a quick update to address an issue where visibility checks were not being performed for add-on products being displayed in the sidebar in the product view. This could lead to soft-deleted products, or products you have restricted permissions for, to still appear (albeit not purchasable).

To test whether this fix has resolved any issue you may be experiencing, ensure the dbtech_ecommerce_product_wrapper template is either not customised or that this line:
<xf:foreach loop="$product.Children" value="$childProduct">
now reads:
<xf:foreach loop="$product.Children" value="$childProduct" if="$childProduct.canView()">
And then try viewing the product page as a guest (such as via Incognito mode).

As part of the process of reviewing this issue, I also found minor optimisation possibilities that slightly reduced the amount of queries needed to generate the product view page.

Complete Change Log

Change: Reduced the number of queries needed to load the product view page
Fix: Fixed an issue where visibility checks were not being performed on add-on products before display on the product view page

Complete Change Log

Feature: Added display style options for Top Products and New Products widgets (grid vs list vs auto)
Change: The cart popup now displays the calculated order total and calculated item price (including discounts, shipping costs and sales taxes)
Fix: Fixed an issue where the Sale emails would send to banned users and users who had a user state other than "Valid"
Fix: Fixed an issue where a scheduled sale would not activate correctly