HDCommerce Documentation

HDCommerce is a premium WordPress eCommerce solution designed and developed from the ground up to be as intuitive and extendable as possible to use.

HDCommerce Settings

Your HDCommerce settings page contains all of your global store settings such as currencies, payment and shipping gateways, taxes, and even default styles and options to display your products. The settings page can be accessed by selecting HDCommerce from your WordPress admin menu.

Settings — Main tab

The Main tab contains the only mandatory fields for HDCommerce and includes your most basic settings that all other parts of your site rely on.

• Select your billing currency — This controls the currency that you will be charging in, as well as how currency values are displayed on the site.
• Your store/company name — The name of your store is used on various pages (such as your shop page) and order confirmation pages.
• Store logo — Your logo is only used for email notifications sent by HDCommerce, but can, of course, be added to any part of your site.
• Store address — Your store address is used on the Order Confirmation pages.
• Store sales phone number — This is only visible on the Order Confirmation pages.
• Store sending email — This is the email address that HDCommerce will use to send all email notifications from. It is strongly recommended to use an address that matched the sending domain to avoid spam filters.
• Store sales email — This is the email address that HDCommerce will use when sending notifications to you (such as New Order emails).
• Selling Locations — This is a list of every country in the world. Enable only the countries you will be selling to, as only these countries will be available for your users to select during checkout.

Settings — Payment Gateways tab

A Payment Gateway is a third-party service that you will be using to charge your customers. By default, HDCommerce is compatible with Stripe, PayPal, and Square Payments, but custom gateways can be added in as well. The HDCommerce Stripe gateway is strongly recommended by Harmonic Design as it allows for Google Wallet, Apple Pay, and even BNPL (Buy Now; Pay Later) services such as AfterPay and Klarna.

• Stripe — our personal recommended gateway.
• PayPal — most well known payment gateway.
• Square Payments — great for users who already use in-store.
• Custom — We can also build in a custom payment gateway for customers who need it.

Settings — Taxes tab

The Taxes tab is where you can set up tax calculations based on region.

• Will your entered prices include the tax — This determines how taxes are calculated and displayed on your site. Countries like Canada and the United States are tax exclusive, meaning we list our prices without tax, and then add the taxes on after. Other countries, such as ones in Europe, are tax inclusive, meaning that the listed price also contains the tax.

Tax Table

The tax table is an easy way to set your taxes based on country or region. First, select your country from the Country dropdown, then your region from the Region dropdown to add to the table. Once added, you can change the following settings for each added row.

• Tax name — The name of the tax.
• Tax value — The value (as a percentage) of the tax.
• Shipping — Enable if this tax should apply to the shipping as well.

You can add as many taxes as needed for each country and region, and you can drag-n-drop taxes to reorder them. Since HDCommerce is not compatible with compound taxes (tax a tax), the order only affects their position during checkout and order confirmation pages.

Settings — Shipping tab

The shipping tab contains all settings related to shipping, including global settings and Shipping Methods.

• Disable Shipping — if you will not be selling any products that require shipping.
• Use Imperial measurements — HDCommerce uses Metric by default, but if your Shipping Method requires units to be in Imperial, enable this.
• Allow for Store Pickup — Enable this and your users will always be given the option to select Store Pickup as their shipping method.
• Free shipping — Enter a value here, and HDCommerce will offer a FREE SHIPPING method if the cart total (not including tax) is equal to or greater than the entered value. This will also automatically enable a “free shipping” banner on the cart page, notifying customers of the free shipping value to incentivize upsells.

Shipping Methods

HDCommerce includes three shipping gateways by default. These included gateways are sufficient for most users, but as with Payment Gateways, custom Shipping Methods can be added in as well.

Flat Rate Shipping

Flat Rate Shipping (or, Class Based Shipping), is great for stores that not need super accurate shipping quotes.

• Flat rate for entire cart — the value entered here is what will be charged for all orders. It doesn’t matter what products are in the cart, or how many items, this value is what will be charged for shipping.
• Shipping class (A to E) — every one of your products can be added to a Shipping Class, and the shipping cost of that product will be based on what you enter here. Shipping class F is reserved for free shipping. You can assign any value to any class, but some helpful advice would be to internally categorize your products based on your own shipping cost estimate. For example, simple, small, lightweight products can be shipping class A, while large expensive items can be shipping class E.

USPS

The United States Parcel Services is best used by customers who ship from the United States. With this method, you will need to enter shipped product dimensions for all products (weight, length, width, height). Once done, HDCommerce sends the cart data (shipping address, combined product dimensions) to USPS who then sends back the available methods and price.

Canada Post

The Canada Post shipping method is best used by customers who ship from Canada. With this method, you will need to enter shipped product dimensions for all products (weight, length, width, height). Once done, HDCommerce sends the cart data (shipping address, combined product dimensions) to Canada Post who then sends back the available methods and price.

NOTE: HDCommerce includes a developer API key for Canada Post, but we strongly recommend using your own so that you can get account specific pricing.

Custom shipping methods

Of course, just as with all other aspects of HDCommerce, custom shipping methods can be created for customers who need it. With custom methods, we can design a solution that works for you.

Settings — Emails tab

The emails tab is where you can enable and disable email notifications that occur during certain events. Each email “template” can be overridden by adding your custom template to your theme’s ./hdcommerce/emails/ folder.

• Payment completed — Sent to both you and your customer on a successful new order.
• Payment failed — Sent to you when a new order was created, but the payment failed. This should only be enabled for debugging or testing purposes.
• Payment cancelled — For recurring orders only, this email is sent out when an order has been cancelled. This can be triggered manually by cancelling an order, or when an order is automatically cancelled due to nonpayment.
• Autocharge failed — For recurring orders, this email is sent to your customer if autocharge failed. The email contains a link to their order page so that they can pay.

Settings — Advanced tab

The Advanced tab contains settings and options that most users will not need to change, but are still here if you need to really dig in deep to change the way certain elements look or behave.

• I support HDCommerce — If you enable this, then a very discrete link will be added to the cart page letting your customers know that this site is powered by HDCommerce.
• Disable reviews — you can disable reviews if you do not want users to be able to A) Submit reviews, and B) display reviews on product pages.
• Cancel unpaid orders after — for recurring orders, if an order has not been paid after x days, automatically cancel the order.
• Product heading type — On product pages, you can change what type of heading product titles use for better compatibility with your theme.
• Default product view style / columns — Affects how many columns the shop page and product category pages use by default.
• Product lists: Product image fit contain — By default, on the shop and category pages, product featured images “cover” the area – they zoom and crop to fill the entire space. Enable this to force the images to “contain” instead, ensuring that the full image is always visible.
• Cart: give single item price priority — On the cart page, the table that lists product name, quantity, and price, will show what the price of an individual item is. Hovering over the price will show a tooltip that shows what the price of the product is multiplied by the quantity. Enable this to reverse, so that by default, the table will show the item price multiplied by the quantity.

Orders

The Orders page will list out all of your orders, including failed orders. The Orders page can be accessed from the WordPress admin menu, underneath HDCommerce.

Order List Page

The page contains a table that lists all HDCommerce orders, with columns for:

• Order — This column lists the Order ID as well as the customer name.
• Status — This column lists the order status.
  • Success — The order was successfully paid.
  • Failed — The order was created, but the payment was not successful.
  • Pending — The order was successfully created and is awaiting payment.
  • Cancelled — The order has been cancelled and is no longer payable.
• Total — The total value of the order.
• Date — The date and time that the order was created.

Export Orders

Above the Order Table is a blue button to Export Orders. Selecting this button will direct you to the Order Export Page. This page will allow you to either export all of your orders, or to limit the export between (and including) two dates.

The export is in CSV format.

Individual Order Page

Selecting an order opens up the Individual Order Page. This page shows you all relevant information about the order such as the totals, products, coupons, taxes, shipping, customer information, and any custom metadata that was added to the order.

Selecting the menu icon ☰, will open up the Order Menu. The available options will depend on factors such as the enabled payment gateways and current order status.

• Print Order — opens up the order in a new print friendly page.
• Print shipping slip — opens up the order in a new print friendly page with only the necessary information needed for shipping.
• Mark as Paid — If the order status is pending, this will update the status to success.
• View Order (payment form) — View the public facing order page that includes a payment form. This is only available for orders with the pending status.
• View Order — View the public order page.
• Cancel Order — If an order is no longer payable, you can cancel the order. This will also stop any recurring orders from occurring.
• Custom Actions — As is the running theme, we can also extend the menu to add custom order actions for customers who need them. This can range from a simple link, to a new system to add tracking codes and having that code automatically email to the customer.

Order Logs

Most order “events” will appear in the order logs. What is logged depends on the order status and selected payment gateway. Examples of order logs are:

• Order creation
• Order status change
• Payment success
• Payment fail
• Recurring order created
• Transaction ID
• Transaction Fee

Coupons

The Coupons page will list out all of your existing coupon codes, and allow you to edit or add new ones. Coupons page can be accessed from the WordPress admin menu, underneath HDCommerce.

NOTE: All coupons apply to the entire cart. HDCommerce coupons are not currently compatible with product based discounts.

The Edit Coupon Page contains many settings for you to configure and customize how your coupon code will work, and what conditions will invalidate the code.

Coupon — Main tab

The main tab contains your basic coupon settings for how you want your coupon to be calculated.

• Coupon Code — The code that a customer needs to enter to enable this coupon.
• Coupon Discount Type — If the coupon is worth an absolute currency amount, or if it should be percentage based (example: $10 off, versus 10% off).
• Coupon Value — The value of the coupon (either currency amount or percentage amount).
• Disable Stacking — If this coupon can be combined with other coupons.

Coupon — Restrictions tab

The restrictions tab contains options to limit when a code will be accepted or not.

• Expiry Date — This coupon will no longer be able to be used after this date.
• Minimum cart amount — This coupon will only be usable if the total cart amount (before taxes and shipping) is greater than this value.
• Limit to categories — This coupon will only be usable if at least one product from the selected categories is in the cart.
• Limit to products — This coupon will only be usable if at least one of the selected products is in the cart.

Products

Products is where you can manage everything to do with your actual products. Products page can be found from your admin menu.

Products — Main tab

The Main tab contains the only mandatory fields that HDCommerce requires in order to create a product page.

• *Product Title — The name of your product.
• SKU — The SKU and or UPC of your product. This is only needed for either your internal records, or if sending order data to a third party such as a shipping warehouse.
• *Product Price — The price of the product. If using variations, this is the number that is used by default to represent the product price.
• Product Sale Price — If the product is on sale, enter the value here. If using variations, this is the number that is used by default to represent the product price.
• Stock — If you only have a limited number of items, enter how many are available here. Set to 0 to disable the “add to cart” button if you want to keep the product page, but disable purchase.
• Custom Tax Rate — If the product requires a custom tax rate, enter here. This overrides the tax chart found on the Settings page.
• *Short Description — The short “elevator” sales pitch to describe your product.

Products — Description tab

The descriptions tab is where the editor for the main product description is located, as well as where any additional custom content areas for the product can be found.

• Description — The long form product description. This is where you can add additional details about your product that a customer might be interested in.

Products — Categories tab

The categories tab is where you can select which product categories the current product belongs to. You can create new categories from the Product Categories page link located here.

Products — Shipping tab

The shipping tab contains fields to set default shipping options for this product. These fields should only be filled out if required by your selected shipping method. For example, Canada Post requires the shipping dimensions for all products (width, height, length, weight), while the Flat Rate method only requires selecting a Shipping Class.

Product variations will inherit these settings when created. Shipping dimension measurement types can be changed to Imperial from the HDCommerce Settings page.

Products — Recurring tab

The recurring tab allows you to set the options for recurring orders. Recurring orders allow for things like subscription based products.

• Recurring Deposit — If the initial charge should be for a deposit. Example: If your product is $100, and you enter $10 here, then the customer will be charged $10 now, and the remaining $90 will be charged on the next recur.
• Payment Frequency — When should this order recur? Once a week, month, or year.
• Times to charge — How many times should this order charge? You can leave blank or set to 0 to charge indefinitely. If your product is $100, and you want to charge your customer $20/month, then enter 5 here and your customer will make 5 payments of $20.
• Charge for Shipping — If the recurring order should also include the original order’s shipping cost.

Products — Variations tab

The variations tab allows you to create new product variations and configure each individual variation as needed. A product variation is anytime a customer needs to choose an option for a product. Examples would be for a clothing store, a customer might need to choose what “size” they wish to purchase. Variations allows you to have each available size on the same product page instead of needing to create unique pages for each possibility.

• Use Select Boxes (dropdown menus) — Instead of buttons, use a dropdown. Should only be used if you have too many variations and need to condense them.
• Add New Variation Type — The variation type is the type of attribute that a customer is selecting. Examples: Size, Colour, Materials, etc. Creating a new variation type provides a new variation attribute box.
• Add New Variation — The variation attribute to be selected. For example, if the variation type is “size”, then you might enter: Small, Medium, Large, etc.

NOTE: You can drag-n-drop each variation attribute to change the order they appear in on the product pages (eat your heart out, WooCommerce!).

Variations

Each new variation attribute you create will automatically generate a list of all product variation permutations under the All Product Variations section (eat your heart out, again, WooCommerce!). Selecting one of these permutations will open up a new sidebar dialogue allowing you to customize everything about that option.

Each permutation will inherit the settings from the Main, Shipping, and Recurring tabs, so it is recommended to fill thouse out before creating your variations for simplicity.

Products — Images tab

The images tab is where you can control your featured image and add any gallery images.

• Featured Image — The featured image is the primary image to represent the product. This image is used on the individual product page, as well as the shop and category pages.
• Product Gallery — The product gallery appears underneath the featured image on the individual product page. You can have as many gallery images as you want.