This release is about 2 things, the most prominent and after much community feedback is our Advanced Gift Certificating and Store Credit module just in time for the holidays!  This module allows you to offer gift certificates or even store credit to any of your customers as pre- or post-tax credits.  They carry balances, they are viewable from your customers my account pages, you can customize the gift codes and so much more.  A primary supporter and collaborator in this effort was www.travelguideuniverse.com.au who helped through every step of the process and continues as we firm up the features of this module.  The other prominent item, although it’s a rather silent upgrade is a rewrite/reworking of our ‘carting’ architecture to support some great new features and extensions to our cart and order modules. Check out the release summary below for all of the great things in this release.

• Advanced Gift Certificates and Store Credit Module
  • Accept Gift Certificates and Store Credit on one page checkout and the order entry screen in the admin. 
  • Create pre and post tax gift certificates to fit your taxation needs
  • Create your own custom formatted gift certificate/credit codes
  • Create certificates in batch and send them out as promotional “Credits”, much like the $75+ Google AdWords PPC Credits supplied by Google
  • Accept them as payment in addition to Credit Cards and other payment methods, side-by-side on the same order.
  • Issue store credit as a way to ‘refund’ a customer through your return process.
  • Gift Certificate Settings
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  • Gift Certificate / Store Credit Listing
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  • Applying Certificates/Credit on Order Edit
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  • Entry on one page checkout
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  • Gift certificate generator/editor
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• Now building and working 100% under Visual Studio 2008 and the 3.5 .Net Framework for the latest in AJAX and updated features!
  • Keeps our customers on the edge of technology and we are able to realize the speed and coding benefits as well.
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• Floating Action Bar on all long pages
  • The button bar will no float over the page when you scroll down allowing easy access to the primary page actions.
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  • Fades to 80% opacity on mouse out
    • Off:
    • On:
• Themes and Theme Selection Changes
• 8+ New Themes Added, color variations to follow
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• Swoosh_Blue:  http://themedesign.americommerce.com/store/?SessionThemeID=15
• Capstone_Grey:  http://themedesign.americommerce.com/store/?SessionThemeID=17
• Classic_Black:  http://themedesign.americommerce.com/store/?SessionThemeID=18
• Clean_Blue:  http://themedesign.americommerce.com/store/?SessionThemeID=19
• Home_Spa:  http://themedesign.americommerce.com/store/?SessionThemeID=20
• Primary_Black:  http://themedesign.americommerce.com/store/?SessionThemeID=25
• Floral_Orange:  http://themedesign.americommerce.com/store/?SessionThemeID=26
• Clear_Spring:  http://themedesign.americommerce.com/store/?SessionThemeID=27
• Theme selection changes
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• ABF LTL Truck Shipping Integration
  • Enabled in a special way, gets trucking freight shipping from their API.
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• Order Splitting Capabilities Added
  • Split an order into two orders, must still edit each one to adjust shipping and discounts according to your rules.
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• Low Stock/Out of Stock Email Warnings (even at variant inventory level)
  • Notify yourself immediately when your inventory approaches depletion and reorder points!
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• Carting Architecture Rewrite (silent upgrade)
• New API methods
  • Can import products over the API using the EXACT same CSV format as under global settings
    • Avoids the need to do the base IO using each object type in the API
    • Allows automation of importing/exporting
  • Customer_SetPassword
• New merge codes
  • ## TRIM##
    • Examle: ## TRIM[50]## text text text text text text text text text text text text ##ENDTRIM##
    • Result: text text text text text text text text text text…
• Better Credit Card Validation and warnings
• Call For Shipping Enhancements
  • Mimics call for pricing, allowing order submittal
  • Better validation and messaging to end users
• Bing.com Cashback Program Javascript updated to latest specifications
• Shipping Enhancements
• Added support for UPS Negotiated Rates
• Many tweaks made to shipping and regions