Magento Question About Applying Sales Tax Based on Amount of Purchase

I received a question about how to configure Magento to apply sales tax to only purchases that are above a speficied amount. The question and my answer are below.

Question

Hello William Rice,

Ref Article: http://www.packtpub.com/article/creating-tax-rules-in-magento

First of all your article is really cool and help full. I gone through all the steps, but i'm unable to figure out how to set TAX based on Product cost?

I'm interested to learn how can we define TAX based on 'The amount' of the purchase. For example, some places tax clothing purchases only above a specific amount.

Criteria is like this:

• TAX should be calculated if Product cost is higher than 150$.


• if Product cost is less than or equal to 150$, TAX will be ZERO.


• TAX Rate is 5.50%.

Could you please guide me how can i implement above criteria in Magento?

Thank You,

-Shahil

Answer

Shahil,

The most expedient way to apply a tax rate based upon a product's price, is
to create a product class for the products in that price range. In your
example, you would need to create a tax class for those items, such as
"Clothing items costing$150 and above." Then, you would apply that tax
class to all of the clothing items costing $150 and above.

This means you would need to search through your catalog, find every
clothing item that costs $150 or more, and apply the product class to that
item. To find all these items:

1. Go to Catalog > Manage Products.


2. The top row of the catalog listing, the one that is shaded in blue,
   is for your search criteria.


3. For Price, enter From 150 To a very large number.


4. You might also use the Attrib. Set Name field to find your
   clothing. It depends on how you have your catalog set up.


5. Click Search and you will see the results.


6. Using the check boxes to select all of the relevant clothing
   products.


7. From the Actions drop-down menu select Update Attributes. Then
   click Submit.


8. This brings you to an Attributes page. Whatever you change and save
   on this page, happens to all of your selected products.


9. Select the tax class "Clothing items costing$150 and above."


10. Save.

Note that when you change a clothing item's price, you'll need to also check
its tax class. This will just need to be part of the store admin's job. We
all would like to see functions like this automated, but until Magento lets
you include the price in a tax rule, this will require intervention by the
store administrator.

Hope this helps. Good luck in your e-commerce endeavors.

Regards,
William Rice

Magento 1.3 Sales Tactics is Published

My new book, Magento 1.3 Sales Tactics, has just been published by Packt Publishing. My goal for this book is to help you solve real-world Magento sales problems with some simple, effective recipes. You can read a sample chapter on the publisher's website. It's too new for any reviews yet, but the CEO of Magento recently received a copy, and I'm eager to know what he thinks of it.

Review of Magento Beginner's Guide

MilkYourMoney.com is "a daily blog dedicated to helping its readers reach their financial goals." They just reviewed the Magento Beginner's Guide. I thought the review is thorough and fair. Check out the review and my comments here.

Magento Beginner's Guide versus Magento User's Guide

The company behind Magento, Varien, recently published their own Magento User Guide. This is a few months after Packt Publishing released my Magento Beginner's Guide. If you're looking for a book to help you use Magento, you might want to know how Varien's book and mine compare. I'll try to answer that question for you in a way that enables you to decide which book is better for your needs.

Is there really a difference between a Beginner's Guide and a User Guide?

After 20 years as a technical writer and trainer, I have come to the conclusion that yes, you will notice a difference between a Beginner's Guide and a User Guide. The differences are in the scope and flow of the book. And I think you will see those differences between Magento User Guide and Magento Beginner's Guide.

Scope: Reference Librarian versus Coach

If you read the User Guide table of contents, and the Beginner's Guide table of contents, you can see that the User Guide covers more of Magento's functions. Yet, it has fewer pages. It covers more features than the Beginner's Guide, but usually with less detail.

In the Beginner's Guide, the step-by-step directions are usually more detailed than those in the User Guide. And, the Beginner's Guide includes some business intelligence. That is, not just how to use a feature, but also when and why.

If the books were people, the User Guide would be a reference librarian and the Beginner's Guide would be a coach.

Flow: Jump In and Out, or Go For a Ride

Both books work as reference material. The User Guide usually gives you just enough information to make a function or feature work. It answers the question, "How do I do this?" and then returns you to your work.

The Beginner's Guide tells you how to use Magento's basic functions while building an example store. The example runs through the book. So you will see not only how each function is used, but also when and why it is used, and what effect it has on your customer's experience. You can work through the book from front to back if you want to follow the example. Or, you can use it as a reference guide.

So which do I recommend?

Neither. I recommend that you consider your own situation. Do you prefer a reference guide, like the one supplied by the official Magento Online User Guide or Knowledge Base? Or do you prefer a step-by-step Beginner's Guide to coach you through building your store? You might find them both useful: the Beginner's Guide to show you how to create and run the store, and the User Guide to provide a quick reference for many of Magento's features.

You can read sample chapters for the books at magentocommerce.com and packtpub.com.

You can read reviews of the Beginner's Guide at Andi J's blog and the Milk Your Money site. It's available for sale at Amazon.

Do your research, dive in, and let me know how it goes!

Sample Chapter and Extract from Magento Beginner's Guide

Packt has published my latest book, Magento Beginner's Guide. They offer a sample chapter on their website, "Categories and Attributes." They also took a section out of a chapter and published it as an article on their website, "Creating Tax Rules in Magento."

The sample chapter, article, and chapter descriptions on their website should give you an accurate and thorough impression of the book's style and content. If you're a Magento user, check it out. And if you've bought the book, as always, I like to hear from my readers. Send me compliments and complaints by clicking on the email link in my profile.

Developing an Online Course in Moodle as Quickly as Possible

I had a reader send me a question about how to estimate the time it will take to develop a course in Moodle. I'd like to share her question and my answer with you. As always, your comments and experiences are welcome.

Her Question:

I am just about to embark on my masters dissertation project, and am looking a web-based tutorials for teaching. At the moment I’m considering putting together a tutorial as part of the project using moodle (I have copies of your books in front of me now).

One question I cannot seem to find an answer to, is realistically how long would it take for me to construct something like this? I have seen reports stating that construction of online courses can take up to 18 months, but I think these were from scratch as opposed to using a software programme such as moodle. I am fairly Internet literate, and have created basic webpages before, but have never done anything like construct my own online course.

I am studying via distance learning and also have a full-time job. I have between now and June/July to work on my project (including analysis and user-testing, etc) – do you think this is something which I can realistically achieve in this kind of time frame?

My Answer:

In my experience, the old methods of determining how long it takes to develop courseware were never very accurate. With the variety of tools available to us today, the many different situations, and the many different expectations from learners and stakeholders, those old recommendations are even more inaccurate.

I no longer ask, "How long will this take me to develop?" Instead I ask, "How long before the client needs it?" And then I determine what I can do between now and then. It sounds to me like you have a few hours a week to spend on developing an online course, between now and June. That's not much time. So instead of dwelling upon how long it will take, let's talk about how to maximize your output in the time that you do have.

First, try to get out of installing Moodle yourself. If you can use an outside hosting service, find one that has a one-click install for Moodle. If you must use your organization's web server, try to get the web admin to install it for you. When Moodle installs without trouble, the installation goes quickly. When it gives trouble, you can spend hours tracking down the problem. If you pay a few dollars a month for a hosting service that will install Moodle for you, I advise it.

Second, resolve to stay within Moodle's built-in capabilities. Some of the add-on modules add great functionality. But for a project working against time constaints, I advise you stick with Moodle's built-in functionality and not get bogged down in trying to get add-ons to work.

Third, make as much use of existing material as possible. As a librarian, I'm sure you can locate web pages that you can use as course material. I think there's nothing wrong with a course whose learning material consists entirely of links to external web pages, video, and audio. For example, if I was teaching a course on public speaking, I might link to a funny Youtube video of public speaking bloopers, tips from Toastmasters, and famous speeches. Creating your own multimedia takes especially long, so I would search Creative Commons for media I could use in my course.

Fourth, I would try to use Moodle's built-in Web page editor (Web page Resource) to write a short description of each resource that I link to, and what I want the students to pay attention to while viewing it, and what I'd like them to get out of it. To ensure that they read this before going to the resource, I would put the link to the resource on this web page instead of on the course's home page. Then, the students would need to go through the web page that I write before clicking through to the external web page/video/audio.

Fifth, I would follow up each reading/viewing/listening resource with an activity created in Moodle. For example, I might ask the students to:

1. contribute to an online discussion, and to rate other students' postings in that forum. (Forum activity)


2. take a short quiz on the material (Quiz module)


3. write a summary of the material and upload it (Assignment activity)


4. record a snippet of speech and upload it (Assignment or Workshop activities).

Sixth, I would use outside services for things that Moodle doesn't handle, or that it handles only with plug-ins. For example, after the students have completed viewing the resources and doing the follow-up activities, just before an exam, I might schedule a summary lecture with WebEx or GoToMeeting. The lecture could include a slide show of the material that will be on the final exam, whiteboarding, and chat. If possible, I would record the session and offer it to the students as a download.

Seventh, I would offer an online exam open only at a given time, to ensure that students don't take the exam and pass along the answers.

That would be my model for rapid development of an online course. And if I could, I would choose a topic for that course based upon the amount of good material freely available online.

Estimating the time to create a training course

The Question

I received this email asking how to estimate the time it takes to create a software training course:

Hello,

I have a strong background in software development and training development and delivery. My training has always been around soft skills, business processes, and employee orientations.

I recently joined a software company as the Training Manager and I’ve been tasked with “figure out how we should do user training for our product”. I’ve purchased and read your book, User Training for Busy Programmers and it’s been very helpful already in translating my current knowledge of software development and non-software training into what I need to do for software user training.

I was wondering if you have any thoughts or resources around estimating the time it takes to develop user training following the process you outline in the book?

Thank you,

Jennifer

The (somewhat disappointing) Answer

Here's my reply:

Jennifer,

Years ago I asked this question on several of the most popular training and technical writing mailing lists. I also tried equating the time it took to develop training and documentation to things like function point counting, number of screens, number of keystrokes and clicks. None of it worked.

Seriously. The conclusion I arrived at is that there is way to predict the time to develop training and documentation, that is more accurate than your own experience.

Since you have experience developing training in business processes, you're not far off from being able to accurately estimate time to develop training for software. Because at the end of the day, a software class is (or should be) nothing more than a business process class that features a new tool. So when you're trying to estimate development and delivery time for a software class, ask yourself how long it would take to develop and deliver the class if you approached it as teaching a new business process, which just happens to use a new tool.

Sorry I couldn't give a more concrete answer. This is a question the continually challenges me, and I'd be happy to hear of any resources you find that help with it.

Regards,

William Rice

A Plea for Help

I want to hear what you have to say about estimating the time it takes to develop a software training class. Do you have any objective, quantitative methods that work for you? Or like me, must you rely on intuition and experience? How accurate are your estimates?

This topic is ripe for conversation. Leave a comment, and keep the dialog moving!