How To: Switching to Checkout

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Why should you switch to Checkout?

There are many benefits to using Checkout in comparison to previous shopping basket versions:

1. Checkout has been designed to be mobile-friendly which means is easier for your customers to book your Courses from any device

2. Checkout is built using modern technology which means that bookings are processed efficiently

There are also several new features that are only available in Checkout:

1. You can design your own Registration Form per training provider and make changes to it when you need to

2. You can capture additional information about the Delegates attending your Course at the end of the booking, this means that you can get up-to-date information about these attendees each time they book with you and reduce the size of a lengthy, off-putting registration form

3. You can create a Workflow to email your customers who abandon their booking to remind them of the Courses or Products that they were purchasing

In addition, there are also several usability improvements including:

1. You can view the content of the basket at every step of the booking

2. You can select multiple Delegates for a Course in one action

3. You can remove items, and clear your basket, from your Administrator view

4. You can choose to only display the PO Number option when your customer is selecting to be issued an Invoice for their booking

How to switch to Checkout

Switching is simple. There are 3 steps to complete before you switch to Checkout:

Step 1: Can I use Checkout yet?

We will work with you to ensure that the functionality that you need is available within Checkout. If there are any gaps, we will contact you again when these are available.

This section details the functionality that is and is not yet available in Checkout. If you need to use any of the features that have not yet been released then please let your Customer Success Manager know.

* Features which are only available in Checkout, these features are not available in any previous accessplanit shopping basket

Differences in functionality between previous shopping basket versions and Checkout:

1. Checkout is not compatible with the legacy system. Please get in touch with us if you are unsure what this means and if you are affected

2. Your current shopping basket does not display the final ‘complete’ message until all bookings, delegates, invoices, and transactions are completely logged. This leaves the booker unable to leave the basket process until everything is complete. With Checkout, a final check is run when the user clicks to make payment, then the user is taken directly to the next page while the items are created in the background, this means that there can be a couple of minutes delay (at the maximum) before you can see the generated delegates and invoices following a booking.

3. Booking Based Discount exclusivity looks at the booker/invoice target instead of the account for the selected Delegate(s).

4. Placeholder places are able to use Delegate Based Discounts.

5. Invoice Based Discounts are merged into Booking Based Discounts as they behave the same.

6. The booker can always be selected as the invoice target, even if they have selected other users as the delegates, whereas your current shopping basket only allows the booker to choose from their account(s) when they are booking others.

Other areas to review:

accessplanit will also complete checks on the following areas before switching you to Checkout:

• Your customer managers are set up with the role 'Manager Role' instead of the legacy 'Customer Manager'

• You do not have any invalid countries assigned to your Accounts or Users (i.e. 'UK' instead of 'United Kingdom')

• Your selected Payment Gateway configuration. Some gateways (such as Opayo) require additional information adding into the integration to work with the new Checkout basket 

If any of the above need to be amended before your switch, we will direct you to make these changes.

Step 2: Configuration

Change the look and feel of your Checkout basket and registration process to give your customers a seamless booking experience. Follow the instructions below and if you need any support, our team of experts are available to help.

Checkout branding

You can change the look and feel of your Checkout basket, best practice is to match your Checkout basket as close to your website as possible to give your customers a seamless booking experience!

Here are a few examples (click to enlarge):

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If you would like accessplanit to set this up for you, please provide us with

1. A company logo to be displayed at the top of your Checkout basket
   Preferably a maximum of 100px by 50px, in a .png format
   
   
   
   
   

2. Company contact information to be displayed at the top of your Checkout basket 
   Preferably, a phone number and an email address for any customers who may be struggling with their booking or have any questions for you
   
   
   
   

3. A core colour; this will be used on in the headers of each section, and on the buttons within the pages
   Preferably in a hex colour code format i.e. #000000
   
   
   
   

4. A secondary colour; this will be used on the progress buttons (call to actions) that the booking user uses to move to the next step
   Preferably in a hex colour code format i.e. #000000
   
   
   
   

5. A third colour; this will be used on the cancel/close buttons
   Preferably red or grey, choose a colour that does not stand out too much against your core colour.
   
   
   
   
   

6. A web-safe font choice
   You can choose from 

   1. Arial

   2. Courier

   3. Courier New

   4. Georgia

   5. Helvetica

   6. Roboto

   7. Times New Roman

   8. Verdana
      
      
      

7. A standard, default image to be used for your courses in the basket
   We recommend that you use an image size between 300 x 200 px to 450 x 300px.
   You will be able to override this per Course Template, this default image ensures that you never have a course that is missing an image! 
   We recommend choosing something generic, or using your own logo.
   
   

If you would prefer to set this up yourself, please access the Checkout Options page from Administration. See our dedicated knowledge base page for support with this.

Capturing Booking User Information

You can decide which information your capture about your new booking users within your Registration Form

If you would like accessplanit to set this up for you, please provide us with

Registration Form

The registration form captures information about the person making the booking (the booker)

We recommend capturing as little information as possible, to reduce the number of drop-outs.

Please let us know from the following list; what information you would like to know about your booking users.

You must include whether the field should be mandatory for your bookers to provide.

Commonly Used Fields

1. First name (mandatory)

2. Last name (mandatory)

3. Email address (mandatory)

4. Password (mandatory)

5. Phone number

6. Account / company name

7. Account phone number

User Fields

1. Title

2. Middle name

3. Job title

4. Address

5. Town/city

6. County/state

7. Postcode/zip code

8. Country

9. Preferred method of contact

10. Date of birth

11. Gender

Account / Company Fields

1. Address

2. Town/city

3. County/state

4. Postcode/zip code

5. Country

Delegate Information

Create Delegates

Delegate information can be provided when the delegate is first created, and again at the end of the booking

We recommend capturing as little information up front, to make the booking process as quick as possible for your bookers, and then request the rest of the information at the end of the booking. 

Please let us know from the following list; what information you would like to capture when the delegate is first created, please note that these will all be mandatory:

1. First Name (mandatory)

2. Last Name (mandatory)

3. Email Address

4. Account Name (mandatory)

5. Phone Number

6. Date of Birth

7. Address

8. Town

9. County

10. Country

11. Postcode

Manage Booking Step

Please let us know from the following list, what information you would like to capture at the end of the booking:

1. Date of birth

2. Job title

3. Address

4. Town/city

5. County/state

6. Postcode/zip code

7. Country

8. Mobile number

9. Shipping address

10. Shipping town/city

11. Shipping county/ctate

12. Shipping postcode/zip code

13. Shipping country

If you would prefer to set this up yourself, please access the Checkout Options page from Administration.

See our dedicated knowledge base page for support with this.

Step 3: Test

This section details the main booking types for you to test within your Sandbox or Test environment to ensure the basket works for you before switching Checkout on within your live accessplanit platform.

We have provided testing guidance which covers the scenarios below here: https://accessplanit.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/HG/pages/2845868033

1. Registering & booking as a manager

2. Registering & booking as an individual

3. Logging in as a manager to make a booking

4. Logging in as an individual to make a booking

5. Booking a classroom or webinar course

6. Booking an eLearning course

7. Booking a sessional course

8. Making a booking as an administrator

9. Paying by invoice

10. Paying by payment gateway

You can also download our handy Checkout Scenarios Template for further support with testing Checkout where you can add your own scenarios and record your findings:

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can we hide any of the billing options in our basket?
   Yes! You can rename or hide the ‘PO Number’ option on the billing step of the Checkout basket, please see our Checkout Options guide for more information. It is not currently possible to hide any of the other options on this page (although you can set the Billing Address to be optional), please log a product suggestion with us if this is something that you would like to see.

2. Can we hide the ‘Skip & Manage Later’ option on the Manage Booking step?
   We have not provided the option to hide the ‘Skip’ option on the Manage Step as it is best practice to provide your customers that either do not have the information to hand, or the time to complete it, a way to reach the end of the booking process. If this Skip option was removed, your customers would instead close the window miss out on viewing their Order Summary. By providing a Skip option, your customers can make the decision to complete this information later, and you can follow up with them automatically using your Workflows!