Hi all,

This is a development update covering February and March .

I have been working hard on a major update in our eCommerce system, after previously merging the Point Store functionality through. This work is going to be the back-bone of version 10.1, which I expect will be out into beta soon.

A quick run-down of the work:

• Download transactions to a CSV
• Better 'memo' support; memos may now be entered on the Composr end if a payment gateway doesn't let a customer input one
• A much more robust transaction system. Prices are now locked in before a transaction happens, so that if prices change mid-flight it won't cause a price-mismatch error. You can configure the grace period for this.
• Improvements to the documentation so that some of the important tangential daily concerns are more clearly explained (especially: tax, shipping, refunds)
• A very significant code cleanup to make sure it is easy to extend and maintain
• Currency conversion is optimised to run using local currency tables, downloaded nightly – this significantly reduces latency on pages that may require many conversions
• A completely rewritten tax system so that we can now support:
  • EU digital good taxation (this caught me unawares and is part of what spurned all this eCommerce work – the EU charges tax based on where the buyer is located for digital goods, e.g. music – and us merging in the Point Store functionality means a lot potentially comes under this category for users in the EU)
  • US sales tax for 'destination' states not just 'origin' states, via TaxCloud
  • Defining tax boundaries on per-country and per-state basis
  • Full auditing of exactly what taxes are levied
  • Configuration whether VAT or sales tax is in use
  • VAT certificates
• New catalogue field types: country, region, currency, state, USA state, tax code
• More to come

Rajesh has been hard at work making video tutorials. Has has published around 23 on our YouTube channel over this update period.

We've got a couple of simple themes live. I hope we'll be able to get some more soon, although it is costly for us to do this (Patreon plug).

Additionally, Site-wide Bulletins / Announcements was sponsored and has been implemented. Thanks Jason .

Of course we released v10 after a very long stretch of testing, and updated with most of our distribution partners to make the switch from ocPortal to Composr CMS:

• Softaculous – live
• Installation – live
• Microsoft Web Platform – live
• CometChat – implemented, pending release
• Bitnami – in the pipeline

We have reached out to many of our customers about upgrading from ocPortal to Composr. If we've missed you then please get in touch and we'll provide you with a quote and upgrade date.

Please do help us promote Composr CMS now that we got through the big complicated relaunch. We're working hard on new features and new tutorial material, but we ultimately rely on our community to spread the word .