Hello all and welcome to the July edition of the ChannelGrabber Newsletter!

Well, in the UK it's school holiday time, and Britain saw the hottest day on record this week (38.7 degrees - phew!), but here at ChannelGrabber we're still working our socks off, come rain or shine (and we've got both at the moment haven't we?! Gotta love the British summertime!) to make system improvements and add useful new features for our lovely customers!

Read on to find out what we've been hard at work on...
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Find out about the improvements and brand new features we have been working on for you, and about our future plans for development.

We have now released an update for the Royal Mail "Ship" interface in CG so that the Parcel Type (Letter / Large Letter / Parcel) can be automatically worked out based on the weight and/or dimensions if you have previously entered them in CG for the product SKU that has been ordered.  No more having to manually select the parcel type for each order - yay!  

If you don't yet have weights and/or dimensions on your products to help with this time-saving function, you can find out how to add them in this guide:  Add Weights and Dimensions to Products

 
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The previous behaviour was that, if a Linked Product (eg. Bundle) was ordered, then the invoice generated by ChannelGrabber would show the actual SKU ordered first on the invoice table, followed by a list of all linked/component products.  Most of our customers who use Bundles found this helpful as it makes sure that no items are missed when picking from the invoice.  However, some customers, particularly those who use Linked Products for SKU Mapping rather than Bundles, requested that we make this an optional field, so it can be turned off and only have the main SKU/Bundle item shown on the invoice and not the component products, or it can be flipped the other way and only show the component products and not the Bundle/Linked SKU.  

You can set your own preferences per invoice in the Invoice Designer.  Open your invoice design and when you click on the Order Table element, you will see a drop-down called "Linked Products: Display Setting" on the editing pane to the right where you can select whether you want just the Linked/Bundle SKU (referred to as the Purchased SKU), just the Master/Component Product(s) (referred to as Components Only) or to show the Purchased SKU + Components together:

 
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We have now added a new option to the Invoice button on the Orders page, so now the invoice can be printed:

 
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As useful as our linked orders feature has proved for the majority of CG customers, by automatically linking multiple orders from the same customer to allow you to save on paper and shipping costs (by printing one invoice and one shipping label for multiple orders), we have listened to feedback from some customers who have found exceptions when it's necessary to un-link orders, so this will soon be possible from the Orders page, so that you're in full control of whether orders remain linked or need to be processed separately.
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We will be adding a new column to the Products page to display the Barcode (EAN, UPC, MPN, ISBN or "Does not apply") of each product per SKU to make it even easier to identify your products by the barcode.

As more and more CG users are managing Amazon merchant and Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) orders through ChannelGrabber, we needed a way to more easily tell the difference between these two order types, so as well as providing the shipping method that Amazon send on the order (eg. "Std UK Dom"), we are going to automatically add the prefix "SFP" to the order shipping method (eg. "SFP Std UK Dom"), so it will be easier to setup shipping aliases for Prime orders and manage them separately to normal merchant orders from Amazon.
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It has always been possible to set a default Fulfilment Latency (handling time prior to dispatching the order) per Amazon account in ChannelGrabber, as we have to provide this to Amazon when sending stock updates (their rule, not ours).  We are now planning to allow more flexibility on this by making it possible to set an overall default Fulfilment Latency per Amazon account, but also the option to change this per SKU, meaning you can have some product ranges with a handling time of 1 day and some with a handling time of 3 days etc, to account for potential differences in supplier delivery times etc.  You will also be able to set different fulfilment latencies per SKU and per account, so the same SKU could have a different handling time for Amazon UK than it has for Amazon US for example.
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We are going to make improvements to the current Invoice Designer tool, to make it more flexible, and to allow multiple formats of PDF to be designed in ChannelGrabber.  Then on the Orders page, you can choose whether to print a standard invoice for the orders, or you can choose from any other PDF format that you have designed.  

This will allow you to design things like packing slips, to incorporate key order details without the need to print a full invoice page for every order, or customised shipping labels for if you want to print address labels in your own format rather than using a connected courier's labels for example.  The possibilities will be limited only by your imagination!  :)
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With so many customers now benefiting from ChannelGrabber's listing tool, we recognise that one of the most highly requested additions to this is the option to add a HTML description template to the listing for eBay.  This will allow you to save a HTML template in ChannelGrabber that can then be applied to the listing when it is submitted to eBay by ChannelGrabber.

If you have an idea for an improvement or new feature you would like to see us add to the system in the future, please do let us know, by emailing featurerequests@channelgrabber.com
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If you're asking for something that has already been requested, we will add your vote to the feature to give it higher priority, or if your idea is totally fresh, we will add a new request to our developers' board for votes and future consideration.

We almost always prioritise feature requests based on demand, so the more users that vote for a feature, the higher up the "to-do" list it will move  ;)

Don't forget, you can also check out our public development roadmap as well, which will give you an idea of what we're working on and what's next in line/further down our developers' queue at any time:  ChannelGrabber Transparent Product Roadmap

Can't wait to hear your thoughts!

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Here, we'll pass on any newsworthy events or changes that we've learned about the e-commerce industry that may affect our system or you, our customers.      
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In order to remain compliant with Amazon MWS data protection requirements we will, within the next few weeks, be releasing changes to how Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is held in your ChannelGrabber account.

The full guidance may be found here and will affect your ChannelGrabber account in the following ways:

If you do not currently sell on Amazon, you will not be immediately affected, however we suspect that it is highly likely similar regulations will be required for other marketplaces in the near future.
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We hope you have enjoyed the July edition of our newsletter and found some useful information to help you with your online business.  

Why not also check out the blog page on our website, to keep up to date with news from us as well as even more industry insights and input from guest authors too?
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As always, if you would like to discuss anything relating to your ChannelGrabber account, please feel free to contact our team using the Intercom chat system (the chat icon can be found on the lower right corner of any ChannelGrabber page) or by emailing help@channelgrabber.com
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