Orders.dat File

[CAFECOSA]

I have exported my batches and am pretty confused. For most orders there are duplicates -- but there is no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes the order shows four times over or, better yet, sometimes it shows that the customer bought three of one item, three of another and then one upsell item when in fact they bought one of each item and an upsell item.

Any ideas as to why any of my batches aren't correct? It is nearly impossible to do any reporting with such a messed up export.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

[dotCOM_host]

Are you sure these are not the "same" orders/items? If you have products with attributes, they will typically be listed on multiple lines to account for the different attributes, since you can assign prices to them as if they were separate products. While this comes in handy, it can create a bit of a problem at the same time when you look at these export files and don't realize you have different line prices because of different attribute pricing...

[CAFECOSA]

Thank you -- that helped. That is a terrible solution by MIVA as now I have to go through each transaction and edit the orders just so I can produce a coherent report!

Thanks again for the tip. At least I now have a solution!

[leslienord]

Perhaps if you gave a little more detail into the type of report you are try to create others might have a suggestion or two for you. I take it you are not happy with the standard batch report?

[Leanne]

I put together some instructions for cleaning up the export file in Excel to make the data a little more useable. You can find them here (http://www.tinyqueen.com/resources/excelfile1.html)

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

I have exported my batches and am pretty confused. For most orders there are duplicates -- but there is no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes the order shows four times over or, better yet, sometimes it shows that the customer bought three of one item, three of another and then one upsell item when in fact they bought one of each item and an upsell item.

Any ideas as to why any of my batches aren't correct? It is nearly impossible to do any reporting with such a messed up export.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

Its not "messed up"...its how you represent a relational database in a flat file. You are looking for a report, not an export.

[CAFECOSA]

Well, I guess I could say this instead -- when I export my information, I would expect to see something that is 'useful'. Maybe I am mistaken?

When a product has two attributes, it looks as if the customer bought the product three times. The export also creates a running total of shipping charges instead of the actual cost. So it seems to me that they (MIVA) could probably figure out a better way to present/layout/export the information. I am not looking for a report -- I wanted to manipulate the data to create my own reprort -- but instead I found myself manually editing every order so that I could easily look at and present the information to my peers.

[CAFECOSA]

I put together some instructions for cleaning up the export file in Excel to make the data a little more useable. You can find them here (http://www.tinyqueen.com/resources/excelfile1.html)

This looks very helpful. I will use it the next tiime i need to export.

Thanks.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Well, I guess I could say this instead -- when I export my information, I would expect to see something that is 'useful'. Maybe I am mistaken?

When a product has two attributes, it looks as if the customer bought the product three times. The export also creates a running total of shipping charges instead of the actual cost. So it seems to me that they (MIVA) could probably figure out a better way to present/layout/export the information. I am not looking for a report -- I wanted to manipulate the data to create my own reprort -- but instead I found myself manually editing every order so that I could easily look at and present the information to my peers.




As I said, you are looking for a REPORT...not an EXPORT. The Order Export is VERY useful as a bases for exchanging data between one system and another. For example, a system that takes the Merchant orders and creates reports from them or prepares the data for importing to other sales tools. (We use the basic format of the order export for dozens of such applications.)

The fact that you want to create your own report is irrelevent, there would be no way to create reports without the ability to express all of the data which is exactly want the Orders.dat file does.

If you where to say that Merchant lacks report capabilities, then you would have a good argument...but you are confusing data with information.