eCommerce Overview

ActiveManage's Carts feature gives you a complete eCommerce stack out of the box — product catalogues, baskets, checkout, vendor applications, discount codes, multiple payment methods, and recurring subscriptions. Suitable for B2C storefronts, B2B order portals, and marketplace-style multi-vendor setups.

The platform handles the heavy lifting (payment processing via Stripe, cart state management, order workflow, email notifications, refund handling) so you can focus on the product-specific configuration — what you're selling, how it's priced, and what the checkout looks like.

The main pieces

An eCommerce setup is composed of several related features, each managed independently:

• Carts — the central shopping basket and checkout flow.
• Stripe Integration — the payment processor. Required for any real-money transactions.
• Vendor Applications — for marketplaces with third-party vendors who list their own products.
• Discount Codes — promotional reductions.
• Payment Methods — configurable payment options (credit cards, BACS Direct Debit, Apple/Google Pay, etc.).
• Subscription Packages — recurring product offerings (see the Subscriptions & Feature Sets section).
• Feature Sets — bundles of platform features sold under subscription packages.

Where they all fit together

A user's path from product discovery to confirmed purchase typically:

1. Browses products via a Browse View on the products datastore.
2. Clicks Add to Cart, which inserts a row into a per-user cart-items datastore.
3. Proceeds to checkout, which collects shipping/billing details (via a Custom Form or User Input View) and a payment method.
4. Submits payment, which the platform sends to Stripe.
5. Stripe processes and notifies back via webhook.
6. The platform marks the order as paid, generates an invoice via Document Templates, sends a confirmation email, and (if applicable) notifies the vendor.

Most of that is configurable rather than code-driven, but each step has hooks for customisation when the standard flow isn't quite right.

Three real-world eCommerce configurations

Example 1: Single-vendor B2C storefront

Selling consumer goods directly to customers. One Carts configuration, Stripe connected, products in a single products datastore. No vendor applications. Discount codes used for seasonal promotions. Standard credit/debit card and Apple/Google Pay.

Example 2: B2B order portal

Existing customers (each represented by a Customer record) log in and place orders. Products are priced per-customer (custom price lists). Payment is on invoice rather than at checkout. Carts configuration uses BACS Direct Debit and Bank Transfer as the only payment methods.

Example 3: Multi-vendor marketplace

Multiple independent vendors sell their own products via the platform. Each vendor goes through the Vendor Applications workflow before being approved. Once approved, they list products into their own catalogue (a vendor-scoped Browse View on the products table with row-level security). When a customer buys, the order is split per vendor and each vendor gets a notification.

Where to start

If you're building eCommerce on ActiveManage for the first time, work in this order:

1. Build the products datastore — name, SKU, price, stock level, image, description.
2. Configure Stripe in Site Settings → Stripe (test mode first).
3. Create a Carts configuration pointing at your products datastore.
4. Run an end-to-end test purchase using Stripe's test cards.
5. Add discount codes, payment methods, and any other tunings.
6. Switch Stripe to live mode only after everything works in test.