Online Order Management

March 10, 2022December 13, 2022

Android based automatic printing for WooCommerce

Introduction

Automatic printing of WordPress / WooCommerce order details is a must for online stores that have a physical location such as Restaurants and Bars. The automatic order printing is a feature that eases the personell at the restaurant / bar and makes it possible for rapid order management and processing.

When talking about Restaurants , the automatic printing system is usually installed in the kitchen, where the cooks directly receive the order receipts , and thus the processing time is significantly reduced. The printed receipts are also used for the delivery as they contain, shipping / delivery details in most cases.

Cloudy is Android based thermal receipt printing system, designed for Print Instant Notifications Plugin for WooCommerce. It features Automatic WooCommerce order printing, wireless (WiFi) and 3G/4G cellular network connection to the Internet Router at the site (The Restaurant or Bar), easy installation and minimal configuration.

How it Works?

Cloudy automatically checks for new orders placed via your WordPress / WooCommerce online store, if a new order is received, the order details will be automatically sent to Cloudy and printed on a receipt for further processing. The Thermal Printing System, together with the Woo Instant Notifications Plugin is very useful for order management and processing in restaurants, bars and cafes. The online order gets printed automatically, allowing the personnel to process it immediately and prepare it for the customer for delivery or local pickup. In terms of configuration, Cloudy just need to be connected to the internet via WiFi, then its ready for printing, thanks to the built-in unique Cloud based email address that comes with each device.

Cloudy is also compatible with Shopify and it can be used to automatically print Shopify orders.

The printing system will be available for purchase by the end of March 2022 via Hardware Group Ltd. online store

January 29, 2021January 29, 2021

Automatic email printing with Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla ThunderBird is a great email client that provides not only the possibility to check and write emails but it also provide some really cool automation features, thanks to the additional addons, available from mozilla.
In This Blog post we will review the possibility of using Mozilla ThunderBird for automatically printing emails based on certain conditions that we define.

So, to start with we will need Mozilla ThunderBird installed and email address configured and the addons listed below:

FiltaQuilla (email filtering addon)
Printing Tools NG (Advanced printing tool addon)

FiltaQuilla is used to filter incoming emails and for defining the conditions upon which the received email gets printed.

Printing Tools NG is used for setting up custom printing options and also to allow you to issue print action without the user interaction e.g to print automatically

So, enough words , the video below lists all the steps needed to configure automatic email printing with Mozilla ThunderBird

Ok, setting up Mozilla ThunderBird for automatic email printing is very easy and can be done for less than 2 minutes, but what are the possible use cases for that?

Printing WooCommerce / WordPress orders automatically ( Check Woo Instant Notifications ) which gives you the ability to easily manage, process and print online orders.
Printing order emails automatically from other CMS such as Drupal , Joomla, OpenCart, Wix etc. that will allow you to easily manage and process online orders.
Printing important messages automatically from colleagues or from the loved ones.

Dont forget to look at the Printers that we offer for automatic email printing on thermal paper. These printers are affordable and it will save you a lot of money as the thermal receipt paper is extremely cheap .

WooPrinter-WiFi-NG – Wireless WiFi 802.11n thermal receipt printer that connects directly to the internet via WiFi and checks regularly its own unique email address for new messages that has to be printed.
WooPrinter-WiFi – Wireless wiFi 802.11n thermal receipt printer that connects directly to the internet via WiFi and checks regularly its own unique email address for new messages that has to be printed.
WooPrinter-Lan – Rj45 wired thermal receipt printer that connects directly to the internet via Lan cable / Wired connection and checks regularly its own unique email address for new messages that has to be printed.

The above printers are extremely useful as you don’t have to setup / run a PC and a printer, bothering installing Thunderbird as the software is already built in these printers and they are ready for use. The only thing needed is to connect to the Internet either via WiFi or via a LAN / RJ45 cable.

December 7, 2020December 7, 2020

Woo Instant Notifications PRO v2.7 is released

We are happy to announce that version 2.7 of Woo Instant Notifications PRO – a plugin for WordPress / WooCommerce that would allow you to automatically print custom order receipts via Thermal Receipt Printers

New in version 2.7

Support for Tyche software Delivery Date
Support for Coderockz Delivery Date Time Plugin
Fix order metadata from any external plugin for woocommerce (Allows you to add additional information to the receipt parsed by external woocommerce plugins e.g for delivery date / time etc.)
Bugfixes

Downloads:

User’s Manual – Woo Instant Notifications PRO 2.7

If you are already a member you can download the latest version of Woo Instant Notifications PRO from the Link below:

https://ji4ka.com/woo-instant-notifications-pro-tutorial/

You can become a member by visting the link below:

https://ji4ka.com/woo-instant-notifications-pro/https://ji4ka.com/woo-instant-notifications-pro/

August 28, 2016August 28, 2016

Using barcode scanners for processing and shipping online orders, or how to make your life easier.

Back in 2013 our online orders from our irdroid.com website increased and we had to find a way to manage all these orders and the order process, including delivery confirmation automated email submittal and user notification. Before we made the automated system we were doing everything from shipping to delivery notification by hand,which gives a lot of errors when a human is involved in the process. Our experience shown that if the user is not aware of his order status he is starting to get really nervous and of course we are drawned with questions via email.

We have decided to automate the user shipping notification process by making a simple script that takes the order data from PayPal (via instant payment notification) and generates automatically two shipping labels for the order of a size (38x90mm / the size can be configured in the script) – the first one with the user address, the second one with our return address and a QR code with the user email coded in. The labels are automatically saved in a protected directory directly on the web server in a PDF file. Later our shipper downloads this file and prints it via our embedded label printer (We use Brother QL560 thermal label printer) . When he prepares the customer package he sticks the two labels, together with a customs declaration on the envelope and prepares for shipping to the postal service.

Now that we have the above labels we are ready to ship via postal service. Normally when you ship a small packet via the postal service you get also a tracking number, that the guys from the posts stick on the packet. We have the tracking number coded on a barcode and the user email coded on the QR code on the shipping labels , we only needed to make a simple application that will scan the two codes and it will send the information to our server and it will notify the user with a nice automatic message that will include the tracking information from the barcode. We are using the ShippmentPal App on a KT40-SY (see the image on the left) Industrial grade laser barcode scanner. We have created the apllication called ShippmentPal, which is available for free download from google play. The application allows the user to configure a reporting URL and also advanced barcode scanning features. We have also made the script which takes care for shipping label generation and for user notification. This script is also available , we charge a small amount for it ~ 25 USD.

KT40-SY and a custom delivery notification app — The App UI

What remained (a personal choise) is to get yourself a nice industrial Android barcode scanner device like the one one the images , relax and open a beer as using the the above delivery notification, will save you a lot of pain in the neck! 🙂

Hardware We used:

For printing labels : Brother QL560 thermal label printer
Labela Roll DK-11208 (38mmx90mm)
KT40-SY Industrial Android barcode scanner / can use any smartphone

Downloads: