Setup Guide

This article guides you through the main steps needed to set up your DecoNetwork system and get your business up and running online as quickly as possible. Before you start the setup tasks, make sure you have completed the tasks in the Before You Start checklist.

The checklist of main tasks you need to follow to set up your DecoNetwork system is listed below. Use this checklist to make sure you don't forget any key tasks, as they are important for your online business to run smoothly.

1.  Configure the basic information about your business
2.  Add team members
3.  Configure your decoration processes
4.  Set your decoration pricing rules
5.  Add products
6.  Configure your shipping
7.  Configure your taxes
8.  Set up your payment gateway
9.  Import your customers
10.  Configure your store domain settings
11.  Test your store

Click on the links, highlighted in blue, to open the help article about a specific task listed below.

1. Configure the basic information about your business

Before you start adding products and configuring shipping, payment, and other options, there are few settings relating to the running of your business that you should configure first.

1. Configure your account settings so that your legal business name, address, and contact details are up to date.
2. Configure your localization settings so that your business time zone, currency, product weight and length units, and site language are correct.

2. Add team members

Add staff accounts that individual staff members can use to log in to the Admin area of your DecoNetwork Fulfillment Center or Business Hub, in accordance with their assigned role.

3. Configure your decoration processes

DecoNetwork supports a number of decoration processes - screen printing, direct-to-garment (DTG) printing, sublimation, and embroidery. Support for the different decoration processes means that you can configure pricing rules, file types and properties, color palettes, and any associated fees to suit each of the decoration processes. It also means that when a particular decoration type is chosen by the customer when an order is placed, the system will output production-ready files in the required format.

Each decoration type is pre-configured with a set of default settings that are common for industry standards, so you can simply enable the decoration processes that you support, and you are good to go.

If you want to modify the default settings so that they are more suited to your business practices, you have full control of the configuration options for each decoration process. See the help articles in the Decoration Processes section for details on how to configure the settings for each decoration process.

4. Set your decoration pricing rules

With decoration pricing, you can choose to use Flat Pricing mode which lets you set a flat price that will apply to all decoration processes. This is the simplest and quickest way to get started. You also have the flexibility to set a different pricing method for each decoration type by using Advanced Pricing mode.

See the Decoration Pricing help article for instructions on how to configure your decoration pricing.

5. Add products

You can quickly add products to your site by selecting and adding DecoNetwork catalogs that you want to make available as part of your product range to your Fulfillment Center. It is sensible, especially when starting out, to keep the number of products you have on offer at a small and manageable level. A manageable number of products means that you will spend less time configuring and maintaining product information (such as pricing and available colors) if the suppliers make any changes and if live updates are not supported by the supplier.

If you want to offer products that are not available in the DecoNetwork catalogs, you have the ability to configure your own custom products. Click here for instructions.

6. Configure your shipping

Before you go live with your online business, it is important to make sure you set your shipping rates and shipping methods correctly. Correctly configured shipping means that you will avoid situations where you overcharge or don't charge customers enough to cover the shipping of their orders.

See the Shipping Methods help article for instructions on how to configure your shipping.

7. Configure your taxes

Configuring taxes is a crucial task to perform when setting up your site. You need to make sure that you charge the correct tax to meet the rules and regulations of your locale. Tax requirements vary depending on location, therefore it is important that you are familiar with those requirements. Before you configure your tax settings, we recommend that you consult with a tax professional on the laws applicable to your state, county, country, or business.

See the Tax Settings help article for instructions on how to configure how taxes are applied.

See the Current Taxes help article for instructions on how to configure a particular tax rate.

8. Set up your payment gateway

In simple terms, a payment gateway is the online equivalent of a credit card processing facility that you would find in a physical store. While this step is not essential, as DecoNetwork supports manual payment processing, there are many advantages of setting up a payment gateway, such as:

• Customers can pay directly on your site anytime, anywhere, on any device
• Transactions are secure: payment gateways use industry-standard encryption to protect sensitive data and protect both merchants and consumers from fraud
• Transaction processing is faster compared to manual processing

See the Payment Methods help article for instructions on how to configure a payment gateway.

9. Import your customers

If you have existing customer data stored on another platform, you can quickly add your customers to your DecoNetwork website in bulk using the Import Customer CSV tool. Importing your existing customers into DecoNetwork is an important step in setting up your site for the following benefits:

• You avoid the time-consuming task of manual data entry, saving you a considerable amount of time
• Increased data accuracy because you do not have to do manual data entry, which is error-prone
• You can just point and click to add your customer's details to an order that you create in Business Hub
• You do not have to manually maintain and update your customer data if changes are made to the data on an external system, you simply re-import the data to update it.
• You can send marketing emails to your customers directly from your DecoNetwork store, inviting them to visit your store and encourage purchases with product promotions.

See the Import customers article for instructions on how to import customers into your DecoNetwork Fulfillment Center.

10. Configure your store domain settings

Configuring your store domain is normally a one-time task, however, it is important that you configure it correctly the first time.

See the Domain Settings help article for instructions on how to configure your store domain.

11. Test your store

Before you go "live", you should place some test orders to make sure you have configured your settings correctly and test that the checkout process and payment gateway are working. You should perform the following tests:

• Test that transactions are processed successfully. You should have at least one product with a small dollar amount (e.g. $1) to run your test.
• Test canceling of orders and refunding of payments.
• Test processing of orders through production and shipping.