The Configuration screen controls universal settings and preferences in Tradebox; anything that will affect all sales channels of a multi-channel company. You can access the Configuration screen at any time from the upper-right menu of Tradebox One.

The screen is broken into five sections: Organisation, Preferences, Database Maintenance, Sales Order Maintenance and Accounts Maintenance.

Organisation

Company Details

Contains your name, address and contact information as entered during the setup wizard. These are used on some documents produced within the program, such as invoices.

If you want to add your company's logo, use the  button to browse to a .jpg or .bmp image on your PC. The logo will display in the upper left of the main Tradebox One UI once you've closed and reopened Tradebox.

Tax Rates

Controls the various tax codes that are used in Tradebox and the rates associated with these. Tradebox is designed for the UK market and these rates reflect the VAT treatment of what's being sold.

Click here for a full guide to tax rates in Tradebox One.

Currencies

In the Currencies screen, you can see the exchange rate that is currently being used to work out the GBP value of foreign currency orders. Tradebox is hard-coded to assume a base currency of GBP.

By default, Tradebox will automatically update these exchange rates before a download takes place, using the daily exchange rate provided by the European Central Bank. You can also force an update at any time via the Update Rates Now... button. If you prefer to set your own exchange rates, simply untick the Update Exchange Rates prior to Download box; the rates will then never automatically update and will need to be periodically adjusted.

To amend an exchange rate, double click on the required currency or use the Edit button, and enter the exchange rate you wish to use. Exchange rates are foreign-to-GBP. If you need an additional currency, use the New button to create one; specify the currency name, code and a valid exchange rate.

Click here for a guide to processing foreign currency sales with Tradebox.

Countries

The countries screen tracks the countries that Tradebox can recognise. If your marketplace or CSV order file uses ISO-Alpha 2 country codes, Tradebox will interrogate this table for the code and replace it with the corresponding name on the shipping or billing address of the order.

If you ship internationally, the VAT treatment of the order will be determined based on the shipping country's status as UK, EU, Rest of World. If you're VAT registered in any additional countries, you can set a country override and specify a different VAT status per country.

Over time, country names and ISO codes may change, as may EU status. Once we're aware of a change, we will include an up to date countries table in our next update, so it's important to always make sure you're running the latest version of our software. If you're aware of a change before we release an update, you can use the Edit button to make a change to the country in question. We strongly recommend you don't make a change to an existing country Code unless this is in line with an ISO-Alpha 2 change as this may prevent your list from updating in line with our own. If you have need of a country name, code or both that isn't present in our list, use the New button to create a country record.

Country VAT settings

Use the Edit button or double-click on a country record to open it.

The VAT Threshold amount feeds into the EU VAT Threshold report, which indicates how close you are to reaching a country's distance selling threshold. The setting and related report are purely indicative and don't do anything different in the processing of those sales; it's designed as an at-a-glance way for you to check whether a given country's threshold is something you'll need to consider. Enter the appropriate amount in the native currency of the country to enable the report.

If you exceed a country's distance selling threshold, you'll need to be VAT registered in that country. Normally you'd set up new tax codes specific to that country in Tradebox, which allow you to report on those sales separately. These can be mapped to custom non-UK tax treatments in your accounts package to exclude those transactions from your UK VAT return.

In the above example, we've applied cross border VAT status to Germany. Going forward, any sale with a shipping address of Germany would be processed using these tax codes, regardless of sales channel. The country override takes precedence over the country's status as EU or Rest of World; in our example if we later made a change to our EU VAT settings it would affect orders shipping to any other EU country but not to Germany.

Shipping

The Shipping option in configuration is planned to hold settings for future integrations with couriers. It's currently inactive.

Preferences

User Interface

Defaults

Memorise List Configurations: If this option is ticked, any changes that you make to the grids within Tradebox will be retained. If this is not selected, the changes will revert once you leave that particular screen.

List Row Height: Sets the size of each record in a list e.g. the Orders list or Products list. At the default screen size, the max setting of 40px shows 13 records per screen. This can be reduced to a minimum of 28px which shows 18 records per screen.

Sales Order List

Default order view: Choose which order status(es) should be the default display when you open the Orders list. For instance, you may always want to see all orders, or you may only want to view open orders that need to be actioned.

View orders for: Control the default filter on the Orders list based on the order date, to speed up loading that list and make it easier to find orders. The default is 30 days.

Products List

Show Active Sales Channels: Adds a list of the channels where a product has been sold to the Products view.

Order Processing

Name casing: Choose whether customer names are automatically converted into upper case, lower case, Proper Case or unchanged and display exactly as entered by the buyer. This affects how names on orders appear within the order in Tradebox and will also be used if you send orders to an accounts package.

Address casing: The same as Name Casing, for all address fields.

Synchronisation Priority: By default, Tradebox will process your channels alphabetically by channel name. If you wish the channels to be processed in any other order, you can set it here.

Stock Control

Defaults

Stock control: This setting is first chosen during the initial set up wizard, and informs Tradebox how you want to deal with stock control. The three options are Accounts Software, Tradebox or None. Click here for a detailed guide to the stock control choices.

Use global product mapping: Normally, product mapping is channel-specific in case you have the same product on multiple marketplaces but set up with different SKUs. If all your SKU's on every sales channel are exactly the same (character-for-character), you can choose to use a single product mapping table. This means any amendments to your product mapping need only be done once and will be applied to every sales channel.
Global product mapping is not compatible with using Tradebox to upload free stock levels. Upload options will be disabled if you enable global product mapping.
To enable, tick the box, then choose from the dropdown on the right which of your existing sales channels you wish to designate use as the master product mapping. This process permanently deletes any other product mappings, so you should ensure you have a backup of your data before doing this.

Check for new products in accounts: If your Tradebox is linked to Sage 50, Tradebox can check to see if any new products have been created in Sage and if so, create a matching product automatically in Tradebox so that your product lists are always identical. If you have just set up stock in Sage or created a large number of products, we'd recommend turning this option off and doing a manual import from Sage instead.

Product Uploads

Enable stock quantity upload: Tradebox can upload free stock levels from wherever you've set as your stock control method. Tick to enable stock upload. This in itself doesn't start the upload routine running, it makes the channel upload options visible. Click here for a full guide to setting up stock upload.

Stock quantity upload type: Stock uploads can either take place automatically as part of the Tradebox Data Service cycle, or can be done manually by clicking the Upload Stock Levels button in the Products screen. This setting allows you to toggle between automatic and manual. The manual with draft quantities setting means the upload routine is fired by clicking upload stock levels, but shows a draft screen of which products will be included in the upload which you can either confirm or cancel before any changes are made to your online stock levels.

Maximum Upload Quantity: On a stock upload back to the marketplace, you may wish for the quantity on your products not to go higher than a certain level, even if you do have more in stock. 0 indicates the setting is disabled.
This is a generic setting that will apply to every product included in upload. A per-product-per-channel maximum upload quantity is available in Products > Mappings.

Apply Quantity multiplier to upload: In the product mapping a quantity multiplier can be added. For example, if you are selling a pack of 5 of product ABC on your website, that may only appear as a quantity of 1 when sold, but you actually would need to take 5 out of stock when an order for that pack is downloaded. Applying the quantity multiplier to upload has the effect of dividing the number you have in stock by the Quantity Multiplier, so that if you have 20 in stock with a quantity multiplier of 5, a quantity of 4 would be uploaded to the marketplace.

Locations: Used if you are using Tradebox for your main stock control system, to enable you to track how many stock items you have in each warehouse.

Contacts

Defaults

Use country tax code: If, in Configuration > Countries, you have a sales tax code set up for a particular country, you can reflect this as the default tax code on the Tradebox customer record for any buyers with a shipping address in that country. If you're a Sage user, this in combination with the Use Tradebox Customer Tax Code setting in the Sage 50 > Customers section of each channel can be used to populate the country tax code on the customer account in your accounts package as well.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields 1, 2 and 3 appear on the Tradebox customer record as additional fields for your own notes. Here, you can change the names of those fields to something more relevant to how you use them.

Invoicing

Next invoice number: If you choose to print invoices through Tradebox, this displays the next number that will be used. By default it starts at 1 but can be edited.

Data service

Run on this machine: The Tradebox Data Service will only run on one machine on your network. If you're viewing these preferences from another PC that hasn't been designated as the service PC, it will display the PC name where the service is set to run and the setting will be greyed out. To change your service PC, the box must be unticked from the current service PC, at which point if the software is launched on any other PC the option will become available.

Process every x minutes: By default after the data service has been open for 1 minute it will run the list of routines such as download orders and post to accounts, close, reopen, pause for 1 minute and then run again. If amended, this setting will increase the delay between service loops.

Accounting

Accounts Software

Accounts software: If you're integrating with a Sage 50 package (any variation of Line 50, Sage 50C, Sage 50cloud, Sage Instant Accounts, Sage 50 Essentials), this should be set to Sage 50. If you're integrating with Xero, it should be set to Xero. If you're not integrating an accounts package or you're planning on using Tradebox to export financials to spreadsheet and import those to any other accounts package, it should be set to None. Amending this setting will delete any existing accounts links that you have created; your sales channels will remain intact but any preferences for accounts posting or interacting with your accounts software will be removed.

Posting to Accounts: If you've chosen Sage 50 or Xero as your accounts package, choose how you want Tradebox to post orders. Manual requires a user to click a button in the Orders screen to send any orders to your accounts package. Automatic assigns that task to the Tradebox Data Service, so new orders will just appear in your accounts package as soon as they're able to. With either setting you'll be able to specify that orders are only eligible to post to your accounts package based on their date, their channel of origin, or their status, by using the settings within each sales channel.

Summary Entries

Calculate VAT on: Applies to summary entries only. VAT on summary entries can be calculated on either the individual Items or on the order Total. Different systems calculate VAT slightly differently where there are multiple items sold; there's no strict right or wrong answer whether a net/tax split should be calculated on the order total or per unit sold. Rounding of part-pence results can lead to discrepancies especially where there are large quantities of units involved, so we offer two different calculation methods.

Database Maintenance

Routines and tools for your Tradebox data as a whole.

Backup Database

Allows you to create a single backup file which contains all your historic data, settings, licence details etc. You should take a backup prior to making any major changes to your Tradebox data, as well as regular backups so you have something to revert to in the event of a problem such as the hard drive that holds your Tradebox data dying.

Once backed up, the resulting backup file can be copied or moved around in the same way you'd move any other import file or document on your PC. You can copy the backup to a shared network drive, USB stick or cloud storage location and it's best practice to periodically move a recent backup file to an off-site location. Backup files can be used to restore Tradebox to an earlier point in time, or to move your database to another machine. If you integrate with Sage Accounts, it's best practice to backup Tradebox and Sage at the same time as each other; in the event of a problem with one system you can restore both to the same point with no risk of them becoming out of sync with each other.

The backup routine is the same one that launches when you close the program, and requires the program to close and the data service to close itself. After the backup completes, the data service will reopen and the normal automated routines will resume.

Tradebox has no automated backup function and we (Tradebox Ltd) do not provide a cloud storage location for backups. There's a default backup filename and a default backup location on your computer's C: drive, but you can amend both the filename and the location as desired.

Relocate Database

Allows you to browse to another directory on your PC or your local network and move the Tradebox database. See our guide to relocating for full steps.

Restore Database

Allows you to restore an earlier Tradebox One backup. Tradebox One backup files use the extension '.tbk'. The current database will be entirely overwritten by the contents of the backup, best practice is to always take a backup of the data in its current state before restoring an earlier backup.

Rebuild Indexes

Performs a database integrity check and reclaims system resource. It's worth running this routine periodically, or if you notice the program running slower than it used to. The main UI and data service should automatically close themselves, then reopen once the rebuild indexes routine has completed.

User list

Shows the users currently active in the program. Shouldn't be used for anything except under guidance from Tradebox Support.

Rebuild Data Tables

Allows you to remove existing data quickly and in bulk by removing all of the records associated with one or more sections of the program. Rebuilds are irreversible so make sure you've taken a backup of your data before rebuilding.

The Sales Channel dropdown determines which channels will have their selected records rebuilt, it's possible to rebuild some records such as orders for one channel but not for others. Other records such as products are program-wide and will be rebuilt for all channels.

Choosing to rebuild one record type will automatically tick the other records that are dependent on it. For example, rebuilding Sales Channels removes channels in their entirety, so you'll see orders, product mappings and the other channel-tied mapping types are automatically opted in to the rebuild.

Legacy Orders (From FM) refers to the 60 days of historic order numbers that were carried across if you upgraded your data from Tradebox Finance Manager. These orders are not visible in the Tradebox One user interface but are present in the background and are included in the duplicate check. Only rebuild Legacy Orders if you wish Tradebox One to re-download any orders that were previously downloaded through Tradebox Finance Manager.

Reset Product Upload Quantities to Zero (All Channels) is used for free stock upload. In normal processing, Tradebox only uploads products that have a changed free stock quantity since the upload routine last ran, which makes for far fewer requests and a much faster upload cycle. If you've had a problem, you can force Tradebox to attempt to upload all valid products to make sure your marketplace inventory matches Tradebox/your Accounts package. Resetting the upload quantity does not initiate an upload routine, it just removes the 'check for changes since last time' when your upload routine runs next.

Check Data

Checks the Tradebox data integrity to see if there are any problems within the data. Should only be run under instruction from Tradebox Support.

Database Settings

Retain Logs For: This sets how long Tradebox will retain its logs for. This is set to 30 days by default. You don't usually need your Tradebox logs, but we may ask for them if you ever contact us with a support request.

Retain Database Copies For Tradebox takes a copy of its own database each time you open the program, like an automated backup to allow you to revert if there's ever a problem (even though this facility exists, you are still advise to take regular manual backups of the system). These database backups can take up space on your PC if left over time, so Tradebox regularly cleanses the older ones. This is also set to 30 days by default.

Sales Order Maintenance

Routines and tools specific to the orders within Tradebox.

Export File Formats

The export of orders from Tradebox to a CSV file (Orders > Actions > Export Orders to File) requires a template file, which determines which columns should be used in which order. We include an all-fields template by default. You can set up any custom templates here, or within the export screen itself.

Duplicated Customers

Automatically detects customer records which may be duplicates and allows them to be merged together.

Recalculate Sales Figures

Some screens in the program present figures that are built at the time of order download and won't necessarily track every possible later change to an order or a line. If you spot any discrepancies in your figures, this option causes Tradebox to perform a self-audit and recalculation so that any figures or reports you see are as accurate as possible.

Accounts Maintenance

Routines and tools specific to your integration with Sage 50 or Xero.

Reset Order Postings

This option can be used to instruct Tradebox to post orders to your accounts for a second time. To be used if, for example, you restored a backup into your accounts software and needed to re-post sales that exist in Tradebox but not in the accounts. See Resending orders to Sage for a second time.

Reset Fee Postings

Sometimes you may need to post fees to your accounts for a second time, for example if you've restored an older backup. This option will reset the 'posted' flag against your chosen fees so that they can be reposted.

Product Mapping Issues

Opens the product mapping screen with a filter applied to show marketplace SKUs that have no corresponding Tradebox SKU assigned.

Validate Customers

If you're set to use individual customer accounts and have auto-match based on name/postcode/email turned off, you'll need to manually assign each new online buyer with their corresponding customer record in your accounts package.

Payment Mapping Issues

Opens the accounts payment mapping screen for your chosen sales channel. Only channels with an accounts link set up will show in the dropdown.