General Online Store Settings

The " General " page is the most frequently used settings page in Shoporama. Here, you set your store’s name, the currency and tax rate it uses, which emails are sent automatically, which product feeds are publicly accessible, and how the search function works. Many of the other pages in the admin panel build on the choices you make here.

The page is long, so this guide walks you through it section by section in the same order as in the admin panel. Use it as a reference guide.

Contents

• How to Find the Page
• General: Name, Language, VAT, and B2B
• For use in your theme
• Orders
• Invoices
• SMS settings
• Feeds
• Emails
• Custom SMTP and Heysender
• Financial and Inventory System
• Return Center
• ChatGPT and Morningscore SEO
• Search
• Related Products and Dashboard
• What Should You Set Up First?
• For those who are tech-savvy
• Frequently Asked Questions

How to navigate the site

Menu: Account, Webshop, General. The page consists of 16 tabs, and on the right-hand side is a menu called Overview that follows as you scroll. Click on an item to jump directly to the tab: General, Theme, Orders, Invoices, SMS, Feeds, Emails, SMTP, Heysender, Accounting and Inventory System, Returns Center, ChatGPT, Morningscore SEO, Search, Related Products, and Dashboard.

The three Save buttons

• Save saves your changes and takes you back to the admin homepage.
• "Save and Continue Editing " saves your changes and keeps you on the page. This is also what the keyboard shortcut Cmd+S (Ctrl+S on Windows) does.
• Save and Clear Cache saves your changes, clears the cache thoroughly, and keeps you on the page.

The store’s cache is cleared every time you save. The difference with “Save and Clear Cache” is that it also resets the calculated stock levels, so they are recalculated from scratch. This is the button you should use if stock levels or prices in the store are stuck on old data. See also the article on resetting the cache.

General: Name, Language, VAT, and B2B

• Online store name. Displayed in the admin panel and used by default in emails, feeds, and order confirmations.
• Homepage category. The category displayed on the homepage of your online store.
• Default payment gateway. Used for new orders, but can be overridden per shipping option.
• Smarty version. The template engine your theme runs on. If the theme specifies its own version, the field is locked, and “Controlled by the theme ” appears below it.
• Language. Determines, among other things, the date format, month names, and default texts in the store.
• Country. Used for VAT calculation and default shipping settings.
• Enable visitor statistics. Tracks visits so you can view traffic figures in the dashboard. This is Shoporama’s own tracking.

Prices for products in the admin panel include VAT

This single checkbox determines whether the prices you enter for products are interpreted as including or excluding VAT. Set this before you create your products. If you change it afterward, you’ll effectively alter the meaning of all the figures already in the system. B2B stores typically enter prices excluding VAT, while stores selling to consumers enter prices including VAT. See “Show prices including VAT” in the backend.

B2B Minimum Order Value

A minimum amount the customer must spend before the order can be processed. The amount is calculated excluding VAT and applies only to the products, not shipping. A customer group can have its own value that overrides the store’s. A blank field means no limit. Small orders often cost more to pack and ship than they generate in revenue, so this is an effective tool in a B2B store.

Validate VAT numbers against VIES

If you’re selling to a business in another EU country, you can sell without VAT if the customer has a valid VAT number. If you enable this feature, the number is checked against the EU’s VIES service, and VAT is only removed if the number is actually valid. If the number is invalid or VIES is unreachable, local VAT will be charged. If you leave this option disabled, the store will operate as before. Details can be found in Reverse Charge and VIES Validation.

For use in your theme

• Results per category overview. The number of products displayed per page in the category overviews. A high number results in fewer clicks but heavier pages.
• Send error messages from your theme to the addresses below. If an error occurs in the theme, the message will be sent here. Separate multiple addresses with commas. A cost-effective safeguard: you’ll spot the error before customers call.

Orders

The page’s largest section. Here you manage order numbers, email templates, inventory, and how the checkout process works.

Numbers, Currency, and Email Texts

• Next order number. The number assigned to the next order. You cannot use a number that’s already been taken: if you try, the old number will be retained. If you use QuickPay, the number must be at least 1,000.
• Currency. The code used in orders, feeds, and prices, e.g., DKK, SEK, EUR, or NOK.
• Subject line on order confirmation/invoice and Order Dispatch subject line. Both fields recognize #ID# for the order number and #SHOP# for the store name. A blank field means the subject line is retrieved from the email template in your theme.
• Sender on emails. Entered as name plus address, e.g., The Store <ordre@butik.dk>.
• BCC on the “Order Sent” email. One or more blind carbon copy recipients, separated by commas. The email is sent only once per order.
• Upload file to invoice.html. Two fixed files attached to the order confirmation, e.g., terms and conditions or a return form. The maximum file size is listed on the page.

Weight and Shipping Cost

• Default packaging weight (grams). If the box, packing material, and tape weigh 120 grams, enter 120. This amount is added to the weight of the goods when calculating the shipping weight. Important if you use weight-based shipping.
• Default shipping cost (excluding tax) for shipments. Used exclusively to calculate the estimated profit on an order: total price minus tax minus this shipping cost minus the purchase price.

Inventory and Notifications

• By default, allow inventory levels to go negative. This makes it possible to sell even if inventory is at 0. Can also be set per product.
• Receive an email notification when a new order comes in? Plus, send an order notification to. Check the box and enter the addresses, separated by commas, and you’ll be notified every time an order comes in.
• Automatically take products offline when they’re out of stock? Products are automatically taken offline when stock reaches 0.
• Automatically put products back online when they’re back in stock? The products will automatically go back online when you restock them.

Checkout Flow

• Skip “Confirm Order”? The customer goes directly from the address page to payment, and the terms and conditions are displayed on the address page instead. Fewer steps usually result in fewer cart abandonments.
• Same shipping and billing address? The customer isn’t asked for a separate shipping address. This is useful if you almost never ship to a different address.
• Should EAN orders go through the standard payment flow? Normally, an order with an EAN number is treated as a government invoice and skips the payment step. If this box is checked, it must go through the standard payment flow.
• Once the customer has added an item to the cart, they must proceed to. Choose between Product, Cart, Cross-Sell, or Back to Previous Page. Cross-Sell displays related items, while Back to Previous Page keeps the customer browsing.
• "Keep the cart open until the order is paid?"—also known as "open cart." This often requires a theme customization, and the admin will warn you when you check the box. Always verify that the payment process still works afterward. See " Open and Closed Cart."

Invoice

• Next Invoice Number. The number is assigned when the order status changes to “Shipped” or when a credit memo is created. If the field is left blank, no invoice numbers will be assigned at all.
• Automatically add invoices and credit memos as PDFs to emails. Automatically attaches a PDF to order confirmations and related emails. Bookkeepers prefer this because the attachment is then stored as a real file in the inbox.
• Text for the PDF invoice. Free-form text at the bottom of the invoice, max. 1,000 characters. Use it, for example, for return information.
• Payment terms for the PDF invoice. For example, “Net 8 days” or “Payable upon delivery.”

SMS Settings

If you have an account with cpsms, you can send SMS messages to customers when the package is shipped. Enter your username, password, and a sender name of up to 11 characters. In the default message, you can use [URL] and [NAME], which will become a link to the order and the customer’s name, respectively. If you check the box for “Send SMS when the order is marked as shipped,” you’ll automatically be prompted to send the message when you mark orders as shipped. SMS order confirmations are set up under the individual shipping options.

Feeds

A feed is a file containing all your products that a partner automatically retrieves. The dashboard aggregates the built-in feeds and includes a shortcut to “Custom Feeds,” where you can create your own.

Feed Keys

Your feeds are located at fixed addresses and can therefore be retrieved by anyone who guesses them. If you check the box next to “Enable Feed Keys,” each feed will receive its own secret key, which becomes part of the address. Without the correct key, the file cannot be accessed. You can create the keys individually or click “Generate All Keys,” and the table will display the completed address with a copy icon.

Two things to keep in mind: feeds without a key remain freely accessible, and the feeds you haven’t enabled appear grayed out in the table. Remember to update the address with the recipient if you change a key; otherwise, their import will stop working.

Google Shopping and Product Reviews

Turn on “Enable Google Shopping Feed,” and the feed address will appear under the settings. You can fine-tune the following:

• Mark the top-selling products as bestsellers. Enter a number. Calculated based on non-canceled orders from the past 24 months, regardless of variants.
• Include only products with the highest profit margin. Calculated based on the product’s purchase price—not at the variant level—and this is the amount excluding tax. Used to avoid advertising products that aren’t profitable enough to justify the ad spend.
• Include products that are out of stock. By default, sold-out items are skipped.
• Enable country and language feeds. This option appears only if you have more than one online store on your account. Note that the SKU number is then used as the ID, and the feed must be enabled on the other stores as well.

Google Product Reviews sends your approved reviews to Google so that star ratings can appear on your Shopping ads. The feed follows Google’s Product Reviews format and works regardless of your theme. The URL is submitted in Google Merchant Center under “Product Reviews.” Google requires at least 50 reviews across your products before the star ratings appear.

Kelkoo, Pricerunner, Klaviyo, and Tradetracker

These four feeds are enabled individually, and the URL appears next to the checkbox. Kelkoo uses your own categories but can be overridden on a per-product basis using the “merchant-category” field. Pricerunner is configured similarly using ` pricerunner-category`, ` pricerunner-description` (max 30 words), and `pricerunner-condition` (new, refurbished, or used). There is also a checkbox to exclude out-of-stock items, and a “Hide in Pricerunner Feed ” option for each individual product.

Partner Ads

Partner-Ads is an affiliate network where other sites refer customers to you in exchange for a commission. You can enable both the feed and tracking; under tracking, you enter the program ID, key, program type (Sale or Lead), and country (Denmark, Sweden, or Norway). By enabling “Automatically Cancel Canceled Orders in Partner Ads” and “Automatically Cancel Returned Orders in Partner Ads,” you avoid paying commission on sales that never went through. If you enable “Use Differentiated Rate Groups,” you specify the rates for your brands, and the “Default Rate Group” is used for everything else.

Note that Partner-Ads tracking sets two cookies with a 40-day lifespan: the partner ID and a click ID. When the order is completed, these are sent to Partner-Ads along with the order number and amount. This must be stated in your cookie policy.

Finally, the “Hide Stock Status in Ajax Feeds” checkbox is located here. It hides the stock quantity in the Ajax-based product feeds used by the theme’s filtering feature, so competitors cannot see how many items you have in stock.

Emails

Here you set up the automatic emails. Most are controlled by a number of hours: 24 is one day, 168 is one week, and 336 is 14 days. A blank field means the email will not be sent.

• Post-purchase email. Sent a certain number of hours after the purchase. Typically used to request a review or suggest accessories.
• Email for an inactive cart. Sent to customers who added items to their cart but did not complete the purchase. Remember to obtain the customer’s permission before sending marketing emails.
• Email for unpaid orders. A payment reminder for customers who haven’t paid.
• Email upon cancellation. A checkbox. When enabled, both a receipt is sent to the customer and a notification is sent to you when you cancel an order. This feature is turned off by default so that automatic cancellations do not send unexpected emails. The customer receipt requires the email template `order_cancelled.html`, which is included in all of Shoporama’s built-in themes.
• Email for stock status. Enter a number, and you’ll receive an email when a product or variant reaches or falls below that level. The email is sent to the default user.
• Product reviews. Sends the customer a link to review the purchased items. The timer starts counting from the time the order was marked as shipped.
• Default user. Receives system emails from Shoporama, including stock alerts and order notifications.

If you want a complete overview of what the store sends automatically, see “What emails does Shoporama send to my customers?”.

Custom SMTP and Heysender

These two options determine which mail server your emails are sent from. This directly affects whether order confirmations land in the inbox or in the spam filter.

"Own SMTP " lets you use your own mail server. You enter the server, port, username, and password. The port is typically 587 (TLS) or 465 (SSL), and you can get this information from your email hosting provider.

Heysender is a Danish system for transactional emails. It improves delivery reliability and helps you meet requirements from organizations such as e-mærket. When you enable it, the page displays the TXT record you need to create on your domain, plus a line you need to add to your SPF record. If you change domains later, you’ll need to reconfigure the settings. If Heysender is enabled, Heysender will be used, even if the SMTP fields are filled out.

Finance and Inventory System

• Dansk e-Logistik. If you have an agreement with Dansk e-Logistik, enter the key here so that orders and shipments are synchronized. If you have multiple stores, there’s an additional checkbox where you can indicate that this specific store should not synchronize products and inventory.
• Automatic inventory status. If you specify an address with a file in the format SKU number;quantity;location tag, it will be retrieved once an hour, and the inventory will be updated. Lines with an unknown SKU number are skipped.
• Auto-cancel orders. Enter a number of minutes, and orders that have been placed but not paid for will be canceled. The minimum is 30 minutes, and leaving the field blank means no orders will be canceled. See Automatic cancellation of unpaid orders.

Return Center

The Returns Center is the self-service feature where customers create their own returns. Here, you enable it and set the rules:

• Enable the Return Center. If you’re using a custom theme, you’ll need to handle the implementation yourself.
• Shipping price with a “VAT-Exempt” checkbox. If the price field is left blank, the price from the shipping method is used.
• Shipping option for returns. Select a fixed method, or leave it set to None—the customer chooses.
• Automatically restock returned items, and under that , select “Restock the item only after the return is marked as received.” The latter ensures that the item does not appear to be in stock while it is being returned and requires that the former option be enabled.
• Use the calculated unit price instead of the original unit price. The calculated price distributes any discounts across the order’s products so the customer receives a refund based on what was actually paid for the item. The price is for reference only.

ChatGPT and Morningscore SEO

Under ChatGPT, you can enter your own API key. By default, you use Shoporama’s, so this field is only relevant if you want to run the AI features on your own account. Morningscore SEO is an SEO tool. Check the box to enable the integration, after which a button for the actual configuration will appear. If you disable it again, the data that has been retrieved will be deleted.

Search

The search bar is often where customers ready to buy start, so it’s worth spending ten minutes here:

• Allow the store to appear in Shoporama’s global search. Your store will appear in Shoporama’s global search.
• Wildcard search. Searches for words that start with the search term, rather than just complete words.
• Exact searches. Disables the search’s attempt to match similar words, such as those with spelling errors. Use this if you’re getting too many irrelevant results.
• Search all fields (including SKU). In addition to name, description, and the search field, this also includes supplier, listing description, and meta description.
• Search by name, SKU number, and GTIN. Narrows the search and is faster than searching all fields.
• Search static pages. Includes content from pages such as “About Us” and “Terms and Conditions” in the results.
• Show in-stock products first. In-stock items are placed at the top, out-of-stock items at the bottom. A small change with a positive effect on conversion.
• Include category names in search. Products are also matched based on the names of their categories. This works well if the categories are authors, brands, or series. However, generic categories like “Special Offers” and “New Arrivals” will then also include all their content in the results. Requires reindexing before the change takes effect.

There’s much more on this topic in the article about the search function.

Related Products and Dashboard

For example, if you enter 8 in the “Minimum number of products to display” field and a product has only 2 related items, Shoporama will automatically find the remaining 6. In the “Get related products from” section, you select the source: Same brand, Same categories, or What other customers have bought. If you leave the quantity field blank, the feature won’t be used. If there are no items for the brand or in the category, or no purchase history to base the calculation on, Shoporama can’t populate the list. That’s why a brand-new store often shows fewer related items than a well-established one.

The last tab is Dashboard, with the checkbox “Do not show statistics on my dashboard.” This turns off statistics and graphs on the admin dashboard’s front page. In large stores with many orders, this can make the admin dashboard load faster.

What should you set up first?

If you’re new and the page seems unnecessarily long, go through it in this order:

1. Name, language, country, currency, and “Prices for products in the admin panel include tax.” These are the fundamentals, and they’re difficult to change later.
2. Sender name in emails and subject lines, so customers can see who is writing to them.
3. Order notifications sent to you, so you’ll notice the first orders right away.
4. Default payment gateway and front-page category.
5. The search function, especially “Show in-stock products first.”
6. Feeds and automated emails. You can safely come back to these once the store is up and running.

For those who are tech-savvy

• If the theme specifies its own Smarty version in its settings, the dropdown is locked, and the theme’s selection takes precedence over yours.
• Feed keys are added as a suffix to the filename, e.g., /google-shopping-YOUR-KEY.xml. If a key is set for a feed, calls without a key will be rejected.
• The subject fields for order confirmation and shipping override the subject set by the email template itself. If you want to use the subject from the theme, these fields must be left blank.

Frequently Asked Questions

I’ve made some changes, but I can’t see them in the store

Click Save and Clear Cache at the bottom of the page. The cache is cleared every time you save, but this button also resets the calculated layer counts, so everything is rebuilt from scratch. If that doesn’t help, try using an incognito browser window, as your browser may still be holding an old version.

Can I change the order number so it starts over every year?

You can set the Next Order Number to whatever you want, as long as the number hasn’t already been used in the store. If you try to use a number that’s already taken, nothing will happen, and the old number will remain. If you want to start over every year, it’s common to include the year in the sequence, e.g., 260001. If you use QuickPay, the number must be at least 1000.

Why isn’t my accountant receiving invoice numbers for the orders?

Because the “Next Invoice Number” field is empty. Without a starting number, no invoice numbers are assigned. If you enter a number, orders will be assigned a number when their status changes to “Sent” or when you create a credit memo. Feel free to check the “PDF Invoice” box so the attachment is included in the email.

What’s the difference between “Search in all fields” and “Search in name, SKU number, and GTIN”?

"Search in all fields " expands the search to include, among other things, supplier, list description, and meta description, so you get more results. "Search by Name, SKU Number, and GTIN " does the opposite and narrows the search, which is faster and more precise. If you have many technical item numbers, the latter option is often the best.

How do I know if my feeds are protected?

Turn on “Enable Feed Keys” and check the table. Where a key is listed, it’s included in the URL, and the feed can only be retrieved using that exact URL. If the field is empty, the feed is freely accessible. Click the copy icon to get the complete address to share.

I’ve set a minimum order value, but customers are still buying for less

Check two things. The amount is calculated excluding tax and shipping, so a cart totaling 500 DKK including tax counts as only 400 DKK. Also, a customer group can have its own minimum order value, which overrides the store’s. So the customer might be in a group with a lower threshold.

Why doesn’t the profit shown for my orders match?

The profit is an estimate and is calculated as the total price minus VAT minus your default shipping cost (excluding VAT) for shipments, minus the purchase price. If the field is empty, the shipping cost is assumed to be 0, and the profit will appear too high. Enter a realistic average excluding VAT, and the figure will be closer to reality.

Should I use my own SMTP or Heysender?

Heysender is the simplest choice for most people because it’s built for transactional emails and only requires a TXT record and a line in your SPF. Using your own SMTP makes sense if you have specific requirements or already have an email server you want to use. If you’ve enabled Heysender, it will be used in any case.

What happens if I enable “Keep the cart open until the order is paid”?

Then the items will remain in the cart until payment is actually completed, instead of the cart being emptied upon checkout. This usually requires a theme customization, and the admin panel will warn you when you check the box. Always test with a real order afterward, and turn the feature off again if the payment page doesn’t behave as it should.

Several of us are making changes to the settings. Can we overwrite each other’s changes?

Yes. The page saves all fields at once, so if two people have the page open at the same time, the one who saves last wins. Agree on who will edit the settings, or reload the page right before you save. If you’re unsure about a setting, email support@shoporama.dk instead of guessing: VAT, currency, and “Open Cart” have consequences for orders already in the system.