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Prices by Country now allows regional sale restrictions!

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Prices by Country can now restrict sales per region

We have released an update for our WooCommerce Prices By Country plugin (one week ahead of schedule), with the new selective availability feature. The plugin now allows you to make products unavailable for specific regions, while leaving them available for other regions.

Rather than writing a long explanation on how this feature works, we prepared some screenshots that can quickly illustrate it.

Products’ regional availability

Great feature! How can I get it?

The feature is already included in the latest version of the Prices by Country plugin. If you have already purchased it, simply download the updated plugin using the link you received with your order. If you don’t have the plugin yet, you can buy it now. Don’t forget to use our New Year discount coupon to get 15% off the price!

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Prices by Country plugin will support selective availability

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Selective availability for products is coming!

We are extending our Prices by Country plugin for WooCommerce so that it will allow to make products unavailable for specific region. This new feature will finally allow shop owners to make some products available only to specific countries, while still allowing customers to buy other ones.

A creative use of this feature would be the creation of split and mixed catalogues. For example, a shop could be configured as follows:

  • Product A, B, and C available to Europe.
  • Product X, Y and Z available to the US and Canada.
  • Product Common1, Common2 and Common3 available to all regions.

With such setup, visitors from Europe will see all Common products and products A, B and C, while visitors from the US and Canada would see all Common products and products X, Y and Z.

Another use of such feature would be restricting the sale of some products to customers within the European union, to avoid having to deal with the new EU VAT MOSS regulations. Simply configure a region containing all EU countries (except your own, if you live in the EU) and customers from the EU won’t be able to purchase the “unavailable” products. Of course, if you would rather become fully compliant, our free, premium WooCommerce EU VAT Assistant plugin can help!

Sneak peek

The selective availability feature is still in active development, but here are a few preview screenshots to give you an idea of how it will work:

I can’t wait to use the feature! What’s the progress?

The feature is now working correctly for simple products, and we will have to implement it for variable products. We hope to release it officially by the 15th of January. Of course, feedback and suggestions are always welcome! If you would like to drop us a line, please feel free to contact us.

The Aelia Team

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Currency Switcher new feature – Per-currency “Buy” prices

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After several requests from our customers, we have finally managed to add a feature that will increase the already great flexibility of our Currency Switcher: we are adding the possibility of setting products’ “buy” prices in the currency of your choice, and let every other price be calculated automatically, unless populated manually.

What is this feature about?

At the moment, the Currency Switcher allows to you enter product prices in two ways:

  • By entering only a price in base currency, letting the plugin calculate all the others, using exchange rates.
  • By entering prices in one or more currencies, thus ignoring the exchange rates.

This system works well in most cases, however it has one limitation: the product price in base currency must always be specified, because it is used as the starting price to calculate the other prices. With the new per-currency “buy” prices feature, such limitation will be removed: you will finally be able to choose which price is going to be the “base” one, and let the others be recalculated.

How can this feature help?

The most common scenario where you could need this feature is when you have supplier from whom you buy products in different currencies. For example, you might buy Product X in US Dollars and Product Y in Euro. If your shop base currency is US Dollars, then you will have to enter all product base prices in USD. This won’t be difficult for Product Y, but, for Product Y, you would have to apply a EUR -> USD conversion first, to determine how much you paid in Dollars, then enter the sale prices, and keep them up to date when you buy new batches.

With the new feature, you will be able to specify that the base currency for Product Y is Euro, and just enter a sale price in such currency. The Currency Switcher will take care of calculating the prices in US Dollars, and in every other currency, using the Euro price as a reference.

Here’s a preview of the new feature, showing how easy it will be to choose the “buy” currency and set the prices for a product, and how the same product will display the prices calculated automatically from the base one.

Sounds great, when will the feature be available?

We are now testing the feature, and we will release an update for the Currency Switcher that includes it within the next couple of days. The update will be free for existing customers, and it will also be included with all new purchases starting from the official release date. If you would be interested in trying it before the official release, please contact us and we will send you further instructions.

The Aelia Team

EU VAT Compliance plugin is now “EU VAT Assistant”

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EU VAT Compliance plugin has been renamed

Shortly after we started working on our solution to help with EU VAT compliance, we gave it the name we used later on to announce it. While we were working on our product, we stumbled upon a plugin, developed by one of our customers and collaborators, which has the same purpose and the same name, and a slightly different set of features.

Initially, we didn’t think about changing our plugin’s name, as we were focused on getting it ready on time. Now that the product has been released, we realised that having two plugins with the same name and a similar purpose is not a good idea. It would cause confusion amongst users, and also mess up WordPress’ automatic updates mechanism, which would show updates available for the wrong plugin (i.e. it will tell you that there are updates available for the EU VAT Compliance plugin, while, in fact, it’s another product). Last, but not least, we don’t want to “hijack” visitors who are looking for the alternative plugin, developed by David Anderson.

For the above reasons, the EU VAT Compliance plugin is now called EU VAT Assistant.

Upgrade instructions

Since the plugin has been renamed, it’s folder is also different. To upgrade, please follow the instructions below:

  1. Take note of the configuration settings. Settings keys also changed, and the plugin will have to be reconfigured (only this time!)
  2. Deactivate and uninstall the EU VAT Compliance plugin.
  3. Upload and activate the new EU VAT Assistant plugin.
  4. Go to WooCommerce > EU VAT Assistance setting page.
  5. Re-apply the settings you saved at step #1 and click on “Save settings”.

All the orders that had been processed by the previous plugin will maintain their data.