PrestaShop Group Buy {User Guide}

PrestaShop Group Buy module offers customers to buy the products in a group of customers.

Group buying is a process in which multiple people come together to buy products of their choice in order to enjoy discounts.

Using the group buying process, store owners can offer discounts if a customer buys in a group.

Discounts always do wonders & help in increasing the product sales.

This PrestaShop Group Buy module helps customers to create a product buying group. And, other customers can join the groups to buy products.

As the admin will be offering multiple products via group buying plans, every customer can buy a product of their choice.

Even if only one product is available in a plan, multiple customers can come together to buy the same product in the required quantity to get discounts.

Note: PrestaShop Group Buy module is compatible with PrestaShop version 8.x.x and multi-store feature.

• Create group purchasing plans.
• Add as many products as you want to a plan.
• A product can be assigned to multiple group purchasing plans.
• Set the quantity that must be added by group members in total to let each member checkout.
• Set the maximum checkout time each customer gets after the maximum quantity needed to checkout is added in the group.
• Define the expiry date & time of the plan.
• Choose to activate or deactivate the plan.
• Offer discount with each group purchasing plan.
• All the customers of the group get this discount while purchasing their product added in the group.
• A customer gets to create a group on the product page.
• The customer can either create a public group or a private group.
• Before creating a group, he/she can select a plan for which they are creating a group.
• After creating a group, they can add the products to the group.
• The group status will be in pending stage until the required product quantity is not fulfilled.
• Other customers can join the group either via invite link(private group) or directly(public group).

• After joining the group, other customers can also add the products to the group.
• Once the maximum quantity to proceed to checkout reaches, the group becomes active.
• Now, no one can join the group or add the product to a group.
• Every member of the group can now place the order.
• Each member will only pay for their own product.
• After each member orders their product, group status changes to complete.
• Buying in groups help each customer of the group to get a discount on their order.
• Group orders are available separately in a section at the admin’s end.
• Notify each customer of the group when a group becomes active.
• A group becomes active when product quantity in the group reaches a number necessary to proceed to checkout.
• Notify each customer of the group when a group gets cancelled.
• A group is cancelled when the checkout time limit expires or group buying plan expires.
• The calculation of the checkout time limit starts just after the group becomes active.
• Notify customer & admin both when group purchase status changes to complete.

• Firstly, go to the module manager in back office and click on ‘upload a module’.
• After that, drag and drop the module file or select the file from the system.
• In this way, the module installation will be successful.

As this module functioning is vast, so here are the steps that will help an admin & the customer both to understand it clearly.

• Firstly, an admin creates group purchasing plans from the backend.
• A plan can contain multiple products as well as a product can also be available under multiple plans.
• The process to create a plan is explained in the later section of this document.
• Now, a customer gets the option to create a new product purchasing group after selecting the suitable plan.
• The plan details are also available on the product page. It updates according to the selected plan to provide the clear information.
• After creating the group, a customer can invite other customers via invite link or by socially sharing the details of group.
• Although, public groups are available to join for every customer of the shop.
• Any other customer can simply join the group & add any of the product available in the plan to the group.
• After the minimum quantity requirement as per the plan is fulfilled, every member of the group gets an option to checkout.
• Please note that every customer will pay for only his/her added product to the group.
• Also, there is a time limit up to which the customers get to order their product. After the time limit, the group gets cancelled.
• When all the customers of the group complete their purchase, the status of the group changes to complete.

So, this was all about the process in which this particular module functions.

After the successful installation of the module, an admin can proceed to configure the module.

There are two sections in the configuration settings of the module i.e., General & Menu respectively.

General Settings

• Show List/Grid View Selector: Enable to show list or grid view selector on the product purchasing group page.
• Select Customer Groups View: Select the default view of purchasing groups whenever someone opens the page.
• Groups Per Page: Enter the number of groups to show per page.

Menu

In this section, there are multiple options. So, I’ll just explain the function of each option one by one.

• Group active status notification to customers: Enable this option to send email to each member of the group when the purchasing group becomes active.

Note: A group becomes active when product quantity in the group reaches a number necessary to proceed to checkout.

• Group cancel status notification to customers: Enable the option to send mail to all group members when the group is cancelled.
• Group complete status notification to customers: Enable the option to send mail to all group members when all the group member complete their purchase.

Note: A group status is complete when all the members who added their products create their order successfully.

• Group complete status notification to admin: Enable the option to send mail to the admin when all the group member complete their purchase.

After the successful installation, three new tabs add to the PrestaShop back office. So, let’s just proceed further to see each one of them in detail.

To offer the functionality to let customers group buy products, we need to create the plan first.

Here, we mean “a group of few customers” by a “customer group”.

Now, why do we need to create plans? It’s an interesting question. So let me give you a quick overview of this module functioning here itself.

Using this module, you are allowing few customers to come together & buy the product to get a discount.

So, using the plan, you’ll define what all those products are which are offered via a certain plan.

And, along with the products you’ll be able to define certain other things(as in restrictions) too.

You can understand those other things by going through all the options.

Create a new plan

After clicking on the “Add new plan” button, you’ll land on this page. So, let’s just go through each of the available options one by one.

• Select product: Select all the products on which you want thi plan to be active.
• Plan name: Enter the name of the plan.
• Quantity: Set the number of quantity that must be added in total in order to let all the customer proceed to checkout.
• Maximum checkout time after group quantity fulfilled: Set the maximum time in days & hours which is available for placing the order.
• Expiration date: Set the expiry date of the plan.
• Status: Choose to activate or deactivate the plan anytime as per your requirement.

Apply a discount: Set the discount in percentage or amount to offer to customers who buy a particular product in the group via this plan.

So, this was all about the process to create a group purchasing plan.

After creating the plan, details of the plan & an option to create a new purchasing group is available to the customer.

1st customer creates the group & adds the product

A customer can simply click on create group & fill in the following details to create a new product purchasing group.

• Group Name
• Visibility: A customer can set the group visibility either as public or private.

If it’s public, then any customer of the shop would be able to join the group.

Otherwise, in the case of private, only those customers can join who got the invitation from the customer who created the group.

After creating the product purchasing group, a customer can also add the products to the group.

A new tab also becomes available on the customer dashboard to manage all the product purchasing groups.

Here, in the following screenshot, as you can see that a new purchasing group is now created. And, the customer name who created the group is “Jonas Kahnwald“.

A customer also gets to send an invite link to other customers. Additionally, he/she can also share the group information on social media networks too.

2nd customer joins the group created by 1st customer & adds the product

Now, let’s see how things work for other customers when they want to participate in this group purchasing process.

Here, you may notice that the customer is different i.e., John Doe.

Whenever any other customer like “John Doe” will visit the page, they will see the following two options.

They can either join an existing product purchasing group or create a new one. The process will be the same if they want to create a new group.

However, that’s not our concern now. We are basically interested in joining the group & aiding in the purchasing process.

After clicking on the join group button, the following popup opens on the page. Here, a customer gets to see the list of all the public groups.

And, he can join the group by clicking on the join button.

After joining the group, a customer gets the option to add the products to the group.

Now after adding the product to the group, the group becomes active & an option to check out is also available to the customer.

This is because the quantity that is required in order to proceed to checkout is fulfilled & the group is now active.

Also, please note that the ordering process of the customers of the group is not dependent on each other.

Every customer of the group will be able to place their order as soon as the group becomes active.

Purchasing Process

This particular customer i.e., John Doe can now proceed for checkout & pay for its added product.

The process to buy the product is the default purchasing process of the product.

Also, you may notice that the total price of the product is $16.73 only. It’s because of the 30% discount on the original price applied cause of the purchasing plan.

You may also notice that there is already a 20% discount available on the product. But, that will be applicable when anyone proceeds to buy it normally.

There is some change in the order confirmation page cause of the module.

The details of the order of the other members of the groups are also available.

In this case, the 1st customer has not yet completed the purchase, so there is no order number available.

1st customer proceeds for completing the purchase

Now, 1st customer i.e., Jonas Kahnwald also proceeds to complete his purchase.

As opposed to the 2nd customer order confirmation page, both order numbers are now available on the order confirmation page.

It is because both customers of the group completed their purchase.

Now, the status of the product purchasing group also changes to complete.

Order details of orders of customer 1 & customer 2

Two separate orders are also created as each customer placed the order separately from their own account.

Admin order details page of “Jonas Kahnwald“

Admin order details page of “John Doe“

You may notice an extra block on the admin order details page. This block informs the admin that it was a group purchase.

All the orders of the group purchase are also available under the group orders section under the group sale tab at the admin’s end.

On clicking the view button, you can view the details of the group order & a list of all the orders of customers who ordered via this group.

In the earlier sections, I explained the flow with one of the available plans only.

However, in case if multiple plans are active on a single product. Then, a customer can select any one of them & then proceed to create a new product purchasing group.

So, this was all about the PrestaShop Group Buy Module. I hope this document will help you in checking the functionality of the module in a better way.

Also, do let us know about your views in the comments.

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