March introduces the first public alpha of UltraCart's expanded CRM module, with two new tools for creating orders directly inside the platform: Point of Sale and Order Entry. Beyond CRM, this month delivered server-side Facebook Conversions API (CAPI) tracking, Open Graph support for StoreFront pages, and a substantial round of Visual Builder and integration improvements.
CRM
The CRM module now includes two new order-creation tools, both available in alpha. Point of Sale supports in-store ordering with shipping, quick picks, and receipt printing. Order Entry provides a redesigned interface for agent-assisted orders with pre-order handling, improved cloning, and smarter validation.
Point of Sale (Alpha)
- Per-Order Shipping Toggle: POS orders can now optionally include shipping. Toggling "Ship this order" enables full shipping address entry, method selection, and standard order processing for orders that need to be delivered rather than handed over the counter.
- Quick Picks with Staging Area: Quick picks now accumulate quantities in a staging area instead of using single-toggle selection. Inline item variation prompts appear when items have configurable options, so agents can specify size, color, or other variations without leaving the quick picks view.
- Quick Pick Thumbnails: Product thumbnails now display in the quick picks dialog, making it faster to visually identify items during order entry.
- Special Instructions and Merchant Notes: POS shippable orders now support special instructions and merchant notes fields, giving agents a place to capture delivery preferences or internal notes at the point of sale.
- Tax County Support: POS orders now use the location's configured tax county for non-shippable orders and standard address-based lookup for shippable orders. This ensures accurate tax calculations regardless of order type.
- Print Receipt: A new Print Receipt button opens a clean popup with just the receipt content, ready for printing without extra page elements.
Order Entry (Alpha)
- Pre-Order Support: Pre-order items now display an orange badge with their estimated availability date. A warning banner reminds agents that credit cards won't be charged until items are available, and a new "Charge Pre-Order" processing option allows overriding this when needed.
- Required Option Highlighting: Validation errors now scroll to and highlight the specific missing required item options and serial number fields instead of highlighting the entire items table. This makes it faster to find and fix issues during order entry.
- Clone Improvements: Order cloning now supports repricing cloned items instead of carrying over arbitrary unit costs. It also restores the customer profile link, shows member pricing tiers, and offers a reprice toggle in the clone modal.
- Quantity Stepper: Item quantity inputs have been replaced with +/- stepper buttons that include debounced server updates, reducing accidental over-ordering and unnecessary API calls.
- Copy Phone Modal: A prompt now appears on blur to copy the day phone to other phone fields, saving time during manual address entry.
- Customer Profile Refinements: Improvements to customer profile integration within CRM order entry, providing better context about the customer during the ordering process.
- Residential Shipping Default: The shipping address now defaults to residential based on your merchant configuration, reducing the need to manually toggle address type on every order.
- Auto-Select Single StoreFront: Merchants with only one storefront now skip the selection dialog entirely, removing an unnecessary step from order creation.
- Custom Fields 8 through 10: Order export now supports custom fields 8 through 10, extending the available custom data fields for order-level metadata.
StoreFronts
- Open Graph Support: Item pages and blog posts can now output Open Graph meta tags for improved social media sharing previews. When someone shares a product or blog link on Facebook, LinkedIn, or other platforms, the preview will pull structured title, description, and image data directly from the page. This includes array meta attribute support and is available in the beta version of the StoreFront Visual Builder runtime.
- Facebook Crawler Caching: Improved caching specifically for the Facebook crawler, reducing server load when Facebook re-scrapes your pages to refresh link previews.
- Visual Builder: My Account Coupon Enhancements: The My Account area now includes a new coupon description element and supports coupon list filtering by base coupon code, making it easier for customers to find and manage their available discounts.
- Visual Builder: Phone Proactive Collection: New settings allow you to proactively collect phone numbers at checkout with debounce, capturing contact information earlier in the purchase flow.
- Visual Builder: Side Panel Responsive Widths: Side panels now support responsive width settings, so they display appropriately across different screen sizes.
- Visual Builder: Checkout Agreement Terms: The checkout agreement terms element now supports configurable error text, letting you customize the message customers see when they haven't accepted the terms.
- Visual Builder: Stripe Express Checkout: Improved reflow handling as Stripe iframes change size, preventing layout shifts during the express checkout process.
- Visual Builder: PayPal Contextual Messaging: Updated with a deprecation notice and a recommended replacement element for merchants still using the older PayPal contextual messaging component.
- Visual Builder: Coupon Error Messaging: Improved error messaging when a coupon code has already been used, giving customers a clearer explanation instead of a generic failure.
- Visual Builder: i18n Translation Engines: Ongoing work on V1/V2 translation engine coexistence, ensuring both engines can operate together as the platform transitions to the newer translation system.
Reporting & Analytics
- Facebook Conversions API (CAPI): UC Analytics now injects hashed customer information into the Facebook pixel for improved server-side conversion tracking. This sends richer data to Facebook's ad platform, improving match rates and attribution accuracy for your ad campaigns.
- Facebook Conversions API (CAPI), Visual Builder Runtime: The StoreFront Visual Builder beta runtime now collects all client-side events and relays them to the server for CAPI ingestion. Combined with the UC Analytics integration above, this provides a complete client-to-server pipeline for Facebook conversion data.
- StoreFront Analytics Events: A substantial rewrite of the analytics event system improves observability across your StoreFront. Logged-in merchants can now see the events that fire in the browser console, making it easier to verify tracking implementations. Available in the beta version of the StoreFront Visual Builder runtime.
- AI Report Builder, Chat Streaming: The AI Report Builder now streams the thinking and chat output of the AI assistant in real-time. Instead of waiting for a finished result, you can follow the assistant's reasoning as it works through your data.
- Refund Report: Adjusted to use item-level and order-level data interchangeably where appropriate, improving accuracy when refund data spans different levels of the order hierarchy.
Integrations
- PayPal Agentic Commerce: Now available to all merchants. Previously limited to a select group, PayPal's agentic commerce capabilities are open to every UltraCart account.
- ShipMonk: Hardened the ShipMonk integration with improved error handling, unit cost support for line items, shipping and tax data, kit component pricing, and JSON parsing fixes. These changes make the integration more reliable for merchants with complex product catalogs.
- SPS Commerce: Added Order Acknowledgement support, enabling automated acknowledgement responses for EDI trading partners.
- QuickBooks Online: New option to skip zero-dollar orders during sync. If you regularly generate $0 orders (for samples, replacements, or internal use), they no longer clutter your QuickBooks ledger.
- Zoho: Improved error handling for more reliable data sync between UltraCart and Zoho.
Communications & Marketing
- SMS Suppression Table: A new do-not-send list is now automatically populated from STOP keywords, Twilio errors, and opt-out events. Every outbound SMS is checked against this list before sending, ensuring compliance with messaging regulations. The table also supports START keyword re-opt-in for customers who want to resume receiving messages.
- SMS Premium Rate and Short Code Filtering: Pre-send validation now rejects obviously invalid phone numbers before calling the Twilio API, saving you API costs on messages that would never be delivered.
- Send Test Email Dialog: The email recipient selector has been modernized with improved validation that rejects invalid email addresses on entry, catching formatting errors before you send a test.
Order Management
- Packing Slip PDF: Fixed top and bottom margin support for packing slip PDF generation, so your printed packing slips match the margins you've configured.
- Auto Order Permissions: Added user and group permissions for auto order cancellation. You can now control which team members have the ability to cancel auto orders, adding a layer of protection for recurring revenue.
- Accounts Receivable, Coupon Retry: The system now records the skip reason for each day during coupon retry processing, giving you better visibility into why specific retry attempts were skipped.
Affiliates
- Commission Table Overhaul: The affiliate commission table has been redesigned for improved readability and usability, making it easier to review and manage commission structures across your affiliate program.
March's updates center on giving you more ways to create and manage orders directly inside UltraCart, whether at a physical point of sale or through agent-assisted entry. The conversion tracking improvements and Open Graph support round out a month focused on capturing better data at every stage of the customer journey. If you have questions about any of these changes or need help configuring new features, reach out to UltraCart support. View all platform updates.