Introduction #
This User Guide will explain everything you need to know, before starting with our bol.com WooCommerce plugin version 1.9.0 or higher.
Download, install & activate the plugin #
- First, you need to start a trial period at woosa.com for one of our plans.
- Second, you’ll need to select the plugin you would like to use via your Woosa account.
- Third, you can download and install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard.
- Last but not least, you can activate your Woosa license key in the settings of our plugin.
Questions and Support #
- Submit a Support Ticket and our Support Specialists will help you out with any questions regarding our plugin.
- Plan a free 30-minute demo call with one of our team members and walkthrough our plugin and your questions together.
About bol.com #
What is bol.com? #
bol.com is a large online retailer in the Netherlands and Belgium. Aside from selling their own products to customers, they have also opened up their webshop for other online retailers. In other words, bol.com is a marketplace.
At the moment bol.com has over 45,000 sellers on its platform and a revenue of 2,8 billion euro. With that, bol.com is one of the biggest online retailers in the Benelux.
Before you start: create a bol.com retailer account #
To be able to start with selling on bol.com, you will first need to sign up for a bol.com retailer account. You can sign up for free via the website of bol.com.
It can take up to 5 business days, before you will receive a letter via post with a verification code. You should fill in that verification code, to complete your account registration. After this, you can immediately start selling via the bol.com marketplace.
Authorization & License #
bol.com client ID and client secret #
Before you can start pushing products to the bol.com marketplace, you should connect the bol.com WooCommerce plugin with your bol.com seller account. There you will notice the plugin is asking for a client ID and client secret. You can find the bol.com client ID and client secret in your bol.com retailer account.
- Click on your company name right above and select Settings in the dropdown menu
- Scroll down to Services in the left menu
- Click API settings
- Scroll down to Client credentials for the Retailer API
- Click the Create button to create a new client ID and client secret
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard
- Go to bol.com > Settings > Account
- Fill in the client ID and client secret by copying it from your bol.com settings page
- Click the button Click to authorize
- The status should change to Authorized in green
Woosa license key #
As with all our software, usage of our plugins requires an active Woosa license key. Follow our Getting Started article activating your Woosa license key to make sure your license key is activated before you start any processes with our plugins.
General settings #
Format of the address #
In the past we have experienced different address formats, which broke to connection between WooCommerce and bol.com. Therefore you can now configure the preferred address format, to prevent any issues from happening.
The most common option is for this setting is Hillside Avenue 123AB.
Low stock threshold #
In the inventory settings of WooCommerce, via WooCommerce > Products > Inventory you can configure a Low stock threshold. By enabling this checkbox in the settings of our bol.com WooCommerce plugin, it will take into account his low stock threshold.
The low stock threshold has the same functionality as the Preserve Stock Offset. Since a lot of our customers sell their products through a dropshipping supplier or via multiple marketplaces aside from their own online store, it can happen that a product now has a stock of 2 and within minutes is out of stock.
The low stock threshold removes the product from bol.com, when the stock reaches that amount. In this way you prevent selling products that are already out of stock and you won’t get any strikes for it from bol.com.
Disable customer order notification #
In case of bol.com, the customer is ordering from their online store. This means bol.com itself will send a confirmation of the order and when the order is shipped a confirmation of the Track & Trace code.
Even though we don’t have access to the actual email address of the customer, our system can still email the customer via a tokenized email address. This is mainly applicable if it’s important for your customer to receive an invoice of the order, which bol.com itself will not provide.
This option is a multi-select, so you can choose to disable it only for a WooCommerce order with the status Processing, Completed or both.
Show shipping status #
In this case we’re not talking about the shipping status, meaning a Track & Trace code. We only mean the shipping status, once you have marked to order as shipped to bol.com.
Our plugin will show with statuses like: processing, error or completed if the shipment is correctly received by bol.com. Once completed, the status can’t change anymore.
Basically it is a confirmation that the technical integration is working properly, but it has nothing to do with the actual shipment to the customer.
General product settings #
Internal reference source #
When publishing a product to bol.com, you can add an internal reference to the product in bol.com. This is not visible for customers or competitors, but only for you. If you have the internal reference already stored in WooCommerce, it would be perfect if we just can connect those fields. Well, luckily with this setting we can!
- Default
With the default option it will take the WooCommerce post ID of the product as an internal reference on bol.com. - Product SKU
In this case it will take the product SKU in the inventory tab of the WooCommerce product, as an internal reference on the product at bol.com. - Product custom field
Last but not least, you can set up a custom field in the WooCommerce product to use as an internal reference on bol.com. If you choose this option, another input field will appear where you need to add the slug of that custom field.
EAN code source #
To be able to publish a new or existing product to bol.com, you’ll need an EAN code. EAN stands for European Article Number, which is the number below the barcode on a product.
The most important reason why the EAN code is mandatory for bol.com, is because based on this they can identify the product and show the correct content. With content I mean images, description, attributes and so on.
This also means if there are multiple sellers for a particular EAN code on bol.com, the seller name will be added to the existing product page. In this way bol.com doesn’t have duplicate product pages.
That having said, it would be wonderful if the EAN code is already stored in WooCommerce. Than we only need to connect the correct WooCommerce field again to retrieve it and send it to bol.com.
Fulfilment method #
The fulfilment method is the way bol.com orders are shipped to the customer.
- Retailer
How will orders be fulfilled to customers? Will you – as a webshop owner – take care of that process? Than you should configure this setting as Retailer. - bol.com
Are you making use of LVB (Delivery by bol.com)? Than your products are also stored in a distribution center of bol.com and they will take care of sending the order to your customer. In this case you should configure this setting as bol.com.
General shipping settings #
If you’re not making use of the automatic Shipping Connector within the bol.com WooCommerce plugin, you will need to mark bol.com orders manually as shipped within WooCommerce. The Shipping Settings has no functionality behind it, it is only used to predefine some choices and smooth the manual process.
Delivery options #
Use the bol.com options
In this case one of the bol.com shipping labels will be preselected. Choosing a bol.com shipping label, will result in bol.com creating a shipping label and Track & Trace code. No further action from your side, will be needed.
Use my transporter
In this case your own transporter will be preselected and you will be able to fill in a Track & Trace code yourself. Are you using PostNL, MyParcel, Parcel Pro or Shops United? We can automate this process also for you.
My transporter #
When you choose Use my transporter you can also preselect which transporter you’re using most often. In this way the manually process of marking orders as shipped, will safe you some extra “scrolling-time”.
General account settings #
Account label #
Our bol.com WooCommerce plugin enables you to connect multiple bol.com accounts, with one WooCommerce webshop. To keep the accounts apart, you can fill in an account label to identify both accounts.
This functionality is often used by bol.com sellers who have a seperate Dutch and Belgium account. In this case you can label the accounts as “bol.com NL” and “bol.com BE”.
Enable or disable functionalities #
| Publish products | Even though this is the core feature of our plugin, some people only want to use our plugin for handling orders. In this case it might be smart to configure the Publish products setting with “no”, to be sure no mistakes can be made. |
| Import orders | If you would like to handle orders from within WooCommerce, we suggest to configure this setting with “yes”. If you would like to handle bol.com orders from the bol.com seller account, it might be smarter to configure it as “no”. No matter which setting you’re choosing, the stock level will always be synchronised from bol.com to WooCommerce and the other way around.
Besides this option has 2 more checkboxes:
|
| Import invoices | We’re talking about the bol.com invoices here, which you’ll receive every 1st of the month from bol.com itself. It has nothing to do with invoices sent to your customers. |
| Import returns | Unfortunately after a sale you can also have a return. If you import the returns in WooCommerce, you can handle them also from WooCommerce (e.g. when a client returns a product with reason “different than expected” you can mark that return with that reason after receiving the return). The stock level will also be updated based on returns. |
| Import commission reductions | For some product categories bol.com offers a commission reduction, based on the selling price. You can choose to show these potential commission reductions in the product overview of WooCommerce, so that you know which products qualify for the commission reduction. It can save you a lot of money. |
| Display order commission | If this setting is configured with “yes”, you will see the commission of bol.com charged on every order in WooCommerce. This will not be visible for your customers. |
| Exclude order tax | Do you want a fair insight in your profits? Than you might want to exclude the order tax. |
| Automatic price update | Normally when you change a price in a WooCommerce product, which has the status “Published” it will automatically be pushed to bol.com. However, there are cases you might not want this automatic synchronisation for prices. In that case, we suggest you to configure this setting with “no”. |
Prices rules for bol.com #
You might want to add margin or shipping costs to your regular price, before publishing the product on bol.com. Luckily our plugin has multiple ways to do this.
- Use WooCommerce price
When enabling the option “Use WooCommerce price” a field appears. This field can be used to add a margin on top of your WooCommerce price. In case of a percentage margin you can say “10%” and in case of a fixed amount margin you can use “10”. In both cases either 10 percent or 10 euros will be added on top of your WooCommerce price. - Use bundle prices
bol.com also offers the possibility to add a discount if a higher volume of products is purchased (e.g. 25 envelopes will give a discount of 5%, 50 envelopes will give a discount of 10% etcetera). - Shipping costs
Last but not least, bol.com obliges you to offer free shipping. This doesn’t mean you don’t have shipping costs. Therefore you can add your shipping costs before publishing the product to bol.com. The sale price on bol.com will than be your WooCommerce price + shipping costs = a total amount.
The WooCommerce plugin for bol.com uses by default the regular price in a WooCommerce product, unless the sale price is filled in. In case the sale price is filled in, it will use the sale price.
Delivery time #
bol.com applies strict guidelines when it comes to delivery time. If your promise is delivery within 1 business day, they expect you to meet and live up to that promise. If anything goes wrong during the process of shipment and a delay occurs, it can happen that you will receive a strike from bol.com.
Therefore you should make sure that the delivery time is something you can live up to. Luckily you can adjust the delivery time per bol.com seller account (e.g. Dutch and Belgium account) but also per individual product if necessary.
Tax country #
Last but not least, within the general account settings you can configure the tax country. It speaks for itself: selling in the Netherlands use the Netherlands, selling in Belgium use Belgium.
Product actions #
Publish a product #
To enable to synchronisation between WooCommerce and bol.com for a product, you must publish the product from WooCommerce to bol.com. You can do this by following the steps below:
- Go to your WordPress dashboard
- Go to the Products in the left side menu of WordPress
- Select the product you would like to synchronise with bol.com
- Go to bulk actions and choose bol.com: publish
- At first the product status in the bol.com column will be Processing… after approximately 5 minutes it will change either in Published or Error.
If the product shows error in the bol.com column, you will need to fix something first. To see the entire error message Click on the product > Scroll down to Product data > Click the bol.com tab > Click the bol.com account the error appears. Consult our list of bol.com errors to see which error you have and how to solve it.
Already selling products on bol.com?
Our plugin will recognise these products through the EAN code and will connect the WooCommerce product to it. Besides it will make WooCommerce leading, which means product information like price, stock level, delivery time etc. will be updated on bol.com.
Update a product #
The following parameters are automatically updated after you have changed them in the individual WooCommerce product and bol.com tab:
- Price (depending on the Automatic Price Update setting)
- Shipping costs
- Stock level
- Delivery time
- Condition
- Fulfilment method
If an automatic update failed, you can also run the update automatically for those particular products by choosing one of the bulk actions below.
| Update price | The price of the WooCommerce product changed and you want to update that price also on bol.com. |
| Update stock | The stock level of the WooCommerce product changed and you want to update that stock level also on bol.com. |
| Update fulfilment method & delivery time | The fulfilment method or delivery time of the WooCommerce product changed and you want to update those also on bol.com. |
These manual update actions will be applicable always, when you submitted a change via the general settings of the bol.com WooCommerce plugin. In this case a manual update action per product is mandatory.
Other product actions #
Aside from the available product actions above, there are some other – less common – actions available.
| Pause | Temporarily pause a product for selling on bol.com. The product will still be available in your WooCommerce store. |
| Unpause | Push a paused product on bol.com back online for selling. |
| Reset | This bulk action is mainly used when a product is stuck in a certain status, for example Processing…. With the reset action you can reset all processes in progress at that moment and the status will jump back to Not published. |
| Exclude bol.com account | This product action is mainly applicable when you have multiple bol.com seller accounts connected to one WooCommerce store. |
| Upload content | This action is only used when you want to upload content, such as: images, title, description, attributes of an existing product/EAN code from WooCommerce to bol.com. We explain here how this bulk action works. |
Override general settings per product #
The general settings you have configured, might not be applicable on all products. Therefore you can override individual products and bol.com parameters, from within the WooCommerce product. Go to WooCommerce > Products > Click on a product > Scroll down to the Product data section > Click the bol.com tab. If nothing is checked in the individual product and bol.com tab, it will use the general settings instead.
| Condition | General tab | Selling products in different conditions? For example new and refurbished products? You can adjust the condition of that particular product here. |
| Fulfilment method | General tab | It might be that some products are shipped by bol.com via LVB. In that case you can change the setting within the WooCommerce product to “bol.com”. |
| Exclude account? | bol.com tab | You can exclude an account entirely for a product, so that it won’t get published or synchronised. This is mainly applicable when you have multiple bol.com accounts. |
| Manage price? | bol.com tab | Adjust the selling price to bol.com by enabling this checkbox. A field will appear where you can add the actual price you would like to sell for. |
| Manage bundle prices? | bol.com tab | Adjust the bundle prices to bol.com by enabling this checkbox. Multiple fields will appear where you can add the actual bundle discounts you would like to offer for this particular product. |
| Manage shipping costs? | bol.com tab | Enable this checkbox if the shipping cost for this product is higher or lower compared to most of your products. For example when this product is a parcel instead of a mailbox package, it will be probably more expensive to ship. |
| Delivery time? | bol.com tab | Enable this checkbox and choose the accurate delivery time for this particular product. |
In the general tab you will also see the parameter EAN code and Internal reference. These can’t be overridden per individual product. Only if the general EAN code source and Internal reference are set to default, they can be adjusted on individual product level in this general tab.
Synchronise content to bol.com #
I want to add a new product and/or EAN code to bol.com #
It can happen that the product you are planning to sell on bol.com, is not yet available on bol.com. This means you should add the product yourself with all the related content, such as images, description and product attributes required by bol.com.
Luckily you can use your WooCommerce store – to save you some extra time in this process – with the content connection functionality within our bol.com WooCommerce plugin.
Since the explanation of the content part is a User Guide on itself, please check how to send content from WooCommerce to bol.com here.
I want to edit the content of an existing product and/or EAN code #
Does the product already exists on bol.com, but want to change it a bit to make it more attractive for potential sellers? You can also apply changes to the content, which should be approved by the team of bol.com.
In general this process works the same for existing products as for new products. Except that existing products have existing content, which should be overridden by yours. Let’s walk through the steps:
- Go to your WordPress dashboard
- Go to Products > Select the product you would like to edit the content for
- Go to Bulk actions > Select “Bol.com: upload content“
- Next, go to bol.com > Settings > Content Connection > Upload content.
- Click Manage content below the product you would like to edit, apply your changes and click Save content.
- You will land back on the Upload content landingspage. Select the product and click the button Upload content.
It can take up to 5 business days for bol.com to approve your changes. We don’t receive a notification if the change is approved or not, so please keep an eye on the product content yourself via the website of bol.com.
Complete bol.com orders automatically #
Every bol.com order will be imported in WooCommerce. To complete a bol.com order, you must share the Track & Trace code with bol.com. Most of the time, the Track & Trace code is generated by a third-party and place in the WooCommerce order. However, in the basic this isn’t automatically connected to bol.com unless you have set it up yourself via the settings of our bol.com plugin.
At this moment our plugin can automate the order process with the following shipping plugins:
- PostNL
- MyParcel
- Parcel Pro
- Shops United
- DHL (coming soon)
- Sendcloud (coming soon)
Connect shipping carriers #
To be able to automate the entire shipping process from WooCommerce to bol.com, you should start with connecting the shipping carriers available in WooCommerce to the ones in bol.com.
- Go to your WordPress dashboard
- Go to bol.com > Settings > Shipping Connector
- Select the Shipping Service you are using
- Select the trigger when an shipment should be registered at bol.com
- Go to the tab of the Shipping Service you configured
- Connect the shipping carriers of the third-party to the shipping carriers of bol.com.
Make sure the Register shipment trigger is also configured in the third-party plugin settings. Check the ideal settings for every third-party shipment plugin.
Developers #
Errors #
During each process it is possible that you will get errors. Luckily for every error there is a solution. Check our list of errors to solve them yourself, without the support of our specialists.
Tools #
Clear cache
In some cases cache can block seeing actual differences in your shop. Therefore it can be useful to clear the cache. In this case the clear cache functionality is solely applicable on everything related to our bol.com WooCommerce plugins.
Clear background processes
It might happen that processes get stuck (e.g. a product status is stuck in Processing…). In that case we advise to clear the background process, which will result in a reset of those stuck products. After that, you can try to update them again.
Events
Events explains the cron jobs that are running for all processes done by this plugin (e.g. import orders) and its schedule, including the last execution. This can be useful to see if a process actually ran.
API requests
Publishing or updating a product is an API request. You can see the status of such an action in the bol.com column, in the WooCommerce product overview. However, maybe you’re curious about the progress of multiple products. In that case you can consult this page and see the actual API requests in the queue.
Logs #
All (error) logs related to our plugins. In this way a developer can debug when an error occurs.