The first step in setting up a FoxyCart account is creating a unique user for yourself. Unlike in many systems, FoxyCart was built for web professionals who may be involved with multiple different clients' accounts. To make a more usable system, each and every admin user created in FoxyCart is separate from any stores that that admin user may have access to.

So if you're creating a site for “Bob's Example Widgets” right now, go ahead and create that store using your own admin user. If you then get a contract with “Jane's Generic Goop” you'd create a new store, using your one single admin account. Once you're ready to give your client (or additional developers, or an accountant, or etc.) access, follow the steps below.

If you've set up an account with your name and email but somebody else needs access to make the payment (like your client, an accountant, another developer, etc.), just click the “Add Users” link in the top to create a user for them. Based on their email address they'll either get access to the store with an existing account (if one exists with the email you entered), or they'll get an email with login details and a temporary password. Users get added per store, so if you have 10 stores on your account and add a user to one of them, the new user has access only to the store to which you've granted them access.

If an admin user no longer should have access, you can remove their access from the “Add Users” section of the admin, as described above. All store admins (including the admin being removed) will receive an email indicating the access change.

At this point, every admin user with access to a store has full access to do everything. We do plan on improving things to allow for more granular control, but we'd appreciate it if you voted for this feature request so we can prioritize it accordingly.

Before your FoxyCart store can use a live gateway to accept real money from customers, it must be activated by paying the monthly subscription. FoxyCart approaches payment in a slightly different way from most web applications in that the admin users (used to access the FoxyCart admin) are distinct from the billing users. This can be useful in some situations, as the billing contact may be the accounting department with no need for store admin access.

Once you've fully tested your store and are ready to continue testing on your live gateway account, you can click the “activate your store” link on your store's dashboard (in the admin), or click the “payment” link in the admin navigation, and click the link to activate your store there. You'll be directed to a payment page but you will not be logged in. Simply enter your email and complete the checkout process and your store will be activated instantly, ready to use a live gateway.

Because FoxyCart serves both web professionals and merchants, questions often arise about who should be paying the FoxyCart subscription. We have a few very strong recommendations:

• The business using FoxyCart should pay for FoxyCart.
• The firm or web developer who built the site should not pay for FoxyCart on a client's behalf.
• The person whose name is on the credit card is the person who should receive the email receipts. This is a biggie.

The reasons for these recommendations are many, but it mostly comes down to the fact that a web developer doesn't generally want to foot an extra bill on behalf of a client, and the client needs email receipts (which provide payment update and cancellation links) for their accounting. Also, a single email address can only have one associated credit card, so if a web developer uses his own email address with Client A's card to pay for Client A's store, then later uses his same billing account to pay for Client B's store (with Client B's card), now Client B is paying for two stores, because one billing account will only use one payment method.

To update your billing information the best method is to find your most recent FoxyCart email receipt and click the link contained therein. If you don't have that handy, you can click here to update your payment information, but make sure you enter the email address where the email receipts are currently being sent, otherwise you may update a different billing account. If you have any questions please feel free to ask for help.

Often a billing contact will leave a company, at which point the FoxyCart subscription will need to be transferred to a new billing account (as specified by the email address). Use the “transfer” link in your most recent FoxyCart email receipt, and feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Should you need to cancel your FoxyCart subscription you can do so using the “cancel” link in your most recent FoxyCart email receipt. If you have any questions just ask.