Tapeline user guide

Tapeline lets shoppers buy an exact length, weight, area or volume: 2.30 m of fabric, 0.75 kg of coffee, 12.5 m² of vinyl. They see the exact price, the cart and the order show “Measurement: 2.30 m”, and stock goes down by exactly what was sold.

How it works

BigCommerce only sells whole quantities. Tapeline manages each measured product in its smallest unit (the base unit, for example 1 cm or 10 g):

• The BigCommerce price becomes the price of one base unit (€14.00/m → €0.14 per cm). Tapeline computes it from the price per metre you enter.
• 2.30 m is added to the cart as quantity 230, with a “Measurement: 2.30 m” line that appears in the cart, checkout, order, emails and packing slips.
• Stock is counted in base units (a 50 m roll = 5 000).

Because the product stays a normal BigCommerce product, tax, shipping, promotions, customer-group pricing, price lists, refunds and reports keep working.

Requirements

• A Stencil theme (Cornerstone or a theme based on it). Headless / Catalyst storefronts are not supported yet.
• The products you convert are physical or digital products with a single price per unit.

Setting up a product

1. Open Tapeline → Products, click Add products, search the product and click Set up.
2. Pick a preset (Fabric by the metre, Bulk food by the kg, Cable by the foot…) or set the unit, base unit, minimum, maximum, step and default value yourself. The preview shows exactly what shoppers will see.
3. Enter the price per unit (per metre, per kg…). Tell Tapeline what one BigCommerce quantity is today (usually 1 m; 0.5 m if you used the “sold per 0.5 m” workaround).
4. Click Preview conversion: the before/after table shows the new price, stock, weight, bulk pricing and price list prices. Then Convert.

Roll back restores the original prices, weight, bulk pricing and price lists, and divides the current stock back (any leftover less than one unit is reported).

With the Pro plan, tick several products in Add products and click Set up together to give them the same rules, or set up a whole category, brand or list of SKUs at once.

Rules

• Valid quantities are the minimum, then minimum + step, minimum + 2 × step… up to the maximum.
• The widget blocks add-to-cart outside these rules. As a backstop, Tapeline also sets BigCommerce's own min/max purchase quantity, and corrects cart lines changed elsewhere to the nearest valid value.
• If an order still arrives with an inconsistent measured line (for example added through another channel), Tapeline adds a staff note to the order and lists it in Tapeline → Activity.

Stock

BigCommerce counts the stock of a measured product in base units: a 50 m roll is 5 000 with a 1 cm base unit. Change it in Tapeline, not in the BigCommerce product form: open Tapeline → Products → Stock and enter amounts in your unit.

• Receive adds what you bought (a new 50 m roll), Remove takes off damaged or used stock, Set to enters a stocktake count. Each line shows the stock in your unit and the figure BigCommerce stores.
• Products with variants have one line per variant.
• If inventory tracking is off, Start tracking stock turns it on with the stock you have now. A rollback then divides it back to your usual unit.
• When the stock is changed elsewhere to a figure that looks typed in your unit (150 for 150 m, which BigCommerce reads as 1.50 m), Tapeline lists it in Activity with a Fix the stock button. The fix keeps any sales made in the meantime.

Inventory, ERP and order software

Software that reads or writes BigCommerce stock and orders (inventory and purchase-order tools, ERPs, POS, marketplaces) sees base units too: a 2.30 m order is quantity 230, and the unit price is per base unit. Set it up before you convert products:

• Set the product's unit to the base unit in that software (cm, 10 g…), or use its unit-of-measure conversion (1 m = 100). Then stock pushed to BigCommerce, received purchase orders and imported orders all match.
• Software that cannot do this will write stock in the wrong unit (Tapeline flags it in Activity) and count orders 100 times too high. Keep its products out of Tapeline, or update their stock in Tapeline only.
• For integrations, the order metafield tapeline/lines gives each measured line's value, unit and unit price as the shopper chose them.

Orders

• Each measured line shows “Measurement: 2.30 m”.
• The order metafield tapeline/lines (JSON) gives, per line, the value, unit, base quantity and unit price, for ERPs and integrations.
• Tapeline → Cut list groups the measured lines of a period by product (“Linen blue – 2.30 m, 1.10 m, 4.00 m = 7.40 m”), ready to print (or save as PDF) or export as CSV.

Things to know

• The quantity shows in base units (“230”) in a few places Tapeline cannot change: the optimized checkout summary and the order view in your control panel. The Measurement line explains it.
• Apps and feeds that read quantities or prices (ERP, shipping by quantity, Google Shopping) see base units and the base-unit price. Use the tapeline/lines metafield for integrations, and check your product feed's unit pricing.
• Edit the price and rules of a converted product in Tapeline, not in the BigCommerce product form. Tapeline warns you in Activity if the product is changed by hand.
• Before uninstalling Tapeline, roll back your products (Products → tick all → Roll back). BigCommerce removes the widget when the app is uninstalled, and Tapeline can no longer reach your store after that, so converted products would keep their base-unit prices and stock.

Subscription

Tapeline is billed on your BigCommerce invoice (Starter, Pro or Business). Subscribe, change plan or cancel in Tapeline → Subscription. Cancelling ends the subscription at the end of the paid period (at once during a free trial). Uninstalling does not cancel a BigCommerce app subscription by itself, so Tapeline cancels it for you when you uninstall. Without a subscription, products you already converted keep working on your storefront; converting new products needs a plan.

Questions? See Support.