Announcing Perch Shop Assistant

Perch Shop is a free add-on for Perch. We’re excited to see the stores you build and the things you sell using it. However Shop isn’t the only thing we’re announcing today. As we launch Perch Shop, we are pre-announcing Perch Shop Assistant.

We are very keen to ensure that you don’t need to pay for a whole bunch of third party services in order to sell a few things from your website. However, there are things that we simply can’t provide as part of a solution with a one-off cost as they have a cost each time they are delivered to your site. A simple example is VAT validation. Perch Shop gives you the ability to set up complex tax rules, including EC Reverse Charge sales. However in order to not charge a customer from another EU country VAT, you are supposed to hold a valid VAT number for that customer. One of the services we are testing will do that validation for you, so your client knows that when they do their VAT return they numbers will check out as valid.

Other things we are testing are services that are hard to achieve on limited shared hosting. Perhaps you would like to create elegant printed invoices and packing slips in PDF format? Shop Assistant will give you a method of designing your invoices in HTML and CSS and retrieve PDF invoices in your Perch Admin.

Due to the nature of these services Perch Shop Assistant will be a subscription service per site that uses these features. If you would be interested in finding out more, or have suggestions for services you think would be useful for your stores, take a look at the Perch Shop Assistant page and complete the signup form there.