(The Hosting News) – Miva Merchant’s online shopping cart software has some exciting new features and upgrades upcoming soon!

1. The new wombat for Miva Merchant 5.5 is now in Beta Testing
2. A new partnership with AccurateTax has been created in order to aid store owners with tax calculations.

The exciting new features included in the Wombat and the AccurateTax partnership are designed to help online merchants that utilize Miva Merchant Web Hosting take their business to the next level by increasing functionality and saving time and hassle.

Anyone with a fully up to date Miva Merchant 5.5 store can test the new Wombat beta and make suggestions to the Miva team on how to better these new components.  Since the Wombat is only in the beta stages, Miva does recommend that you initially install and test the Wombat on a developmental copy of your store to make sure everything runs and functions properly.  You can simply install the Wombat from the Streaming Update menu in your global settings.

Key features included in the Wombat beta are:

• Order Management with Advanced Credit Card Features
• Label Printing For UPS, USPS (Fed Ex will be included in the final version)
• Address Line 2 for Billing, Shipping and Databases
• Order Status and History Fields

Remember that the features included in this Wombat will be available as a streaming update with the production release (after the beta and developmental process).  You do not have to be involved in the beta testing and pre-development stages in order to enjoy the new features – you simply need to wait until the wombat is released as an official update to your store.

In addition to the Wombat beta release, there is some more exciting news in the Miva Host world!  As a result of the often complicated and confusing sales tax rules that face online merchants, Miva Merchant has joined forces with AccurateTax – a leading provider of sales tax software.  The goal of this partnership is to make tax computations within the shopping cart.  This tax plug-in ensures that stores are calculating the correct taxes for the right state(s) and are up to date with the ever-changing rules and laws concerning the calculation of sales tax.  Furthermore, online storeowners need not worry that this module will slow down their sites because most of the work is completed on AccurateTax’s servers.

For more details and instructions regarding the Wombat and AccurateTax, please visit the Miva Merchant forums.

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