Configure your store's general settings

How to set your store's status, origin address, units, login rules, and terms checkbox from one screen

The General tab under Store Configuration is the one place where you write down the core facts about your store — whether it is open for purchasing, the country and state you ship from, whether you want weights in kilograms or pounds, whether customers have to sign in before checking out, and whether a terms-and-conditions checkbox is required on the checkout page. A first-pass setup for a new store takes about 5 minutes here; every field then flows through to the customer-facing cart, checkout, and product pages automatically.

What is this for?

The General tab is your store-availability and origin-address configuration screen. Its job is to hold the handful of whole-store facts that the cart, the checkout, and the public product pages all consume. You reach for it when you are setting up your store for the first time, when you need to take your store offline during a catalogue rework, when your business moves to a new primary location, or when your legal team asks you to add a terms checkbox to checkout.

When you save on this screen, the changes are live immediately — customers browsing your store on the next page load see the new store status, the new default shipping location on checkout, and any new terms checkbox.

Good use cases

Example 1: Taking the store offline during a catalogue rework. You are restructuring your four products — the Canvas Tote Bag, the Brewing Guide 2026, the T-Shirt with variants, and the Sticker Pack — and you do not want customers placing orders mid-shuffle. Open Store Configuration → General, switch Store Status to Maintenance, click Save Changes. The green flash confirms the write:

Your public product pages still render so search engines do not panic, but the Add to Cart button is hidden and /cart shows a "store is temporarily not accepting orders" notice. Here is what a shopper sees on the Tote Bag page the moment after you flip to Maintenance:

Flip back to Online when you are done — the Add to Cart button returns on the next page load.

Example 2: Pre-filling the checkout for US shoppers. Your primary warehouse is in California and most of your shoppers are in the US. Set Default Ship-From Country to United States and Default Ship-From State to California, then save. When shoppers land on your checkout page for the first time, the State dropdown is pre-positioned at California so they are one click away from confirming their address.

Example 3: A UK store switching weight units to kilograms. Your carrier quotes shipping in kilograms. Change Weight Unit from Pounds to Kilograms and save. Every new product you weigh is now in kilograms; your shipping labels and customer-facing weight displays all speak kilograms. Existing products you have already weighed keep their saved numbers — the unit is a display preference, not a conversion.

Example 4: Adding a terms checkbox for a GDPR launch. Your legal team has approved the wording and has a /terms page live. Open the Privacy & Compliance card, switch Require Terms Agreement to Yes, paste https://yourstore.com/terms into Terms Page URL, and rewrite the checkbox wording if you want something stricter than the default. The form looks like this once you've filled it in:

Click Save Changes. On the public checkout, every shopper now sees a tick-box — they cannot complete the purchase until they tick it.

Example 5: A quick weight-unit audit before a shipping-label batch. Before printing shipping labels on a busy Friday, confirm the Weight Unit reads the same unit your carrier's label software expects. Open the General panel, glance at the Units & Measurement card, and either leave it or flip it. Save. Every product's Shipping tab picks up the new label on next page load — no per-product click-through needed.

Example 6: Set up your store origin address before configuring a free-shipping threshold. You are about to go to Store Configuration → Shipping to set a "free shipping on orders over $50" rule, but first you need to make sure your ship-from origin is correct — weight-based rate tiers and free-shipping thresholds both reference the origin address to determine which rate card applies. Open General, confirm Default Ship-From Country is set to your warehouse country (for Acme Coffee Roasters, that is United States) and Default Ship-From State is California (where the roastery ships from), then save. Once General is correct, open the Shipping panel to set your threshold — the free-shipping rule will apply against the origin you just confirmed.

Example 7: Set store origin for local tax-rate matching. Acme Coffee Roasters ships from California. When a shopper at checkout has not yet entered their own address, the tax engine falls back to the Default Ship-From Country + State to look up the applicable rate. Open General, confirm Default Ship-From Country is United States and Default Ship-From State is California, then save. Once saved, open Store Configuration → Taxes and add a California location rule (state = CA, rate = 10.25%). Any checkout session where the shopper's address is unknown will now calculate tax at the California rate rather than defaulting to zero or a wrong jurisdiction.

Example 8: Multi-currency international expansion — the General settings step. Acme Coffee Roasters is expanding to ship to the United Kingdom. The full international setup involves the Purchase Flow panel (currency display) and Shipping panel (international rates), but General settings is where you establish the ship-from origin that international tax and shipping calculations reference. If you are shipping UK orders from a UK fulfilment centre, open General, change Default Ship-From Country to United Kingdom and Default Ship-From State to the appropriate region, then save before you configure any UK-specific shipping or tax rules. Keeping the origin accurate ensures shipping-rate lookups and tax fallbacks point to the right country. Note: currency display (the symbol shown next to prices) is set in the Purchase Flow tab, not here — see Configure your store's purchase flow.

What NOT to use this for

• Do not use this panel to set prices, stock, or variants. Per-product fields live on each product's edit page, not here. This screen is for whole-store settings only.
• Do not use Maintenance as a "down for a few seconds during deploy" signal. Maintenance is for planned catalogue work that takes minutes to hours. If you are expecting to be back in under a minute, leave the store Online — the momentary blip most shoppers will not notice is better than a disruption banner.
• Do not use Weight Unit as a conversion tool. If a product has a weight of 2 saved under Kilograms and you flip the unit to Pounds, the saved value still reads 2 — only now the label next to it says "lb." Convert weights on each product before flipping the unit, or stay on the unit your source data uses.
• Do not assume the Terms checkbox also gates the sign-up form. This is the checkout-specific terms gate. Sign-up and newsletter forms have their own wiring; speak to your developer or support if you need a store-wide click-through terms flow.

How this connects to other features

• Your public checkout — the Default Ship-From Country and State pre-fill the first visit to /checkout. If a shopper has already entered their own address on a previous visit, their saved address wins.
• Products — every product's Shipping tab shows weight and dimension inputs with labels that match the units you pick here. The Canvas Tote Bag's weight label changes from "kg" to "lb" system-wide when you flip this setting.
• Shipping — the weight-based shipping method displays its rate as "Rate per KG" (using the unit name you set here).
• Taxes — if you leave a shopper's address unknown, the tax calculation falls back to the Ship-From country and state you set here for rate-matching.
• Your store's public page — Store Status = Maintenance replaces Add to Cart with a notice; Status = Disabled hides the store pages entirely.
• Tracking Consent — if your store ships internationally or handles EU customers, the Tracking Consent panel controls which cookie disclosure banner appears at checkout. The Terms checkbox here (Privacy & Compliance card) is separate from cookie consent — you may need both.
• Users — the Require Login for Checkout toggle here interacts with your Users panel. When set to Yes, shoppers are sent to the sign-in / sign-up screen; the fields on that screen (password requirements, sign-up form layout) are configured in your Users settings, not here.

Before you start

• You are signed in to SGEN as an Administrator or Site Owner.
• You know your store's primary shipping origin (country and state).
• If you are turning on the terms checkbox, you have a published Terms page URL ready.

Where to go

1. Open the left navigation in your SGEN admin.
2. Click Store Management → Configuration → General (or open /sg-admin/ecommerce/configuration/general directly).
3. The General panel loads with all five cards populated from your current settings.

Steps — Store Availability

1. Pick the right store status

The Store Status dropdown has three values:

• Online — the default. Shoppers can browse and buy.
• Maintenance — browsing is still allowed (so search engines do not see broken pages), but Add to Cart is hidden and checkout is blocked. Use this when you are restructuring your catalogue, rotating a seasonal set, or doing a bulk price update.
• Disabled — the store is hidden entirely. Every product page returns a "page not available" view. Use this only when you are taking the store offline indefinitely.

You can flip this at any time — the change is live on the next shopper page load.

Steps — Store Origin Address

2. Set your ship-from country

The Default Ship-From Country dropdown is a searchable list of every country. Pick the one where your warehouse (or your primary shipping location) sits. If you ship from multiple locations, pick the one your shoppers are most likely to order from.

3. Set your ship-from state

The Default Ship-From State dropdown depends on the country you picked — the list of states updates when you change the country. Pick the state your warehouse sits in, or the state that will match the highest share of your shoppers.

These two fields pre-fill the checkout for first-time visitors. A shopper in New York opening your checkout for the first time sees your Ship-From country and state as the starting values; they can change them to their own address in one click.

Steps — Units & Measurement

4. Pick your weight unit

The Weight Unit dropdown offers Kilograms (kg) or Pounds (lb). Pick the unit your shipping carrier expects. Every product's Shipping tab shows a Weight field whose label updates to match your choice.

5. Pick your dimension unit

The Dimension Unit dropdown offers Centimetres (cm) or Inches (in). Pick the unit you prefer for measuring packages. Every product's Shipping tab shows Length, Width, and Height fields whose labels update to match.

Steps — Account & Login

6. Decide whether shoppers must sign in before checkout

The Require Login for Checkout dropdown is No by default — shoppers can check out as guests without creating an account. Pick Yes if your store is members-only or if you want every shopper to create an account before their first purchase.

If you switch this to Yes, first-time visitors are sent to your sign-in or sign-up screen when they click Add to Cart.

Steps — Privacy & Compliance

7. Turn on the terms checkbox

The Require Terms Agreement dropdown is No by default. Pick Yes to add a required tick-box to the checkout page.

Paste your Terms page URL into Terms Page URL — this is where the linked text in the checkbox wording will point.

The Checkbox Wording textarea is a plain text field with one special placeholder: {terms_link}. Anywhere you put {terms_link} in the wording, the Terms page link is inserted at render time. The default wording reads I agree to the {terms_link}. — on the public checkout that renders as "I agree to the Terms & Conditions" where "Terms & Conditions" is a clickable link to your Terms page.

Save and verify

8. Save all five cards

The Save Changes button sits in the sticky right-hand column and stays visible as you scroll. Click it once — all five cards (Status, Location, Units, Account, Privacy) save together. A green success message reading Ecommerce configuration has been successfully updated! appears at the top of the panel.

9. Verify the changes on your public store

Open a new browser tab and load your store's product archive (for example /products). Confirm:

• If you picked Maintenance, the Add to Cart button is hidden on each product card, and /cart shows the maintenance notice.
• If you changed the ship-from country or state, open /checkout in a private browsing window — the country and state dropdowns start at your new values.
• If you changed the weight unit, open any product's edit page and confirm the Weight field label now reads "kg" or "lb" as you picked.
• If you turned on the terms checkbox, open /checkout in a private browsing window with at least one item in the cart — the checkbox appears above the Place Order button.

What success looks like

• The green Ecommerce configuration has been successfully updated! message appears at the top of the panel after you click Save Changes.
• Flipping Store Status to Maintenance and reloading a product page in a new private browsing window hides the Add to Cart button.
• Flipping to Disabled and reloading any product page shows a "page not available" view.
• Changing the ship-from country and opening the checkout in a private window shows the new country as the default in the country dropdown.
• Turning on the terms checkbox and opening the checkout shows the tick-box above Place Order; un-ticking it disables Place Order.

What to do if it does not work

• I saved but shoppers are still seeing Add to Cart. Hard-refresh your browser (Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac). Browser caching often keeps a page's previous version for a few minutes. If Add to Cart is still showing after a hard refresh, confirm the Store Status dropdown on this panel shows Maintenance and save again.
• My ship-from state dropdown is empty. The state list is tied to the country. Pick the country first, wait for the state dropdown to refresh, then pick the state.
• The weight unit changed but my product's weight field still shows kg. Reload the product's edit page in a new tab — the label updates on next page load. If it is still wrong after a hard refresh, confirm the Weight Unit dropdown here is set to your intended value and save again.
• I turned on the terms checkbox and it is not appearing on checkout. Confirm the Require Terms Agreement dropdown on this panel is set to Yes and that Terms Page URL has a value — if the URL is blank, the checkbox may not render. Save again, then reload the checkout in a private browsing window to clear any cache.
• My shoppers are saying the terms link in the checkbox does not open. Check that Terms Page URL is a complete URL starting with https:// (not just /terms). An absolute URL is the safest choice.

Next step