I Need Customer To Pay Half Now Half Later

[SPH]

As you can see, if the customer notices the Layaway option while shopping, they can simply start the purchase off as a layaway, using the layaway code for 50% off. When the order is received, whoever is managing it sees the "layaway" in the order for the discount and knows it's a layaway. I guess she makes or has someone make the follow-up payment product for that customer

I think a pretty clever way and don't have to worry about some mod working properly (although we might be interested in such a mod). But since it's all core zencart function it seems safer.

sph
www.prommart.com
www.fashion-mart.biz

[shelly2bit]

Thanks SPH

your post was really helpful. Although i don't think i want to implement it in exactly this way, it has made me come at this from a different angle.

I think i am going to use the deposit module to allow them to pay the deposit and once this is paid, automatically create a hidden product for them with the remaining balance. The url of this will be sent to them in their confirmation email. They then come back later and pay for that product in the usual way.

Does anyone see any issues with my proposed solution?

thanks
Michelle

[DrByte]

... you mean, other than a database full of hidden products that must be manually cleaned up, and needlessly increase the product numbers when adding legitimate new products ?

[shelly2bit]

yeah other than that... ;O)

i know this would be a complete fudge and i'm clutching at straws really to keep my client happy seeing as they sprung this requirement on me at the last moment.

I am trying to convince them now that trying to make these changes to zencart is risky, time consuming etc. I think i may have persuaded them to go a different route - which essentially would mean not using zencart and throwing away all the work i've already done.

Having said that, whilst investigating this, I have seen so many requests for this functionality - many going back years - but it seems that it just hasn't happened - leaves me wondering how all the other people have handled it - or whether they just didn't use zencart either.

thanks
michelle

[DrByte]

... or they wrote bespoke functionality to add account-balance support to their store
... or they adapted and used purchase orders for payment ... where the customer sends their payment to the storeowner, who then handles the deposit/clearing/bookkeeping/record-keeping
... or they used one of the methods I suggested earlier

As for stores that don't use Zen Cart ... well ... this is the Zen Cart support site, not "other stores" support site ... so ... can't really speak for those.


Or maybe they used a payment service, such as Bill Me Later, which handles partial payments automatically.

Regardless what method is selected, the storeowner STILL has to do some work to manage who has paid and who hasn't, before shipping. If your client is wanting to abdicate that role, then you're in a hopeless spot, because unless they have bags of money for you to keep customizing software for them, you'll never win. Better to hire someone to manage the accounts ... a lot cheaper and more efficient than changing software constantly at the whim of the "client".

[smcelligott]

There's no "built in" way to "assign a product to just one customer". It doesn't work that way. There might be addons that offer that, but I've not used them.

You could consider setting up a product whose price is $1.00 and let the customer enter a quantity to indicate how much they want to pay. So for $43 they'd by 43 of the $1 product. The product would be visible to all customers, but there's not really anything wrong with that. In fact that's the approach very often used for donations.

This is exactly how we handle it. We do a fair number of orders that require one-off customisation not accounted for in the standard product offering. Initially we created an active item in a non-displaying category that said "Custom Order for Dr. Byte" quantity of 1, and set the price to whatever we had quoted for the custom project. Creating new products became a bit of a hassle, so we created a $1 custom order "product," and it has been so much easier. While anyone can order the product, the product description clearly states it is to be used only for custom orders for which the client already has a quote from us. Also, like our first attempt, this item is in a "hidden" category, so it isn't easy for a potential customer to find it. Quantity for this by the way, should be set very high, as you go through the "items" quickly. Note too that this item messes up some of your pretty analytics reports because it may look like you've sold 4000 of this item, when in reality you've sold (20) $200 items. Small price to pay though for easier administration.

We have also tried to use this for a lay-by/lay-away payment plan, but we can't seem to explain this in a way that customers can follow. As a work-around, our lay-by explanation page says that they should act as if they are doing a bank transfer (which saves the items they want ordered) and then we send them a payment schedule with payment options. They can use any of our payments (bank transfer, paypal, or credit card), however unfortunately all have to be manually reconciled. We also have an order status of lay-by that we use internally to alert staff that payment is not complete.

Wish the lay-by was easier . . . working on another solution, will keep you posted if we make any progress!