Generating Gift Certificate Codes for Printers

[guyhancock]

Hi there, hope someone can help on this.

My shop is up and running and gift vouchers are working fine. However, I'm opening a real bricks and mortar store soon (selling the same stuff as the website and using Zen as the "engine" for the entire operation) and want to sell gift certificates/vouchers to the customers. Naturally these instore customers will want a real printed voucher and not just an e-mailed code. So, I need to get some vouchers printed and to do that I will need to be able to provide the printer with a list/range of codes.

Does anyone know of how I can bulk generate gift voucher codes without sitting here for hours e-mailing them to myself one at a time?

Thanks for any help
Guy

[DrByte]

There is presently no built-in option for mass-generating GV codes.

[misty]

Previous thread below may help
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=94967

[laurahowes]

Print blank Gift Certificates. Enter code and amount by hand when paid for and code is generated.

This is the way gift certificates were handled in the store I used to work in, and they were brick-and-mortar only.

[guyhancock]

Ho hum.

Dr.Byte, sadly I know, but do you have any idea/clues/guesses about what I could do to achieve this?

Misty, I'd seen that one but it doesn't really give me what I'm looking to do.

Laurahowes, for a slick operation I want to have them pre-printed and then just give them out at the till, also handwriting the code allows for errors with the correct case etc. As a side note, I'm using Olla-Cart for the till in the bricks and mortar shop.

cheers
Guy

[fairestcape]

In reality, "Gift Vouchers" in any electronic store are no more than a negotiable credit balance... In effect, someone is paying in advance, for products that are to be delivered at a later date.

So GV's are actually a payment method - NOT, as is believed, a PRODUCT.

Additionally - and unlike "paper-based" vouchers, these electronic vouchers are fully negotiable instruments (just like cash), either in their entirety, or as segments.

I can buy a GV on a zencart shop for £100 and then "split it up" into Ten £10 portions and send these to 10 different people. (Each portion then assumes a new ID code). These recipients can do the same, and each time a bit is split off the amount, a new code is generated.

In a "real" shop, you are doing a similar thing, but not on such a dynamic level. When you sell a paper-based voucher in your shop, you are actually selling a "credit balance" against stock to the same value. The voucher is nothing more than a redemption note - just like a banknote. The only difference is that I buy a £100 paper voucher, I cannot cut it up into ten equal portions of £10.

... but even so, the paper voucher is just like its electronic counterpart - a form of payment and not a product or object.

The only way round this is to examine discount vouchers as these can have a unique number, and be applied to unique situations.

[DrByte]

Dr.Byte, sadly I know, but do you have any idea/clues/guesses about what I could do to achieve this?

You could hack the code that is used in the admin for sending out complimentary GVs, and use it to mass-generate your own batches.
Beware that normally these are intended to be tied to customer email addresses, so you may have to do some testing to ensure that you can redeem them without problem if you're using blank email addresses when storing the generated GV codes in the database.

Then you'd have to do something to output the generated codes in some format you can use for whatever mail-merge/etc tool you use for printing your GV certificates.