Help for setting up a credit-based shop

[Saydie13]

Hello,


Sorry if I posted this on the general questions forum.. I don't see where else I could post this since it *might* involve a lot of functions in Zen Cart.

Basically, the shop that I am trying to set up is for internal tracking of the promotional items inventory in our company. This is where our salesmen can see what promotional items we currently have in stock and "purchase" them, to give to their clients. Now every fiscal year, we give each salesman their own budget for promo materials, which is based on their sales performance.

I am trying to set up Zen cart so that I can assign "credits" to the salesmen (their yearly budget) and based on these credits, they are able to purchase the products.

Right now, I am using "Gift Voucher" to achieve this function, since it lets the salesman see his remaining balance. However I have run into a couple of problems. When the GV hits zero, the salesmen could still continue purchasing the items with regular payment. Another problem with GV is that it can be cheated when the salemen will have to enter the GV amount they want to use with their purchase. Is there any way that Zen Cart could operate totally with just GV as the only method of payment?

I don't really know if there are other ways to set up this kind of "credit-based" shop. If you could help me configure this loop hole or if you have other suggestions.. please do enlighten me!



- Saydie13

[kuroi]

A better approach would be to write a simple payment module that simply draws down on an admin controlled balance and make that the only payment method.

[Saydie13]

Yup, it would be great to be able to tweak a payment module that's customized for my need.

However, I am a total beginner to Zen Cart.. I have no idea where to start/how to work on it. Is there any resources for starters that you could point me to regarding how to do it?

[Saydie13]

Then again, even .php is new for me. I might not be able to write this on my own...

I am thinking that GV is a starting point that you guys might be able to help me tweak.

[kuroi]

As payment modules go, this would be at the very easy end of the scale as there's no external interface to worry about.

There is some (very limited) information about them in the wiki, and you might want to take a look at the moneyorder or cod (includes/modules/payment) modules for similarly straightforward mechanisms.

You'd also need to build an admin page to manage the credits. Something like countries.php or currencies.php are probably the easiest to follow.

Though without some solid PHP and database experience, this is likely to be beyond a new user. In which case, there is a commercial help wanted section of this forum which you could fall back on.

I personally wouldn't go down the gift voucher route, as that's introducing all sorts of complexities, as you are beginning to find.

[Saydie13]

Asking for someone to build the function is the best bet I suppose.. Thanks again Kuroi for your help

[schoolboy]

I created a module called "Account Holders", cloned off Check/Moneyorder.

It is actually very easy to do.

Go get "Account Holders" mod off the free add-ons, and then compare its php files with their counterparts in "Check/Moneyorder"... and you will soon see how I did it.

It is (fundamentally) a similar procedure as cloning a shipping module and fairestcape has provided the technique HERE