What if Gift Certificates are used Online and in-person?

[minneapolis_dan]

Any suggestions on how to deal with this: Someone who bought a gift certificate may use the thing online,or they may use it when they're in the store. Online is easy, ZenCart tracks it all. But in person, at the store, .. what to do?

I know the store owner could keep a computer handy at the register, and look up gift certificates in the ZenCart Admin when someone is trying to make a purchase in person, but is there a better way? I'm sure there are many ways, I just wondered how other people have dealt with this.

[schoolboy]

Zen's gift certificates are "virtual" products - they are really just a unique code that can be sent around to people via email. In the database, this code is "aligned" to a numerical value (cash value) and a condition that it can only be "redeemed" ONCE.

The only way the value can be redeemed is by someone entering the code into the appropriate input field and clicking "Send". This then adds the value to that persons account, and renders that unique code null and void.

There is no "paper equivalent".

[minneapolis_dan]

Thanks, but I understand all that just fine. You can, however, print your own gift certificates using the code Zen Cart generates, as I know many store owners have done. So, I was just wondering how people with both physical stores and Zen Cart stores have dealt with gift certificates, and keeping track of them. Assuming there are people who have dealt with this issue. There must be someone.

[schoolboy]

As the principal data relating to the status of a GV resides in the database relevant to the webshop, it stands to reason that the only surefire way of knowing if a GV had been redeemed online, would be to check its status in the database. So if a shopper is issuing GV codes in printed format and is accepting these hard-copy versions at his cash register in his real shop, he would need to have immediate access to his webshop database before he encashes the GV.

...Unless he's psychic, in which case he may be able to sense his DB's Aura and have the info communicated to him via some wierd energy force.