Gift Certificate Help Please

[simpledomaining]

I am using 1.3.9 zen cart. i have 4 gift certificates being sold on my site. testing was smooth. but here is real deal: customer purchased 100 doll gift certificate, i got it in gift certificate queue, ,i clicked button to release it, confirmed it, then i went to section Gift Voucher's Sent, and no info appeared there, and nothing left in queue. Now how can i know, if customer got his gift certificate, and how i will have it in my Gift Voucher's Sent page? Do i need to go and manually send this to him?

[Ajeh]

Gift Certificates that are purchased then released put a balance in the Customer's account ...

Go to your Admin and look up your customer and you will see a balance on their account once the GV has been released to them ...

[simpledomaining]

Tahnks for the respond. yes i do see it approved in customer's account. but why i don't see it in "gift certificate sent" area, i dont see it or its generated code, like i see for other 3 gift certificates. will it appear in "gift certificate sent" once customer will send it to someone?

[Ajeh]

You did not "send" the GV and neither did someone else ... the customer "bought" the GV so it is either in the GV Queue ... or you "release" it and it is now in the Customer's Balance ...

If you had EMAILED the GV to the customer or the Customer sends some of their balance to someone else ... then you will see it in the Gift Certificate/Coupons ... Gift Certificates sent ...

[simpledomaining]

thank you so much for explanation. so there is no way to track the purchased GV ?

[Ajeh]

Once a GV is purchased ... the amount is added to the Customer Balance, when released ...

Once a GV is sent to a Customer via the Admin ... the amount is added to the Customer Balance, when redeemed ...

Once a GV is sent from a Customer with a balance to a friend ... the amount sent is removed from the Customer Balance ...

Once a GV Balance is used to pay for an Order ... the GV amount used is removed from the Customer Balance ...

But the problem is, the amount of the specific GV cannot be tracked as it is "Cash" ...

On Gift Certificates that are purchased in an Order by the Customer ... you will see the original GV in the table:
coupon_gv_queue

Before the GV is released from the Queue, the release_flag is N, and after being released from the Queue, the release_flag is Y ...

Now all transfers of the Customer's GV Balance can be tracked in the coupons and coupon_email_track ...

Now the person who redeems the GV redeep code on the amount sent from a friend will show in the coupons as no longer available to be redeemed and in the coupon_redeem_track of being redeemed by what address and in the coupon_gv_customer as being added to the Customer GV Balance ...


In your Admin, you will see a lot of this information ...

However, some information, while available in the database tables, cannot be seen from the Admin ... example: GV Queued info only shows when you have GVs queued for release ... not old ones already released ...

You could probably write something to try to manage tracking the sources of the credits to the Customer Balance and the debits from the Customer Balance ... but it will not tell you what specific GV amount came from what ...

The customer that bought the GV from you ... now you see in the Customer account their balance ...

As they send it to friends you will see:

1 their balance go down

2 GV Sent will show they emailed to someone an amount(s)


Customers who spend their GVs on Orders you will see references in the Orders, but again do not know the source of the funds that made up the total amount as it could of been several GVs from friends, GVs that they bought, GVs sent by the Admin ... once the GV was converted to Cash in their GV Balance, you lose the specifics ...

Kind of like at a bank where you make all kinds of transactions to build up your balance and transactions to spend your balance but you don't know specifically which penny came from where and went where ...

[flyf3a]

I can't find an answer to this in this thread but need help. My customer bought 2 gift certs and says he did not get the email with the codes. Is there any way to get the codes through admin? I can't find any mention of the certs once they are released. Could my customer just log in and email them back to himself? Thanks!

[Ajeh]

If the Customer bought the Gift Certificates, then you released them, there are no GV redemption codes ...

Go to Customers and look up the customer ... do you see a Balance in their account?

[flyf3a]

The customer account shows the certs available to use or email. He wants to give them as a retirement gift and print out something to give the recipient. Perhaps the only way is to email them from his account which is less exciting than being able to hand them an envelope for their retirement party with the certs. I though he just needed the codes and could write them down on a made up paper cert to give.

[Ajeh]

He could send the GVs to you in the amount he wants to give which generates a redemption code and you can give the codes to him ...

Just do not redeem his codes ...