Update Address Info During Checkout with Option to make changes in Profile

I've seen that it is possible for a customer to enter a new shipping address, or alter their billing address during checkout. However, I have not found a way to allow the customer to update their billing or shipping addresses such that the new info is saved in their profile. The system seems to only save the new address info for that one transaction. If there is no way to do this with the native Zen-Cart now, seems there should be two boxes to check: one if they want the shipping info saved as their new account address and one if they want the new billing info saved to their profile.

Here is how it could be useful. I've seen templates that include a form for signing up for newsletters via email. Anyone who signs up is NOT in the store database, but in a separate email address database. If one of those people later sign up as a store customer, then they will be in two databases for one store.

I want to be able to add people who sign up for the newsletter to be part of the store customer database with just an email address, password and name (which native Zen-Cart is already able to do!). If at a later date, they decide to buy a ship-able product, I want them to be able to update their address info during checkout and save it in their profile as their current information. Right now, the most efficient path is that the person would have to anticipate purchasing, change their profile, and then purchase. If they making impulse decisions to purchase, they'd have to change the address during checkout every time they purchase until they take the time to go into profile and change it permanently.
Seems it would be more conducive to purchasing to have the address changes available during purchase as it is now, but allow saving the changes to the profile.

This would extremely easy to implement and save potential Zenners from have two databases to manage.

Thanks for you consideration.,
Bern

Update Address Info During Checkout with Option to make changes in Profile (with grammar corrections)

I've seen that it is possible for a customer to enter a new shipping address, or alter their billing address during checkout. However, I have not found a way to allow the customer to update their billing or shipping addresses such that the new info is saved in their profile. The system seems to only save the new address info for that one transaction. If there is no way to do this with the native Zen-Cart now, seems there should be two boxes to check: one if they want the shipping info saved as their new account address and one if they want the new billing info saved to their profile.

Here is how it could be useful. I've seen templates that include a form for signing up for newsletters via email. Anyone who signs up is NOT in the store database, but in a separate email address database. If one of those people later sign up as a store customer, then they will be in two databases for one store.

I want to be able to add people who sign up for the newsletter to be part of the store customer database with just an email address, password and name (which native Zen-Cart is already able to do!). If at a later date, they decide to buy a ship-able product, I want them to be able to update their address info during checkout and save it in their profile as their current information. Right now, the most efficient path is that the person would have to anticipate purchasing, change their profile, and then purchase. If they are making impulse decisions to purchase, they'd have to change the address during checkout every time they purchase until they take the time to go into their profile and change it permanently.
Seems it would be more conducive to purchasing, to have the address changes available during purchase as it is now, but allow saving the changes to the profile.

This would be extremely easy to implement and save potential Zenners from having two databases to manage.

Thanks for you consideration.,
Bern

There is no description of what if anything has been changed about the store as installed regarding any additional software or changes that have been made. In a default install, when a customer creates an account up front, the address that is entered becomes the default address used for shipping. When/if that selection is changed or an alternate address is used along the shipping/payment path, then that address is associated with their account and is available for them to use on the next checkout (or when editing their account). It is also available from within the admin when reviewing their account. As far as making that new address their default address, yes that option is available from within their account.

So while there may not be an option in either the shipping or payment to make one of those the default address, the other part of this is why does the installed store not operate like described to this point? As far as an email mailing list, there is one email account to a customer's login. If they choose to create multiple accounts then yes there would be multiple occurrences of an email address being associated to a single person, but that's up to them basically. As far as being entered in some separate database table for newsletters compared to accounts, that's just a lack of coordination of creating an account when being added to a newsletter. In fact, I would find it troubling that a "random" email address could be added to a newsletter listing without some sort of account or account validation. Ie. Let's assume I knew your email address, I could just go to any newsletter distributor and add your email address without batting an eye. Doesn't affect me in the least, but you would be stuck with receiving emails from these businesses time and again... Who did the spamming? The company that merrily emailed the people on their list or the one that added the email address???

Now as far as the one that setup an account with a mailing address and then every purchase they make is to another address that possibly is to become the "always ship to" address, why did they enter an address that needed to be changed? Perhaps some text in the create account area would help get there, or yes perhaps a checkbox in the shipping area or the payment area would help. Predominantly though (perhaps not so in some businesses) a user that creates an account is the recipient of the product being ordered and has a payment method associated with that address. Business accounts may be different and even some businesses ship to multiple addresses.

If yes though the business in question has this need to update the primary address from either or both of the shipping and payment windows, then that additional logic (taken from the account page) could be used to update the page and satisfy the need... it's open source...

mrsawyer:

Update Address Info During Checkout with Option to make changes in Profile (with grammar corrections)

I've seen that it is possible for a customer to enter a new shipping address, or alter their billing address during checkout. However, I have not found a way to allow the customer to update their billing or shipping addresses such that the new info is saved in their profile. The system seems to only save the new address info for that one transaction. If there is no way to do this with the native Zen-Cart now, seems there should be two boxes to check: one if they want the shipping info saved as their new account address and one if they want the new billing info saved to their profile.

Here is how it could be useful. I've seen templates that include a form for signing up for newsletters via email. Anyone who signs up is NOT in the store database, but in a separate email address database. If one of those people later sign up as a store customer, then they will be in two databases for one store.

I want to be able to add people who sign up for the newsletter to be part of the store customer database with just an email address, password and name (which native Zen-Cart is already able to do!). If at a later date, they decide to buy a ship-able product, I want them to be able to update their address info during checkout and save it in their profile as their current information. Right now, the most efficient path is that the person would have to anticipate purchasing, change their profile, and then purchase. If they are making impulse decisions to purchase, they'd have to change the address during checkout every time they purchase until they take the time to go into their profile and change it permanently.
Seems it would be more conducive to purchasing, to have the address changes available during purchase as it is now, but allow saving the changes to the profile.

This would be extremely easy to implement and save potential Zenners from having two databases to manage.

Thanks for you consideration.,
Bern
What you're describing above is how the "Registered Accounts" feature of One-Page Checkout operates. There's additional documentation on the plugin available on its GitHub repository: https://github.com/lat9/one_page_checkout/