Shipping and Payment Options by Customer Type

Hi All,

This is my first post in this forum so please bear with me should anything goes wayward.

Background:
I've just started administrating a Zen-Cart store for an online retail business. The business has recently launched and has been processing cash orders for an extended social network. Stock has been monitored on an excel spreadsheet.

The Issue:
What we'd like to do is process the cash orders through the website, so we can report, invoice and manage stockcontrol all from ZC, rather than from multiple spreadsheets and places. We are treating the cash orders very much like a high-street shop would, we don't have the names and details of all the customers, just what they bought and how much for.

What we're planning on doing is setting up a pseudo customer called "Cash Sales". This will be a dummy customer account that admins will log into and create orders. This should allow us to report on transactions and deduct stock automatically.

This customer would always have "store pickup" and "cash on delivery" payment type. The problem we've found is that shipping and payment types can only be allocated to zones, so if we enabled these payment types for the UK, ALL UK customers would be able to select these options. We don't want this.

The Work-Around:
We've added a new "country" called "Office Use Only" and configured a zone definition for it. In the shipping and payment modules, we've enabled "Store pick-up" and "Cash on Delivery" for that zone. When we registered the Cash Sales customer account, we addressed it with the country code "Office Use Only".

This seems to work fine. One potential drawback is that customers may dig around the reg. process and register under the "Office Use Only" country.

The Questions:
Is there another way to do this? i.e. enable specific shipping or payment option for specific customers as opposed to entire zones.

Can anyone see any potential problems or implications of the work-around suggested above?

Any input, ideas or related advice is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Hani

The approach you've taken is the simplest way to use existing built-in features to accomplish what you require.
The caveat you mention about customers being able to select Office Use Only is valid, but highly unlikely to be an issue. If someone uses it, clearly you'll need to charge them for shipping unless they intend to come and pick up their products from your store directly.

Thanks for validating the approach. Much appreciated. Looking forward to exploring and working with ZC in more depth.