I Need Customer To Pay Half Now Half Later

Hello,

I sell products that take 4-5 months for delivery and I was wanting to give the customer the option of paying half up front and then the other half once the item arrives.... along with the option of simply paying for it all at once.

Any help appreciated!

Thanks

Zen Cart v1.x.x isn't designed to handle "partial payments". It always deals with collecting complete payment based on the product's price as offered in the store.

To handy ANY workaround to collect a partial payment, you'll have to be SURE that you COMPLETELY understand that it'll be ENTIRELY up to YOU to manually collect the final payment from the customer, completely SEPARATE from Zen Cart, because Zen Cart will not be able to "charge" the customer for a secondary payment.

That said, possible workarounds include:
a) price your product at half the actual price (yes, that might create confusion, so I suspect you'll not want to do that)
b) price your product by using attributes:
-- i) pay full price up-front
-- ii) pay deposit of half up-front and pay balance upon delivery (and then you'll set the attribute to subtract an amount equal to 50% of the product price)
c) write extensive customizations to the software to handle different preferences

With scenario B, I'd do it like this:

• product price is $350, and be sure to set the "Priced by Attributes" to Yes in your admin
• then add one Option Name of something like "Deposit Method"
• and two Option Names: "Prepaid in Full" and "Two payments: half now, half at delivery"
• then assign the attributes to the product:
  -- the "prepaid" will not require any pricing differences
  -- the "two payments" one will need you to set the attribute price to "-" and $175 ... so that it subtracts 175 from the price paid at checkout

And then when the product is ready for delivery, you'll contact the customer to make separate payment arrangements.
The only involvement Zen Cart would have with respect to the 2nd payment is when you manually go into that order in your Admin and update the order's status with a note saying you've collected the 2nd payment and that you're shipping the item. Zen Cart will NOT see/show any changes in the price on the order, so it will NOT be a complete record of the payment made on that order, so cannot be used as your accounting system (nor is it intended to be accounting software anyway). And Zen Cart will only apply taxes to whatever price Zen Cart collects payment for. So you'll need to handle taxes separately when you collect the 2nd payment, also.

Thank you very much DrByte!

Your reply was super fast. I didn't even get a chance to browse my other websites before my phone emailed me with your reply...LOL..

The information you provided is very well understandable to me and I know exactly what you've explained. I'll set it up as above, Like option "B", and then when they item arrives, I'll send them an invoice through PayPal. Problem Solved!!

Thanks alot for your speedy and thorough reply.

TesterServers

you could always use the installment plan mod and just adjust it to suit yourself and is perfect if you are able to process CC's offline http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=588

My sister's site does layaways. The way she collects the remaining payments (could be one or more) is to set up a "Product" for only that customer, and the customer makes a payment when ready, within the agreement.

Hi SPH

this is exactly what i need. my site is going to be selling holidays so need deposit paid now and balance six weeks before. I don't want to collect any payments manually though.

When you say your sister has a product just for that customer, would you mind explaining how she does this please? Is it manual? Does the customer log back in later and pay online.

would be grateful for any help.

thanks
michelle

Buying "another product" later for the amount of the balance due is an alternate option. Some customers find that more confusing than being invoiced directly. If your customers are the kind that are smart enough to understand it, then you can try that approach.
But, remember, Zen Cart isn't an accounting package, and doesn't track "amounts owing". It only tracks "purchases" and assumes you're paying entirely in full or not at all. Any alteration to that behavior is a function of changes you must make to the software yourself.

Thanks DrByte

I have already informed my client that the software isn't set up to do this. I have already built their site and customised as they require. They have now thrown this requirement at me saying it slipped through the net. I have replied saying i think it is quite a fundamental requirement to have just been forgotten until now and that i didn't think this software was now suitable for their needs. hrrmmmppphhh ;O)

In terms of an additional product to allow customers to pay the balance, I was just thinking of how this would be done - or some ideas. I'm relatively confident in making changes to zen cart as i have already had to do quite a lot to fit the requirements they DID tell me about lol. I have forwarded details of your post above to my client suggesting that they can take a deposit but would have to manually collect the balance. However, i think they will want some workaround where the balance can be collected online. Would they have to manually add a product to a specific customer who would then come back and pay later? Or do you have any other ideas how the "buying another product" process could be implemented.

i'm really grateful for any advice although in reality i am hoping that they take note of your advice above and collect the balance outside of zen cart.

thanks again
Michelle

There's no "built in" way to "assign a product to just one customer". It doesn't work that way. There might be addons that offer that, but I've not used them.

You could consider setting up a product whose price is $1.00 and let the customer enter a quantity to indicate how much they want to pay. So for $43 they'd by 43 of the $1 product. The product would be visible to all customers, but there's not really anything wrong with that. In fact that's the approach very often used for donations.

Here is my sister's site Layaway category page:

http://www.promstobeaches.com/layaway-payments-119/

You might be able to understand how she does it. It is a defined actual category, bottom left on categories box.

As I recall, she uses a 50% off coupon to receive the first half-down payment on the dress. Then makes a follow-up layaway "product" for that customer and subsequent payments, as on link above.

And here is her Layaway page explaining it to the customer, how it works:

http://www.promstobeaches.com/pages/layaway-35.html

Hope this helps.

sph
https://www.prommart.com
https://www.fashion-mart.biz

As you can see, if the customer notices the Layaway option while shopping, they can simply start the purchase off as a layaway, using the layaway code for 50% off. When the order is received, whoever is managing it sees the "layaway" in the order for the discount and knows it's a layaway. I guess she makes or has someone make the follow-up payment product for that customer

I think a pretty clever way and don't have to worry about some mod working properly (although we might be interested in such a mod). But since it's all core zencart function it seems safer.

sph
https://www.prommart.com
https://www.fashion-mart.biz

Thanks SPH

your post was really helpful. Although i don't think i want to implement it in exactly this way, it has made me come at this from a different angle.

I think i am going to use the deposit module to allow them to pay the deposit and once this is paid, automatically create a hidden product for them with the remaining balance. The url of this will be sent to them in their confirmation email. They then come back later and pay for that product in the usual way.

Does anyone see any issues with my proposed solution?

thanks
Michelle

... you mean, other than a database full of hidden products that must be manually cleaned up, and needlessly increase the product numbers when adding legitimate new products ?

yeah other than that... ;O)

i know this would be a complete fudge and i'm clutching at straws really to keep my client happy seeing as they sprung this requirement on me at the last moment.

I am trying to convince them now that trying to make these changes to zencart is risky, time consuming etc. I think i may have persuaded them to go a different route - which essentially would mean not using zencart and throwing away all the work i've already done.

Having said that, whilst investigating this, I have seen so many requests for this functionality - many going back years - but it seems that it just hasn't happened - leaves me wondering how all the other people have handled it - or whether they just didn't use zencart either.

thanks
michelle

... or they wrote bespoke functionality to add account-balance support to their store
... or they adapted and used purchase orders for payment ... where the customer sends their payment to the storeowner, who then handles the deposit/clearing/bookkeeping/record-keeping
... or they used one of the methods I suggested earlier

As for stores that don't use Zen Cart ... well ... this is the Zen Cart support site, not "other stores" support site ... so ... can't really speak for those.

Or maybe they used a payment service, such as Bill Me Later, which handles partial payments automatically.

Regardless what method is selected, the storeowner STILL has to do some work to manage who has paid and who hasn't, before shipping. If your client is wanting to abdicate that role, then you're in a hopeless spot, because unless they have bags of money for you to keep customizing software for them, you'll never win. Better to hire someone to manage the accounts ... a lot cheaper and more efficient than changing software constantly at the whim of the "client".

DrByte:

There's no "built in" way to "assign a product to just one customer". It doesn't work that way. There might be addons that offer that, but I've not used them.

You could consider setting up a product whose price is $1.00 and let the customer enter a quantity to indicate how much they want to pay. So for $43 they'd by 43 of the $1 product. The product would be visible to all customers, but there's not really anything wrong with that. In fact that's the approach very often used for donations.

This is exactly how we handle it. We do a fair number of orders that require one-off customisation not accounted for in the standard product offering. Initially we created an active item in a non-displaying category that said "Custom Order for Dr. Byte" quantity of 1, and set the price to whatever we had quoted for the custom project. Creating new products became a bit of a hassle, so we created a $1 custom order "product," and it has been so much easier. While anyone can order the product, the product description clearly states it is to be used only for custom orders for which the client already has a quote from us. Also, like our first attempt, this item is in a "hidden" category, so it isn't easy for a potential customer to find it. Quantity for this by the way, should be set very high, as you go through the "items" quickly. Note too that this item messes up some of your pretty analytics reports because it may look like you've sold 4000 of this item, when in reality you've sold (20) $200 items. Small price to pay though for easier administration.

We have also tried to use this for a lay-by/lay-away payment plan, but we can't seem to explain this in a way that customers can follow. As a work-around, our lay-by explanation page says that they should act as if they are doing a bank transfer (which saves the items they want ordered) and then we send them a payment schedule with payment options. They can use any of our payments (bank transfer, paypal, or credit card), however unfortunately all have to be manually reconciled. We also have an order status of lay-by that we use internally to alert staff that payment is not complete.

Wish the lay-by was easier . . . working on another solution, will keep you posted if we make any progress!