Sign on using another ID rather than email

I have a problem with customers having multiple sites sharing email addresses.

Orders go in with many details held specific to site but billing is to same customer email.

If I could sign on with a different ID rather than the email then my problem is easily solved.

At the moment I have "double email address" approach which sort of works but is just painfully over complicated !

Is there an Add on or a configuration which allows sign on other than by email ?d, remove this comment before actually posting!]

I don't really have any idea what the problem is, or what you are trying to do?
Could you please explain a bit further?

gilby:

I don't really have any idea what the problem is, or what you are trying to do?
Could you please explain a bit further?

Ah OK
I have a number of clients who have orders for various locations by staff at the locations.

So client "a" may have twenty sites who order independently BUT the billing all goes back to a central email address.
Client "b" may only have one location while client "c" may have 40 locations and so forth

So I would like Client "a"s site "1" to be able to sign on with say an alphanumeric ID rather than the email address used for general purpose. AND client "a"s site "2" another ID etc but all sites owned by the same client sharing the same email address

It seems to me that having the same email address isnt a problem EXCEPT on sign on where a duplication is detected.

It would seem quite easy to add another field for Login ID - but I am reluctant to "fiddle about " with the email sign on because of the many places using the email address.

It seems a simple requirement and I would have thought the "one Customer, Many sites" issue would have popped up before - So has anyone an approach.

As I said I have a couple of work rounds -
double email adresses etc,
an added location selection menu within a client sign on etc etc ....

but they are very messy and a "non email " login ID would be so much simpler.

Why not ask/let the client take care of it at their email server level?

[email protected]
[email protected]
etc

Client Server email rule to forward ALL email from yourzencartemailaddress.com to [email protected]

Because we have hundreds of multi site clients !! Mostly using Gmail and hotmail etc !

All i want is for a client location to be able to sign on as "fred" or "Jim" with appropriate passwords- the emails can be configured from there by lookup reference and they could be the same. Other carts do it.

There's no mod that I am aware of that does this, but it could certainly be done.

It could be done with (somewhat complex) custom coding.

Or have them use magic aliases like: site1+fred @ gmail.com (where +fred is just an extra suffix that will still put the email into the site1 @ gmail.com mailbox).
Or in the case of gmail, any added "." in the email address is still the same mailbox.
https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html