Checkout without account

Was hoping that maybe someone else had run into this. Can a customer who COWOA the first time, come back late and COWOA again in the same COWOA Account?
Currently it looks like it always creates a new account in Zen-Cart, which is problem because we use QBI integration and it would create tons of accounts in there.

I know I am being a little silly. COWOA customers don't repeat do they? Well what if? And the current situation would make my boss :censored:

Please and thank you.

mdegrandis:

Was hoping that maybe someone else had run into this. Can a customer who COWOA the first time, come back late and COWOA again in the same COWOA Account?
Currently it looks like it always creates a new account in Zen-Cart, which is problem because we use QBI integration and it would create tons of accounts in there.

I know I am being a little silly. COWOA customers don't repeat do they? Well what if? And the current situation would make my boss :censored:

Please and thank you.

A new account is created each time a person uses cowoa. They cannot cowoa in the same account as last time.... this would be equivalent to the regular non-cowoa checkout/login. I'm not sure why it matters so much that there would be tons of accounts in whatever QBI is. An order is an order whether its from different people or the same person. Most people wont go through guest checkout multiple times, they'll end up creating a real account at some point if they plan on being regulars. Obviously its important to you/your boss though, so I'm not sure what to tell you other than maybe cowoa isn't for you.

Sorry.... Should have been clearer. QBI is our quickbooks integration, and having multiple accounts for the same person would be painful.

Thanks for the reply,

That's the nature of account-less customers: they don't want to be seen as the same customer anyway.
If they want to be repeat customers and marketed-to as such, they'll create an account.

So, you either let them choose how they want you to manage their relationship with you,
Or you go back to having everyone create an account so that your bookkeeping is a second or two faster.

I am thinking this would be more of a hassle than it is worth. The only thing I am saving asking the customer is a password...
Which isn't really anything.

Thank you both for your replies; I'll keep them in mind.

mdegrandis:

The only thing I am saving asking the customer is a password...
Which isn't really anything.
Right ... and since it really isn't anything, then it's not such a big deal to request them to select one.

Some customers do complain though. On our current site I get phone calls all the time about accounts and forgotten passwords.
We do a lot of B2B sales and sometimes they think an 'account' is this big thing and call to ask if they really need one.

I think we'll make some changes to the template and see if we can make it friendlier...

But honestly, asking where to ship and whom to bill and heck we'll only need the info once(because you'll have an account!) seems like a better deal.

Customers object less to the idea of creating an account if you just ask them to supply a password which will let them view their order status details and control how they interact with you. Especially useful in a B2B environment.

That is a swell idea. Again, thanks so much.

I'm using checkout without an account on my site but I'd like to add a checkbox on the billing information page to allow people to sign up for my newsletter. I've tried enabling it in the admin but that doesn't turn the checkbox on for this page. Any ideas how I could do this?

Oops, I should have given more details. My site is bobababycarriers.com and it is running version 1.3.7.1