Generating multiple Gift Certificates to hand out?

I would like to print up a batch of gift certificates to hand out at a convention. Is there an easier way to generate 40 gift certificate codes than to email one to myself fourty times?

Thank you.

Or better yet, a batch of unique one-use discount codes (since they don't have to have the redeemed value set).

Why not just use one single coupon, say call it "CONFERENCE1" or something?
It can be set to "use once per customer" and even limit it to say 50 uses total, and you can even expire it so it can't be used say after 60 days ... etc.

And if you enable the built-in basic referral tracking, you'll know which customers come to you from the conference because it stores the coupon code as the referral source.

Because, absent a shipping address or form of payment, it would be trivially simply for one rotten customer to make five different accounts.

Or one bad egg could post the single discount code online, robbing the other 39 people of their discount.

What I need is to be able to generate X number of unique discount codes for $Y each on demand.

This is not part of Zen Cart but it could be written ...

There is a fixed peice of code to generate Discount Coupons ...

You just need to toss that in a loop to generate XX number at the push of a button ...

While not a feature of Zen Cart, at this time, it is not a difficult feature to customize ...

Got your coder's hat on? :smartalec:

NOTE: there is a copy button on the Discount Coupons where you can just give it a new name/code and all other info is reproduced for you ...

This will save a couple of steps of setting:
1 per customer
1 per coupon
coupon amount

that would be the logic to build an auto builder for the generation of coupon groups but add in the auto generator on the coupon code or build into the loop to increment a given coupon code such as:
conference1

and the generator would create:
conference1-1
conference1-2
conference1-3

or make:
conference1-001
conference1-002
conference1-003

for sorting purposes ...

Has anybody seen a development of this function? Anybody want to bid?
Thanks!

I am also looking for this feature but I'm a newbie so wouldn't know how to begin coding myself. Any one else need this?

Talk about a timely subject. I am in the need for this exact same thing. I run a wine store, and we have made a deal with a radio station to trade for advertising.

I need to deliver 110 certificates for $50 each to them. I don't have time to wait for someone else to code this for me, so I'm going to be diving into it.

If anybody has any immediate guidance as to which modules I should be working on, that would be helpful.

I'll post my results here when I get done.

Great news mitch_h, thanks for your response. I need to generate 254 certificates for a similar deal with an online membership based company. So far I've managed to do 30 and it is way too tedious so looking forward to any help that you can provide!

Hoping I'm staying well enough on topic here but I have a similar kind of situation where I need to be able to generate a number of gift cert codes (to be put onto physical "download cards" for a digital music store (Zen based of course). Have I got things all topsy turvy or is the only way to generate a gift cert code via the Mail Gift Cert function? The Coupin Admin would be fine to use for this kind of thing, albeit it a manual process, however the Coupon Admin only makes discount coupons which are useless for this purpose as they do not store a balance in the customers account.

I'm not sure why Gift Certificates aren't afforded the same sort of admin options as Discount Coupons?

Am I missing something here?

Thanks Gang,
Cam

Install the Gift Certificate module in the Modules ... Order Totals ... Gift Certificates ot_gv ...

Then, it will show to send out GVs from the Admin ...

Thanks for the reply Linda. Unfortunately though I already have the Gift Cert module installed. I might not have explained myself very well - I can make gift certificates by sending gift emails to myself but I can;t generate the gift certificate codes via an admin section as I can for discount vouchers (the two being quite different things obviously).

Thanks for your help my friend.

Cam

While I've not used it, you might want to experiment with this addon, perhaps on a test copy of your store: http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=553