Gift Vouchers that really work

If you can do it to the order BEFORE adding shipping (like it works now), you can do it to an order AFTER shipping. The logic does not change.

All this talk of tax, paypal integration etc is a red herring, IMHO.

I get it - it's to do with sales tax.

A promo code or coupon reduces the bill and therefore the VAT collected.

A gift voucher is currency.

The goods (including VAT) are charged at full retail. The invoice is then settled with a combination of voucher and other payment method.

When you think it through, it's not the same as simply knocking an amount off the price of an item.

Richard.

Hello Everyone,

All your concerns are completely justified and it is agreed that vouchers are something that would be a brilliant feature for RomanCart. Obviously a key selling point as well. However as mentioned there are other works that unfortunately take priority.

The priority works are actually Payment Gateway updates. As you know we work with a variety of Payment Gateway Integrations all of which have to be maintained. Unfortunately we get very little notice to do this and it is a constant and when these updates come in we have to drop everything and get them done to make sure you our customers can continue to process transactions through them.

The problem with vouchers are as follows. Although it seems like an easy fix. We cannot adapt Promotion Codes or Coupons to give free shipping. The main reason for this is actually to do with all the tax variations (depending on the shipping method) that occur with shipping. I appreciate this might not be the case for everyone. But when working on a hosted system like ours this has to work for everyone.

Vouchers when we finally get there will have to be configured as a new Payment Method. That is the most practical way to keep tax and shipping calculations all up together.

Where things get really complicated is that we will then have to rewrite every payment gateway to become a "partial payment method" to pay for the remainder of the balance. In a sense it’s a more complicated version of the 'zero value order' found under 'Configure/Payment Methods'

This then makes RomanCart Support two payment methods per transaction which in turn means pretty much rewriting most of the core code for invoices and despatch, call back and you name it. And that is just to begin with.
I know this is not the best of news but we feel it is important that you are aware of the real reasons for such a beneficial and maybe even obvious feature to not be prioritised. Please be assured we are aware that this is something that does need to happen but it will be a lot more work than you probably anticipate and the current maintenance and upkeep of RomanCart to keep you all processing your transactions obviously takes priority. I hope that you can all understand this. Also please watch this thread. This is something we all want to see happen.

Kind Regards

Oliver Brason
RomanCart Support Team


Edited by Support Oliver - 27 September 2013 at 10:03am

Andy, the problem with the 'work-around' that you suggest is that it is suitable for very few merchants.

Most of us cannot afford to give free shipping to anyone who spends a gift voucher.

We all have our business models worked out, we know how our postage bands work, & we dont want to change it. We just want to be able to use a normal gift voucher, in the normal fashion.

And, seriously, there's no technical reason why doing it properly should take 'several months'. People do need to be clear we are not talking about months of development work here, just a few hours. The fact is that it isnt a priority to RC. That's fine - there are limited resources and thats RCs business decision.

But people need to realise that the amount of coding needed to do either a bodge, or a discount that applies to the total inc shipping is about the same (practically SFA for either). So its not that one could happen quickly while the other takes ages - its simply that you're not going get either in a hurry if you can't convince RC of the need for action.

The actual problem is that Support either do not see the need for this, and/or don't understand the conceptual difference between a coupon and a gift voucher. So it isn't a priority, so it doesn't get added to the roadmap. No doubt we'll be having exactly the same conversation this time next year. . .

Hi,

Thanks for everyones feedback regarding this. We have looked at your requirements and this is something we would like to implement.

However please appreciate that this is not easy to integrate and simply cant be added overnight. We will take a serious look at this after we have completed other projects which must take priority. However this unlikely to be for a few months.

But rest assured we are keen to add this and will look into this when we can.

Thanks

James