Store Credit

Overview: What are we talking about?

This article will cover the Store Credit feature in Gingr. This functionality is part of the Invoicing in Gingr feature, and allows the business to provide monetary credit to owners to use towards future purchases at the facility.

This article includes:

• What is store credit?
• Store Credit Permissions and Settings
• How to Purchase Store Credit
• How to Use Store Credit
• FAQ
  • How do I refund a store credit purchase?
  • Can I use Store Credit towards an owners open invoice balance?
  • How do I remove store credit?

Helpful Hints: Before you begin.

• Invoicing is a new feature that will be released on August 1st, 2019! This article is available to help you get an idea of what to expect with the launch of this feature. To obtain a full conversion guide, check out this article.

Video: A helpful tour. 

Let's get started: What is store credit?

Store credit is a monetary credit that businesses can use to provide money on account to their customers. Store Credit is able to be purchased on an owner’s account, used towards purchases as a payment method, and also used as a payment method for refunds where the amount should be returned to the account, instead of given with another payment method. Store credit is a great way to record general prepayment—by this, we mean payment that does not relate to one specific invoice in Gingr, and instead can be used to cover any future purchase. 

Store credit might be used in scenarios where:

• An owner provides cash to pay for an invoice and instructs staff to "put the rest on my account".
• The business provides a refund for an item that isn't eligible for a money-back refund and instead wishes to place money on the account.
  

Additionally, there are some automatic processes that will add store credit to the owner's account. These include:

• Redeeming Loyalty Rewards Points 
• Overpaid Deposit situations where the difference in overpayment is indicated to be credited back to the account

Set it Up: Store Credit Permissions and Settings.

There are a few related settings and permissions to consider with regard to store credit. 

To control which employee users are able to add store credit to an owner's account, navigate to Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More Icon » Groups and enable or disable the Can Add Store Credit permission for the respective user accounts. 

Important! This permission only controls the users' ability to purchase store credit on an owners' account—it does not prevent the ability to use store credit as a payment method or refund to store credit. We recommend enabling this permission for at least one user group in your application.

To indicate if customers' are able to purchase their own store credit from the Customer Portal, navigate to Left-hand Navigation: Admin » Payment and Purchase Options and indicate a preference for the Allow customers store credits setting.

Important! Regardless of the preference on this setting, customers can only buy store credit from the Customer Portal if your application utilizes Gingr's integrated Credit Card Processing. Click here for more information on processing credit cards with Gingr.

How to: Purchase Store Credit.

Store credit can be purchased from both the business side of the app and, depending on your system preferences, the Customer Portal. 

Purchasing Store Credit on the Business Side of the app

Store Credit can be purchased from three places on the business-side of the application:

Purchasing Store Credit from the Owner Details Page

To purchase store credit from the Owner Details page, follow these steps:

1. Use the Search bar to navigate to the owner's profile.
   
   
2. Click to the Invoices tab.
   
   
   
   
3. Click  $Add Store Credit.
   
   
4. On the pop up window, enter the Amount of store credit to purchase, enter a Description for hte credit, and choose the Payment Method that the customer has presented. Click Credit to process the payment.
   
   
   
   
5. Once complete, you’ll see the owner’s Store Credit balance has been updated to reflect the purchase. 
   
   
   

Purchasing Store Credit from the Dashboard

To purchase store credit from the Dashboard, follow these steps:

1. On the Dashboard, locate the reservation for the Owner that would like to purchase store credit.
   
   
2. Click the Action Menu to the left of the reservation.
   
   
   
   
3. Choose Buy Store Credit from the Action Menu. 
   
   
   
   
4. On the pop up window, enter the Amount of store credit to purchase, enter a description for the payment, and choose the Payment Method that the customer has presented. Click Credit to complete the purchase.
   
   
   
   
5. Once complete, you’ll see the owner’s Store Credit balance has been updated to reflect the purchase. 
   
   
   
   
   

Purchasing Store Credit in the Shopping Cart

To purchase store credit in the cart, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Shopping Cart.
   
   
2. Select the Owner from the drop down menu (if you've added an owner's reservation to the cart, you'll notice that this is pre-selected).
   
   
   
   
3. Enter the Amount of Store Credit to purchase in the amount field.
   
   
   
   
4. Click the Add to Cart button to apply the store credit purchase as a line item in the cart.
   
   
   
   
5. To complete the purchase, click the Check Out With Payment button and enter the payment information that the owner has provided.
   
   
   
   
6. After purchasing store credit, you’ll see the owner’s store credit balance has been updated to reflect the sale.
   
   
   

Purchasing Store Credit on the Customer Portal

If your system-wide settings are configured to allow for it, store credit can additionally be purchased from Customer Portal. In order to allow for this type of purchase, you must use Gingr's integrated credit card processing.

To purchase Store Credit from the portal, the pet-parent will follow these steps:

1. Log into the Customer Portal as an existing customer. For more information on logging into the Customer Portal, click here).
2. Once logged in, navigate to Top Navigation Menu: My Account » Buy Store Credit.
   
   
3. On this page, enter the Amount of store credit you'd like to purchase, and indicate whether to use the card on file (if there is one) or enter the credit card information to complete the purchase.
   
   
4. Once complete, they'll see that their store credit balance has been updated to reflect the sale.

Important! While it's possible to purchase store credit on the customer portal, it's not possible for a pet parent to use store credit towards purchases on their own. They will need to contact the facility to use their store credit.

How to: Use Store Credit.

Once an owner has a store credit balance on their account, the Store Credit payment method will be available when applying payment to invoices or deposits for that owner on the business side of the application. Additionally, store credit can be chosen as a refund payment method on an owner's invoices where the refund amount should be returned to the account to use towards future purchases.

Using Store Credit for a Purchase

When an owner has store credit available to use on their account, Store Credit will appear as a payment method option when apply payment towards their invoice(s). To use an owner's store credit as payment towards an invoice, follow these steps:

1. Add the desired item or reservation that the owner will be purchasing to the Shopping Cart.
   
   
2. After confirming the charge amount, click the Check Out With Payment button.
   
   
3. Select Store Credit as the payment method and indicate how much of the owner's store credit should be used for this sale.
   
   

4. Click Continue to apply the payment(s) and close the invoice.

5. Viola! Once complete, we'll see the store credit listed as a payment on the invoice, as well as the owner's store credit balance adjusted.

Important! It's not possible to use more store credit than an owner has on their account. If the store credit on account is not sufficient, another payment must be applied to continue.

Refunding an Invoice to Store Credit

If an invoice needs to be refunded, but is not eligible for a cash refund or the customer would like to do an exchange, it's possible to refund the amount to Store Credit to allow the owner to use the credit towards future purchases. To refund an invoice to store credit, follow these steps:

1. Locate the invoice that you'd like to refund and View it.

2. Check the Refund? box next to each line item that the refund should be placed on.

   
   
3. Click the Refund (X Items) button.
   
   
4. On the refund window, confirm the Refund Amount (pretax) and optionally select a Refund Reason. If the item is a POS item, indicate if the item should be Returned to Inventory.
   
   
5. Next, select Store Credit as the Refund Method and enter the Amount to refund.
   
   

6. Click Process Refund to process the refund.

7. Viola! Once complete, we'll see the refund placed to Store Credit, and see that the amount has been returned to the owner's profile to use towards future purchases!

   

FAQ: Check this out!

• How do I refund a store credit purchase?
• Can I use Store Credit towards an owners open invoice balance?

How do I refund a store credit purchase?

You may find the necessity to refund an owner's store credit purchase if the credit is no longer needed or was placed accidentally. Store credit purchases can be refunded without trouble, so long as the credit to be refunded is still present on the account. Once store credit has been used towards an invoice as payment, the original store credit purchase cannot be refunded. Instead, the invoice that the credit was applied to should be refunded!

Can I use store credit towards an owner's open invoice balance?

Sure! Store credit won't automatically be applied to an owners' open invoice balance, but staff can certainly apply available store credit to the invoices as payment. To do that, the user will follow the steps in the video below:

How do I remove store credit? 

Q: When owner balances converted to store credit as part of the August 1st release, I noticed that some owners have store credit that was placed on their account accidentally prior to the new features coming out and that shouldn't really be there. How do I get rid of it?

A: If you find that store credit has been placed on an account incorrectly, to remove it, you'll follow these steps:

Head to Left-hand Navigation: Admin » Open Line Item Types and create a new open line item to use to for removing store credit. The settings for this line item should look like this:

Once you have that created, you'll simply navigate to the Shopping Cart and select the Owner. Then, input an open line item for the amount of store credit that you're wanting to remove from the owner's account, and check that item out using their Store Credit.