Conversion Guide

Overview: What are we talking about?

This article covers what to expect after the financial update on August 1st, 2019. The information below serves as a guide to help you know what is expected after this release, as well as some setting adjustments that you might need to make to take advantage of the new functionality available to you! 

This guide will cover: 

• Understanding Fundamental Changes
  • Invoicing
  • Payments
  • Store Credit
  • Account Balances
  • Using the Shopping Cart
  • Refunds
    
    
• Revisiting Settings and Templates
  • Customer Portal Permission Settings
  • Email and SMS Templates
  • Custom Text Settings
  • User Permissions
  • Payment Methods
    
    
• Understanding Legacy Data
  • Owner Balance Conversions
  • Estimate Creation
  • Pending Transactions
  • Editing Transactions
  • Handling Deposits
    
    
• Understanding Updated Reporting
  
• What to expect on your July 31 Revenue by Date Report 

Familiarize Staff: Understanding Fundamental Changes

This release included some of the largest changes that we’ve ever made to the application so it’s critical to ensure that any user that performs transactions or manages reservations understands the fundamental concepts surrounding these changes. These concepts included a switch from a receipt-based model to an Invoicing model, the introduction of a payment method called Store Credit, more flexibility with applying Payments and performing Refunds, the replacement of an owner’s running account balance with separate Account Balances for open invoices and store credit, and a few adjustments to the Shopping Cart. 

Invoicing
Gingr has converted to an invoicing model. This model allows you to provided invoices to pet parents for their reservations, which can be paid at any time. You can learn more about Invoicing in more detail in this article.

To prepare for this release, the important points to remember are: 

There are two states an invoice can live in. 

Estimates exist from the point in time when a reservation is created until it is checked out. These give the estimated charges for the reservation, including any additional services, point of sale items, and pricing rules associated to the reservation. Estimated charges can be adjusted at any time up until the reservation is checked out.

Invoices exist from the point in time when a reservation or item is checked out until payment is applied in full. Invoices display the finalized charges, which cannot be edited after the point that the invoice is opened.

The invoice’s payment status will determine whether it’s Open or Closed. Open Invoices indicate that action is required on the invoice, typically that payment has not been made in full. Closed invoices indicate that payment has been applied in full and no action is required.  Invoice charges are reported on the date that the invoice is opened.

Store Credit
With this release, we have created a new payment method called Store Credit. This payment method can be used for things like: 

• General Prepayment (Prepayment that is not tied to one specific invoice) 
• Refunds where the amount should go back to the account instead of as money-back
• Redeeming Loyalty Rewards Points
• Comping credit for a customer
  
  

Store Credit is able to be purchased on an owner’s account from the business side and optionally on the customer portal, and can be applied to purchases as a payment method on the business side of the application. To learn more about store credit, visit this article. 

Payments
With the release of invoicing, payments on a transaction are no longer directly related to checkout, which allows you a greater amount of flexibility with payments including the ability to accept prepayment and have it apply directly to an estimate, the ability to require deposits, and the ability to collect payment at anytime after the reservation has been checked out and have it apply directly to the selected invoice. The main things to remember are: 

• Payment is no longer tied to reservation checkout—payment can be applied at any time and will be connected directly to the selected invoice.
  
  
• Split payments can be applied easily on an invoice, right from the shopping cart. 
  
  
• Prepayments vs Deposits—the existing Deposit functionality still remains available to you in Gingr! These types of payments can both be used to allow for flexibility when collecting payment for reservations.
  
  Deposits should be used if you need to require prepayment for reservations made during peak periods or to ensure that a pet parent will show up for their reservation or cancel inside your cancellation policy. 
  
  Prepayments are more free-form and can be used in conjunction with deposits to provide payment plans for high-priced services like Board and Train or to take prepayment for the remainder due after a deposit at check-in.

Account Balances
We have replaced the running account balances on an owner’s profile with separate balances for store credit and open invoices. Credit/Debit balances no longer run as a total to make it very clear what a customer owes and how much store credit they have to use.

Checking Out in the Shopping Cart
The shopping cart has been updated to allow for more flexibility when collecting payments! The view will look similar to what you’re used to, however, there are a few things to keep in mind: 

• No Payment is no longer a payment method—to check out without payment for a $0.00 invoice or to Open an invoice to collect payment later, choose the Check Out Without Payment option in the cart. 
  
  
• To check out and apply a payment, or check out using a prepayment that has already been applied, choose the Check Out With Payment option in the cart.
  
  
• If you use integrated credit card processing with Gingr, you’ll notice that with this release, credit card transactions are settled directly on your EMV terminal. This allows for immediate feedback on the payment and allows for split tender in the shopping cart. It’s important to know that when you send a transaction to a terminal for a tip, it’s charging the card at that moment to allow for other payments to be applied if necessary.
  
  
• With this release, split payments are an option directly through the cart and do not require a workaround!

Refunds
With this release, refunds have been improved to allow for split refunds, multi-payment refunds, partial deposit refunds, and individual tip refunds. The view will look similar to what you’re used to, but with this release it’s important to remember: 

• There must be at least one payment applied to an invoice in order to process a refund to the invoice
  
  
• When processing a refund, you must refund both an invoice line item and a payment.

Review: Settings and Templates

With this release, and the added functionality surrounding invoicing, it’s now possible to allow customers to apply credit card payments on invoices from the Customer Portal! This allows businesses to provide more abilities to customers from the Customer Portal, depending on a few settings. The sections below serve to provide a check-list of settings to review upon the launch of this release so that you can utilize these awesome new features right away.

Customer Portal Permission Settings
These settings affect the abilities that your customers will have on the customer portal. These settings can all be adjusted in Left-hand Navigation: Admin » System-Wide Settings.

• Allow customers view estimates — this setting controls whether customers can view their Estimates for current and upcoming reservations on the Customer Portal. This is an existing setting, and with this release will remain in the position your application currently has it set today. If you’d like to allow customers to apply a non-deposit prepayment to an estimate, this setting will need to be enabled.
  
  
• Allow customers to pay deposits — this setting controls whether  customers can pay deposits attached to their upcoming reservations from the customer portal. This is an existing setting, and with this release will remain in the position your application currently has it set today.
  
  
• Allow customers pay invoices — this setting controls whether customers can apply payments to invoices from the customer portal. This is a new setting, and will be delivered to your app in the off setting with this release. 
  
  
• Allow customers store credits — this setting controls whether owners can purchase their own store credit from the customer portal. This setting exists today as “Allow customers misc credits”, but has been renamed with this release. Because this is an existing setting, with this release will remain in the position your application currently has it set today.

Important! In order to allow for pet parents to make payments of any kind from the Customer Portal, you must use Gingr’s Integrated Credit Card processing. You can visit this page to learn more about getting integrated credit card processing.

Email Templates
Now that your Customer Portal allows customers to make payments, you might want to adjust your email templates to provide instructions for them to do so!

The Email Templates below can be adjusted from Left-hand Navigation: Admin » Email Templates. Depending on your customer portal permissions, you might want to adjust these templates to include information about payment online.

• Payment History Statement — this template is sent at will by a user emailing an owner a generated Payment History Statement from the Owner Details Page » Invoices » Payment History.
  
  
• New Invoice Email — this template is sent to customers either automatically or at will to provide the details of their invoice.
  
  
• Checkout Email — if the automatic checkout email is enabled in your application, this template is sent any time a reservation checks out in Gingr. This email includes a link to view the related invoice for that reservation. There is also an SMS template with this same function, which can be adjusted from Admin » SMS Templates.
  
  
• Estimate Email — this email is sent to customers at will by viewing an Estimate for a reservation and emailing the estimate to the customer.
  
  
• Registration Email — if you will be allowing online payments from customers and send the Registration Email to your customers through Gingr, you may wish to add this information to this template!

Custom Text Settings
The following settings control the custom text that displays on various customer-facing pages of the application. These settings can be adjusted per location from Left-hand Navigation: Admin » Locations.

• Statement Custom Text — this text is displayed at the bottom of a Payment History Statement, which can be printed or emailed to a customer.
  
  
• Invoice Custom Text — this text is displayed at the bottom of an invoice, which can be emailed or printed for a customer.
  
  
• Small Receipt Custom Text — this text is displayed at the bottom of a receipt printed on receipt-sized paper.
  
  
• Estimate Custom Text — this text is displayed at the bottom of an estimate, which can be printed or emailed to pet parent.
  

User Permissions
These settings affect your employee users’ abilities to process transactions. These permissions can be managed from Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More Icon » Groups.

• Can Process Refunds/Returns — this permission determines if a user can perform a refund or make an edit to a payment on an invoice.
  
  
• Can Edit Service Prices — this permission determines if a user can edit additional service prices in the shopping cart.
  
  
• Can Add Store Credit — this permission determines if a user can buy store credit on a customers’ account.

Payment Methods

As part of this release, we've changed the way that a few payment methods work in your app! These include:

• Adding a new Store Credit payment method to your app to use for purchasing and using store credit on an owner's account
• Hiding the Zero Payment methods from checkout and reports to alleviate confusion, in conjunction with the ability to leave an invoice open if payment needs to be applied.

Prior to this release, we highly recommend heading to Left-hand Navigation: Admin » Payment Methods and ensure that you only have a single payment method with the Zero Payment setting enabled. If you have more than one payment method with this setting enabled, you will not be able to use those payment methods on August 1st.

If you have any questions about how to adjust this, submit a ticket for assistance!

Understand: How to view legacy data.

With this release, your existing data for transactions processed prior to August 1st will be converted over to fit into the new invoicing framework. All of this conversion will happen without any action needed by you, but it's important to prepare yourself for how your legacy data will look upon launch day. The important things to keep in mind are:

Owner Balance Conversions 
On August 1st, your owner account balances will be converted to flow with the new functionality!

Existing Credit Balances will be converted to a purchase of Store Credit on the owner’s account. 

Existing Debit Balances will be converted to a single Open Invoice on the owner’s account for the entire debit balance that was on the account.

Estimate Creation 
Reservations created prior to 8/1 will not have an invoice created for them until a payment is applied to the invoice. If you don’t see an estimate for a future reservation, under the Owner Profile » Invoices » Estimates tab, don’t worry—you can still apply prepayment by viewing the estimate directly from the reservation. 

Pending Transactions 
With the new system, it is no longer possible for users to create pending transactions. If you find that a user has a pending transaction on their account from a past date, you’ll just need to navigate to https://YOURAPP.gingrapp.com/sale/pending_transactions to take care of it.

Important: Replace YOURAPP in the url listed above with your actual app url. If your Gingr url is happywags.gingrapp.com, you'll go to https://happywags.gingrapp.com/sale/pending_transactions to take care of any pending transactions.
 

Editing Transactions 
It’s not possible to edit a transaction that took place before August 1st, 2019 after that date has passed with the new interface. If a payment amount or payment method needs to be adjusted on a transaction that was processed prior to August 1st, please reach out to our support team with the details of the edit and we’ll help you get it squared away!

Keep in mind that payments applied after 8/1 will be able to be edited without the need to contact support. 

Handling Deposits for Reservations Cancelled Prior to August 1st

If you use Deposits, we would recommend that on July 31st you ensure that all cancelled reservations that have paid deposits associated to them have had their deposits handled prior to the release of the new features on August 1st, 2019. To handle those, head to Left-hand Navigation: Reservations Icon » Deposits » Cancelled Reservations Pending Resolution.

Understand: Updated Reporting.

With this release, we are bringing some exciting new and updated reporting to your application! This includes:

• An all-new Revenue by Date(s) Report that breaks out your Invoice Charges and Payments received for transactions processed after the rollout of this release. This report is found by navigating to Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More Icon » Reports » Revenue by Date(s). More documentation on this report will be available to you on Friday, July 26th, 2019—keep your eyes peeled! 
  
  
• An updated End of Day Report, which can be used to aid in closing duties for staff on a daily basis. This is an existing report that you are likely familiar with today, and will be updated to reflect similar information to the all-new Revenue by Date(s) report in conjunction with this release. This report can be accessed by users with the appropriate user permissions by navigating to Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More Icon » Reports » End of Day. 
  
  
• An all-new Owner Balance Report, which can be used to view outstanding balances for owners in your application. Upon this report, you'll be able to access this report from Left-hand Navigation: Reports and More Icon » Reports » Owner Balance.
  
  
• An all-new View Open Invoices report, which will list out all open invoices for your location, providing a single page to view all invoices that need payment or your attention! This report can be accessed upon release from Left-hand Navigation: Point of Sale » View Open Invoices.

What to expect: Owner Balance Conversions

On August 1st, 2019, you'll see that all of your existing owner credit and debit balances will be converted to fit into the Invoicing world automatically. It's important to understand, however, what these will look like on your Revenue by Date report for the day before and after this release.

Credit Balances

Existing credit balances will be converted to Store Credit. The way that we handle this on the backend is to do a Store Credit Purchase using the No Payment method. You can expect to see:

• An Invoice for July 31st, 2019 for each owner with a credit balance for a store credit purchase. These will be seen in each owner's Invoice list.
  
• This invoice will be seen on the July 31 Revenue by Date report under the Misc Debits section of the report. This essentially shows that the account balance was settled to $0.00 in the "old world" and store credit was purchased in the "new world".
  
  

Debit Balances

Existing debit (owed) balances have been converted to a single open invoice for the amount owed. You can expect to see:

• A single open invoice created for each owner that had a debit balance.
  in the "old world" and store credit was purchased in the "new world".
  
• This invoice will be seen on the July 31 Revenue by Date report under the Misc Credits section. This essentially shows that the account balance was settled to $0.00 in the "old world" and the invoice was created in the "new world".