How-To

Gift Certificates

Posted in How-To

How to setup and use ABPro Gift Certificates

Introduction

Gift Certificates in ABPro are essentially the User Credits system modified to support a credit balance applied to a number rather than a user.

ABPro does not print certificates.

ABPro does not sell certificates.

You 'create' a certificate by entering a number and a balance into the Gift Certificate screen.

Now if you give/sell that number to a customer, they can use it to pay for bookings. The certificate's balance will be adjusted by each booking made.
The certificate number is like cash to ABPro, anyone can use the number until its balance comes down to $0.

 

 

Setup

 

 

 

 

The screen is pretty much self explanatory.

The Activity section at the bottom provides a limited audit trail of the certificate. Clicking on a booking id will open a detail view of the booking that was used to consume the amount shown in the 'Decrease' column.

If you enter a comment it will be logged, if not it will just enter 'Admin EDIT' and the current balance.

 

Using Gift Certificates

When Gift Certificates are enabled (at the top of the Gift Certificates list screen) the booking screen will display a box for the customer to enter a certificate number. When they click 'Apply Certificate' the current balance will be show below the certificate and the booking totals will be adjusted.

 

 

 

 

Issues and Limitations

  • Gift Certificates are component wide and cannot be limited to specific resources.
  • Because they are not tied to any resource, they can only be created/managed from the back end. There is no Gift Certificate screen in the front end Advance Admin.
  • By design, they do not expire. If you want 'expire' a certificate you can manually set its balance to $0.
  • Limitations of the User Credit System apply to the Gift Certificates also.
    • ABPro is not a banking system and Soft Ventures will not be liable for any discrepancies. 
      Limited activity logging will be maintained but NOT at an auditing level one would find in financial system software.
    • A payment processor must be enabled to turn on the financial parts of the screens.
    • Certificates are purchased outside of ABPro and entered manually by Admin.
    • If a user needs to pay part via PayPal (the certificate balance was not enough) and he bails out of PayPal without paying, he would need to contact admin to get his credit restored manually.
    • The credit system only applies to the public booking screens and Front-Desk booking screen. Admin manually setting a booking to 'accepted' will have no effect on the certificate balance. If admin sets a booking to 'canceled', and the booking was paid all or in part by a certificate , the credit is re-instated. If part was paid by PayPal, that will be added to the certificate balance - no PayPal refunds are ever initiated by ABPro.
    • Not compatible with manual booking acceptance (Auto-Accept = No)
    • Not compatible with the Shopping Cart.