Can customer accounts handle advance payments in Shopify?

[KarinK]

We have many customers who have money on account with our shop, either from a credit (return) or they just pay in advance for orders etc. Will these deposits transfer with their customer information? Or does Shopify offer account payments of some kind for customers?

[Shay]

Hi @KarinK 

Great question! Shopify does offer the ability for customers to have store credit on their account, but tracking it is very limited. 

For offering customers store credit we recommend providing them with a gift card of their store credit value. Gift cards can be issued physically or digitally, and would also be stored in the customer order history in the POS system.

Alternatively, you can look at using an app on your store that offers more robust store credit functionality: Shopify App Store - Store Credit.

For pre-order, in full or partial, this information would be tracked in their customer profile based off their email address. You would want to ensure that you are capturing customer contact details at the checkout for these orders to ensure you will have a continued history of it. 

[KarinK]

and in the meantime, as I am migrating from QB POs, would I refund my account customers with a gift card? Is that the best temporary solution during this limbo phase?

[DaphneOlive]

I am working on two solutions for this. we are still deciding which to go with:

1) create a custom payment in the Shopify app (More --> settings --> Payment Types --> Custom Payment types) for the people who have QBPOS store credit. I named the payment "Customer Account Balance" and can use it whenever someone has a balance from the old system. 

I ran a report in QBPOS to list all the customers who have store credit and I am making a google doc for us to track which have been used

2) The other thing we are considering is to generate gift cards with their names as the code, but that feels like a lot of work compared to the first option

a trick I just found for how we may continue issuing store credit going forward:

In QBPOS we kept track of the store credit by the person's name. You can make their name be the gift card code in the POS app as well. choose 'physical gift card' and then when it goes to the camera to scan a barcode, click 'enter code' at the top right of the screen and then you can enter the customer name

[Knit3]

Great ideas. I've been struggling with this, wondering if apps will mess up/duplicate customer or credit info. Dying for details on this. Which did you choose? 

I get making the report from QBPOS (I have one), but where do you get the $$ to make the payment? Do you just discount by the credit amount? 

I haven't completed the Quickbooks connector, but the amounts obviously don't carry over to Shopify. 

Scenario A: 

I like the custom payment idea, but how does Shopify let you close out the order? 

Scenario B:

Can you issue gift cards for random credit amounts? Where do the funds come from? 

[Danceman1]

In QBPOS we just used to put a credit in the customers notes with a * by their name to alert us to check notes. The reduce the amount till gone and remove the *. Could use the notes in shopify.

[ZainManji]

I think this app can be helpful for you. Just like in Quickbooks, you can charge purchases on a customer's account in Shopify POS with this app: https://apps.shopify.com/credit-charge-account-on-pos

Here is also another resource on Shopify POS and a walkthrough of performing charges on account: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B2s6c3vDMzQDbFOQTO6J-fHJAfXOrx2WuoUFMYWpCrw/edit