Feature Request - Negative value products and scannable coupon barcodes

[petgrocer]

As I'm sure you are all aware, the only way to get anything added to improve the challenges with the POS as it is currently is to have many many many people request the same feature. To that end, I remain an optimist apparently, because I'm trying again.

We would like to have the functionality of a normal POS again and be able to 1) track coupons easily and 2) scan the upc barcode on a coupon. In order to do that, we need either the ability to create a product code (coupon) with a negative value, or for the actual discounts feature to be written to allow barcodes to be scanned. Ideally creating a coupon 'product' would currently give us the greatest ability to track its use.

[Kimberly_Myers1]

I would LOVE to have this feature! I do a lot of local shows and like to run specials to increase sales. People tend to buy more when they save money, even if it's only a couple of dollars. I have to manually enter the total discount in the POS and it's a PITA, especially when it's busy and I'm trying to quickly get through checkouts.

[WhiteGolf]

I agree completely.  This seems like such a no-brainer that I can't believe we even need to request it.

[gregg1226]

Agreed. This is such a basic feature that should be included. I have to use BetterReports - an added app and cost - just to be able to 'sort of' track sales of items. But, tracking coupons would be exceptionally beneficial. We should be able to have items scan at negative prices as well.

[petgrocer]

As a bit of news - obviously the dev's are doing things (but not updating changelog or reporting it anywhere to end users) because you can now have a zero dollar product in your store! That's step one towards this feature. We can at least have an item at zero dollars to help track when we give away free samples. Now if we can get the negative value (or even one where we can just let the cashier input the value in the field - for donation amounts) that would be awesome!

[Kimberly_Myers1]

Baby steps but a step closer! Thank you for filling us in! Hopefully there are plans (and soon) to have a negative value option.

[WhiteGolf]

I came up with a workaround:  Create two products and a metafield to link between the two.

There are a lot of reasons to not want to do this, but it does work.  What would work even better would be for Shopify to put basic features into their products instead of relying on 3rd parties to solve every little problem.

[petgrocer]

@WhiteGolf we are not very tech savvy and don't understand what a metafield link is. Are you able to elaborate on this? If I can input coupons in there to scan somehow this would be great. Thanks!

[WhiteGolf]

I am not very tech savy either, and I doubt that this solution will be appealing to everybody, but in my case it solved my immediate problem.

Here is a link to one of my product pages:  https://putt.fun/products/newton-1-2-sophie-silver

I wanted the top price to be the default.  Choosing an option that cost less, would then subtract that amount.  Remarkably, this cannot be done in Shopify... and not for a lack of trying.  It should be dead nuts simple, but as you know there are no negative values, and a coupon cannot be for less than the total cost of the product.  Amazing.

My solution was to create two products, the default and the less expensive one.  The template for that product has a button.  The button is a metafield link.  The metafield for the more expensive one contains the URL to the less expensive one and vice versa.

Since my product is a web of interrelated options, I pulled this same trick for all of the options, or "variants."  The product linked above has 7 metafield links.  Each one actually takes you to a different product page.  In this case, this trick solves the combinatoric limit problem with Shopify variants too.

So that is a description of my problem and solution to it.  That probably isn't your problem, and this solution might not work for you, but here is how it works from a technical standpoint:

A Metafield is merely user defined set of data.  They are actually pretty easy to use once you get your mind around what they are and how to use them.  It is one area that Shopify has done a good job.  Metafields can be found under Settings.  Your products are basically data objects, and metafields allow you to add your own data to those objects.

So you go into the metafield, name and define it.  In my case, I needed to make 2 metafields for each link.  For instance, PutterLabel and PutterURL.  Then I went into the product template and put PutterLabel in for the text on the button, and PutterURL for the link on the button.  Then, in each product I put the name and URL for the options I wanted to link to.  The above page has 7 labels and 7 URLs in the product data.  Extreme, to be sure.  It helps to use a spreadsheet if you are going to make a web of links like I did.

I hope that helps.

[TheVeganistBC]

This is something that has actually made us consider switching POS yet again. 

Typing in a discount code isn't efficient in grocery retail or retail in general anymore. 

The software is there now to do this (ie Gift Cards) they just need to wrote the script into the code to allow this to function. Its SUPER frustrating. As of right now we ask customers to bring the coupon in-store and then our cashier identifies which coupon it is, then presses the discount button on the POS. (I create individual tiles for active discount promotions) but we often have 3-5 plus our standard ones (like employee, wholesale, customer accommodation etc). 

[needhelpcl]

What are you considering moving to?