Store Credit

[djb6301]

I want to give my customers the option to receive store credit instead of a refund when they return an item. The store credit should go directly into their accounts and act as a store credit. Can this be done? My website requires you to make an account before a purchase so they will all have accounts linked to their email. Does Shopify allow you to do this or would I need to hire a developer? 

[MAE333]

Then shopify should develop an app to do it, like the ones they suggest
store owners add and pay for, but offer it free.

[Tony39]

No app can do it. That’s the problem. Apps can only work with “discount codes”....which is a very un-elegant implementation of a customer credit solution. It’s ugly. Apps can’t fix the core flaw in Shopify’s design...the issue that they did not create a customer table to store customer data. They just search transaction history and print a report of every unique email address (that is their main customer identifier...even if some of your real life customers have multiple emails addresses...Shopify treats each address as a unique person. It’s a mess.

They need a customer table (database).

[Holly99]

They are now pitching us to use Shopify in our brick & Mortar...Customer service is paramount...and without being able to do store credits & track a customer's history we cannot give the service our customer's know & love.

[Irism]

hi, 

Same problem here. May I ask which platform you consider leaving shopify for? 

[Tony39]

So...no system out there will be perfect. We ended up choosing to go with a solution that is specialized for our industry (retail clothing sales). 

We moved to 100% CommentSold. They provide a mobile app, web store and highly efficient pack and ship/warehouse management solution. One person can pack and ship a package in under a minute.   It’s all barcode based. 

They do not offer point of sale. So, if you have brick and mortar, this solution will not work. Also, the website is bare-bones and lacks a lot of features Shopify has. However, we are happy that we made the change. Store credit works great. They don’t have a return label solution, so that’s a bummer...but we normally don’t pay for customer returns unless there is a defect. 

CommentSold is good for boutiques selling clothes. If that’s not you, perhaps check out BigCommerce. If you are outgrowing or are getting tired of Shopify’s lack of core features, take a look at BC. 

good luck. 

[Tony39]

CommentSold now has a Point of Sale and a new website/content management system that rivals Shopify. Since leaving Shopify, we’ve had 1000% revenue growth and are now a multi-million dollar business. I’m confident we would have struggled to hit our growth targets on Shopify’s clunky platform. I don’t miss Shopify at all. 

[jonathanOVRC]

We're using Vend for our brick and mortar POS and Shopify for online sales (for now). We'll probably move that to Fitted, however, which is specific to the running industry right now as far as I know.

Shopify's POS is worthless for what we do, even though the online solution isn't bad

[Tony39]

Agree. Shopify online return works well...

It’s so tough to find a solution that does everything.

We do a lot of live selling on social media platforms and CommentSold is great for that.

If you are doing more standard SEO and Pixel/AdWords advertising, Shopify is set up better for that.

I’ve heard BigCommerce is a good platform but haven’t done much more than a surface look at them...

[Cara_ByteStand]

Hello djb & all! 

There is a app called Fresh Credit that may help. Fresh Credit enables store owners to give store credit to their customers for any reason, at any time, and in any amount. They have a 7 day free trial and plans start at $10 for 5k customers or less. It is very simple and easy to use! 

Below are some resoures for you that include videos, FAQ's, and more information about our apps!
FAQ's - www.bytestand.com
How to use ByteStand-Import Video - https://youtu.be/yef2R2iPsTg
How to use FBA Shipping Video - https://youtu.be/D9nfPLafJDI
How to use Fresh Credit Video - https://youtu.be/WEac3HKOQ_g

[BarryVG]

If a brick & mortar store has migrated to Shopify & then has to use their POS to continue "in-store" sales, they can easily be migrating MORE than 5,000 customers.

[Mostafa_Kamel]

Hello everyone,

We just released a new app that could help solve this problem by providing you a way to offer store credit to your customers and customers can easily redeem the credit on new purchases/orders using a fully customizable widgets.

Also you can moderate and track your customers store credit activity and know how much credit is spent and how much is pending.

Please feel free to check it and happy to hear your thoughts.

https://apps.shopify.com/my-store-credit

Thanks

[dirtyjane]

@Mostafa_Kamel thanks for sharing. It looks interesting. How long will it be free and when it's no longer free what will the monthly fee be? The issue most of us have here is that credits are something that should be built into the Shopify platform.

Offering gift cards for store credits severely screws up sales reporting. But we all pay far too much for external apps that should be part of the basic Shopify plan.

Thanks,

Amy

[Holly99]

I absolutely agree that Shopify should have the Store Credit built in.  Retail sales - no matter in a brick & mortar or online - always have returns - it is the nature of the business. 

It is perplexing that Shopify has not built store credits into the software.

[violetsea]

Still No store credit feature. Shopify is horrible! They made the "live View" Also horrible with a spinny globe. I regret opening my shop via shopify to be honest. Just stuck. I have Rewardify app and it doesn't work most of the time. It is embarrassing when customers let us know they don';t see a store credit even after we have issued a store credit via rewardify. 

Rewardify sucks big time same like shopify. 

[VigneshSivan]

Up until recently, the only option to provide a Shopify store credit was through the use of discount codes. Discount codes are super simple to set up and definitely have their place in the flow of your online store. 

A discount code is like a passkey offered to customers to reduce the price of an order. The customer enters the discount code at checkout and the discount is automatically applied. With Shopify, you can offer fixed value, percentage, or shipping discounts in your store. You can set an expiration date on the code, a minimum order amount, and the number of times the code can be used.

However, when offering store credit on Shopify with discount codes, there are quite a few unappetizing downsides:

• There’s no way for shoppers to maintain a balance. If you give a shopper $50 off through a discount code but they only want to use $20 today, they lose the remaining balance on their discount code.
• Basic discount codes can only be used once. After that the code expires and the customer is no longer able to use it.
• Multiple use discount codes can cause even bigger problems. If you offer a multiple use discount code for $50, the shopper could receive a $50 credit on every order they place. So your $50 store credit could blow up into $500 or more worth of store credit.
• With discount codes the user has to enter in a typically long random code and there is no stored value, its just a percent or dollar amount off.

What about gift cards? Gift cards are another form of payment that can be used for store credit and redeemed on your store. Once you load the store credit money onto the gift card, the customer will receive an email with a link to redeem it at a time of their choosing. This ensures the customer will return to your store to spend that money, but there are a couple of issues with gift cards:

• Gift cards are typically only available on Shopify’s Advanced Plan ($79/month). This has been temporarily suspended due to COVID-19, but could go back into place any day.
• Gift card purchases are counted as revenue even though they’re actually refunds. That could create a nightmare for your accounting.

Gift cards are a better option than discount codes, but they still pose issues that you’ll need to account for. Learn more about how to offer a Shopify store credit. 

[CharlesMJr]

I read this thread about store credits with a lot of interest.  We want to issue either store credit or gift card for refunds that are the customers arbitrary decision to return products vs refunding to the original payment method.   We are an on-line store and thus do not use Shopify POS which I understand offers some kind of store credit functionality, although after reading this thread it does not sound like it is very good option.   I also know that Shopify will only issue refunds to the original payment method.  So it seems to me that we are going to have to develop a workaround process for when we want to issue refund via gift card vs against the original payment method.

My questions is this - does anyone have a good manual work around process for making some refunds to gift cards vs the original payment method?   I have thought of a few but possible ways involving issuing a free gift card in the amount of the refund to the customer but they are very manual and messy and I have no doubt will result in adjusting entries being required in the accounting records.  Any and all suggestions appreciated.

[Tony39]

Thank you for your kind response. However, I do not believe anyone is “confused” about the difference between a store credit and a gift card.  🙂

The problem we have with Shopify is our inability to clean up duplicate accounts.  This makes any kind of store credit solution difficult to manage.  The same thing goes with customer loyalty programs. When I have so many valuable customers that have 4-5 accounts in Shopify…it’s a nightmare. 

We all understand the difference between store credit and gift cards. I hope you can understand the core issue with Shopify lacking customer record management. (See my many prior posts on this). Thank you!

[brettski_tc]

My though on a solution for this is to provide a discount for the amount on any item in the store. It seems to handle a "credit". Other than no showing up on their account and them not being able to apply another discount code, is there a reason this shouldn't be used? Something I may not be thinking of? 

Thank you all.

[GTG2019]

We offer a coupon code in the amount that the credit would be, it can be tailored for the individual customers, usages, items etc..

I agree with the other posters here, that there should have already been a built in mechanism for this as it only makes sense.