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? 

[Ragibh]

Hi Djb, 

Well you can use an app to do so, try looking at https://apps.shopify.com/rewardify that does exactly what you are wanting to do. 

So with this app instead of actual refunds you would be able to provide store credits which could be redeemed with future purchases from the same customer both online as well as physical shop (this app integrates with Shopify POS as well) 

I would recommend you review the app, install it and use it for free for 14 days, for more information I would recommend that you touch base with the app developers. 

thanks 

Ragib

[Lara]

Hi @djb6301

Lara here from Shopify!

From what I understand, you would like to give store credits to your customers. That is a lovely idea! However, there's no functionality yet on the store admin in giving store credits to customers, but I understand how having this feature available is important, and I'm sending your feedback along to our responsible team.

If you are on a Shopify Plan or higher, what I can suggest for you is issuing a free gift card to them on the amount of the refund. You can check our guide about issuing gift cards here. If you're not on a Shopify Plan or higher, you can definitely use apps such as Rewardify, Rise Ai or Fresh Credit to help you issue store credit to your customers.

Hope this helps! Please let me know if you find the options above not suiting on what you want to achieve.

All the best! Lara.

[Nadav_Berger]

Hi 

Actually, there is a simple way to issue store credit on Shopify - you can us rise.ai.

Rise enables you to issue store credit directly to customers while segmentizing the reason for the analytics to keep a better accounting track.

For repeat customers, you will also be able to accumulate it directly to their account, creating a seamless experience that they don't even need to remember the code in.

Hope it helps 🙂

0 Likes

[Nadav_Berger]

Hi 

Actually, there is a simple way to issue store credit on Shopify - you can us rise.ai.

Rise enables you to issue store credit directly to customers while segmentizing the reason for the analytics to keep a better accounting track.

For repeat customers, you will also be able to accumulate it directly to their account, creating a seamless experience that they don't even need to remember the code in.

Hope it helps 🙂

[Tony39]

The app looks nice but is very, very expensive.  I pay $99/mo for Shopify and the Rise.Ai plan we'd need is an additional $60/mo?  This is the big problem with Shopify.  They are missing so many core functionalities on their platform and the huge number of add-on apps required to make Shopify have basic functions that customers in the year 2020 expect increases the cost of Shopify by 3-4X.  I currently pay more in aggregate for add-on apps than I do for Shopify itself.  That's crazy.  I'm sure Rise.Ai is nice, but I'd rather do a dozen manual returns each month and manually create discount codes for customers to use as "store credit" than pay $60/mo plus $.15/order.  We did about 800 orders last month with only a dozen or so returns.  At the current rates, Rise.Ai would cost $60 + $60 for the overage (400 x .$15) or $120!!!  That's a cost to me of about $10 per return.  In what universe would that make sense to any small business owner?  The pricing is way way way too high for the value provided.

[Nixs]

Is there a free version of any of these Apps? 

[roehamptonorchi]

Agree.  Completely ridiculous to have to pay extra for an app for one feature that should be a core functionality of any store... a store credit.  I needed it for ONE customer in 300+ orders.. 

[Holly99]

My comment is in response to the the comment below:

Has there been any attention given to making it possible to issue a store credit to a customer?  

I find in what I read Shopify uses the words refund & store credit interchangeably when in reality they are two VERY different things.

In July 2019 Lara from Shopify .... see below:

Shopify Staff

10 4 1

Hi @djb6301

Lara here from Shopify!

From what I understand, you would like to give store credits to your customers. That is a lovely idea! However, there's no functionality yet on the store admin in giving store credits to customers, but I understand how having this feature available is important, and I'm sending your feedback along to our responsible team.

[Holly99]

Hi @djb6301

Lara here from Shopify!

From what I understand, you would like to give store credits to your customers. That is a lovely idea! However, there's no functionality yet on the store admin in giving store credits to customers, but I understand how having this feature available is important, and I'm sending your feedback along to our responsible team.

[OrbitDVD]

I have been using Shopify for less than a month, and although I really like it, there are some key features missing that will hold me back from using it at my physical location.  Buy/sell/trade is a large part of my business, and the inability to give credit is a major stumbling block here.  

In just a few short weeks, I have been giving credit to a good amount of online customers.  Instead of using Shopify, I am capturing their information on my store's POS, and Shopify misses out on the sales.  This seems like such a simple fix to me, but maybe I am wrong.

[Tony39]

We are most likely leaving Shopify. We've outgrown them. I don't see how
anyone but the smallest mom and pop shop could get by with the vast number
of missing features and the MASSIVE core application flaws regarding
customer account management, slooooowwww website performance, lack of
adequate locations support and reporting, poor inventory management tools,
poor pack and ship solutions, etc. I could spend thousands of dollars a
month to fix the issues in Shopify but even that kind of investment
couldn't fix their deeply flawed core product.

I gave them 4 years to catch up with us. All they have done in four years
is put more lipstick on a pig. 😞

[jonathanOVRC]

It's insane to me that I can't easily provide store credit to my customers without installing an expensive app. WTF? We recently migrated from Vend & Squarespace  to Shopify online/POS in order to be more seamless as our online presence increased during the pandemic. Not having store credit capabilities (we allow customers to exchange running shoes w/in 30 days  for a different shoe or store credit) is a HUGE miss. My wife and I recently took a trip out of town and I was shocked to find out we couldn't see how much cash vs cc sales we did from the desktop version. Again: WTF?

We're still on the 90 day trial - and even though we spent a bunch of labor hours moving over the Shopify, I'm not sure we can live with it on the pos side of things

[Tony39]

Whatever labor hours you spent migrating will be astronomically higher if you stay on the platform. Keep shopping for a different solution. We’ve been waiting over 4 years for Shopify to fix MASSIVE shortcomings in their platform. Our requests are not even on their roadmap from what I can tell.

Our top two items are:

1). In store credit. This doesn’t exist and even with expensive third party apps, it’s a complete joke using “discount codes” to make this work. It doesn’t.

2). No customer table in the database. It doesn’t exist. It’s like Shopify doesn’t realize that customers are the core of our business, not our product inventory. Without customers, our products are worthless. Shopify simply scrapes customer names and emails from orders and “reports” that list to you when you go to the customer screen. Those customers do not exist in a database that can be updated...not really. I have some of my best customers that have 5+ accounts in Shopify because they switched email addresses over the years, accidentally typed “gamil” instead of “gmail” one time...and now they have a duplicate entry in Shopify. (I won’t call it an account, but Shopify doesn’t really have true customer accounts). I can’t merge this info or fix it. I have duplicate “entries” forever.


Issue 1 and 2 are related. Shopify can’t do store credit because they never designed their platform around a customer. They designed it around inventory and product sales (invoices).

This is a fundamental flaw in their platform that over 4 years of prodding, they have been unwilling to address. Shopify will fade into the annals of software history if they don’t step up and give their customers the most basic tools we need to serve OUR customers.

[dirtyjane]

Any word on when Shopify will allow us to issue a store credit without having to use a third-party app? I've been issuing Gift Cards but this skews my numbers as it looks like I've sold GC when I haven't. 

Please advise when this will be available! 

[Tony39]

Even with a third party app, it’s not really store credit. It’s simply an overlay to manage “discount codes”. It’s a total mess and not worth the money. We are leaving the Shopify platform soon...

It’s designed for very small mom and pop shops that don’t do much business.

[Neomi_av]

Hi all! I'm Neomi from Rise.ai app,

We specialized in gift cards, loyalty, and refunds - all with our store credit solutions. using Rise, all of your customer credit will accumulate into one loyalty card they can use to shop in your store.

You can use our Refund system directly from you shopify admin.

This feature is available on all of Rise's plan

other solutions we have are:

• an advanced gift card solution that includes a branded gift card, an option to send the gift card directly to the recipient and schedule it for the prefect time.
• rewards flows - alawing you to reward customers for different trigers - like buy X get back Y and many more.
• referrals.

you can read more about our solutions here

since use store credit and not points any customer can use his credit with an additional coupon code.

checkout our listing page and feel free to contact me at info@rise.ai

[Tony39]

This is still not true store credit. It is simply a gift-card overlay in Shopify that continues to leverage Shopify’s “discount code” feature. The solution is also not cost effective at all for high volume Shopify stores.

There is no way to have true store credit with Shopify because Shopify, at its core, is transaction focused, not customer focused. This is why we are leaving Shopify. My business has succeeded because I’ve been customer focused, not transactional focused. Shopify is not congruent with our business. Shopify’s customer “list” is simply a rake-off of all emails ever used on any Shopify transaction. Some of my best customers have accidentally created “duplicate” accounts over the years by mistyping their email address as checkout. There is no way to fix this in Shopify...no way to combine the “accounts” because there is no customer database/table. There are only transactions. Since one single transaction had an incorrect email address used...that “customer” exists as a duplicate forever.

Shopify is broken at its core. Third party apps (no offense) are lipstick on a pig.

[MAE333]

Are we still waiting for this functionality? I have been trying to find a work around that doesn't ding my sales $100 and cost me even more money in taxes by exaggerating the amount of sales we have.

Customer purchased $100 worth of items, items were "stolen". Instead of refunding I want to issue store credit as a compromise. My accounting thinks I have $100 in the bank. 

Now I issue $100 gift card. My accounting thinks I have $200 in the bank.

I can't refund or cancel her original order online to zero that out and make it even somehow because that will trigger actual cash going back to her method of payment.

I can issue her a $100 discount but she needs to use it all at once which complicates matters. 

No to the additional app for one occurrence out of 1,000

[dirtyjane]

Agree. This is a very basic functionality to me. Can't wait to see when Shopify fixes this. I mean, how many external apps are we expected to pay for?

[Tony39]

They cannot fix this unless they radically alter their core database/table structure and coding. It would be open heart surgery for them to do so.

If they had initially designed their app to be more customer-centric vs transaction centric, this wouldn’t be a problem. With no customer table, you can’t have a field to track account balances. Without the ability to merge duplicate customer accounts, it would be a nightmare to try to implement store credit. Shopify has core design flaws that are limiting this “basic” functionality. It’s like asking someone without any arms to “wave” at you. It’s not that they are ignoring the request. They just lack the ability to do it.

[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.