Using Gift Cards with ProductCart

We use PC to manage our gift cards pretty easily, although we are using a barcode system rather than a mag stripe.

I just use PC to generate a code using the built-in code generator. Go to Products>Manage Gift Certificates>then click "To generate one or more Gift Certificate codes for customers, click here."

I've created a gift certificate item called "Gift Card" and set it to $0 value. Once I've generated a batch of codes I make barcodes from them and apply them to the cards.

When a customer purchases a card at our store I pull one from the stack, go to Products>Manage Gift Certificates> "To manage/edit Gift Certificate codes generated for customers, click here" link and scan the barcode and update the value.

I scan the same code into our point of sale system's gift card manager and voila, it can be used in both systems.

We just have to remember to reduce the available amount in PC if it is used in store, which isn't too hard. If a customer uses the card online it is reduced in our point of sale by entering the transaction and applying the gift card code as payment.

It's not perfect, but if I set up a bunch of codes ahead of time it's pretty easy to track.


Edited by rotokirby - 03-November-2008 at 1:30pm