Offline purchase for online use [Solved]

Hello,
I've scoured the forum w/out any success so I'm hoping to find an answer to my issue. Is it possible to sell a gift card offline and then have the user use it online on the site? Here's the scenario I'm talking about:

• 
  Site owner has a brick and mortar retail store and wants to sell a gift certificate to a real, physical person i.e. customer
  



• 
  Site owner sells a gift certificate to the customer using an offline payment method, cash.
  




• 
  The customer pays for the gift certificate, receives a code and then goes online to the site and starts shopping,
  



• 
  The customer enters the gift certificate code during checkout and gets the amount deducted from his/her total amount
  

Thank you for your time.

Joomla version: 2.5.9
Virtuemart version: 2.018a
Awocoupon pro version: 2.1.7

Hello,

That should not be a problem. Most of the work is done offline, the only thing the store owner needs to do is enter the gift certificate into AwoCoupon backend with the code/value that he/she is selling so the customer can use it.

Thank Seyi. Now, how do I reserve a pool of numbers/codes for offline use so that when the system auto generates numbers/codes, via online sales, it doesn't use the codes I've created for selling gift cards offline?

Here's the scenario:

I start selling gift cards online and the systems generates codes for every certificate the site sells.
I upload a csv with custom codes for the gift cards that I plan to sell offline e.g. sell at expos, studio, etc.

So basically, I just want to create a set of codes that will be protected from being auto assigned by the system when a site visitor buys a gift card online.

I checked this out, https://awodev.com/documentation/awocoupon-pro/gift-certificate-codes, the part that talks about inactive but it's not doing it. It doesn't recognize the code. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even recognize the gift card, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've gone through the documentation but the way it's organized is a bit broken up. Are there any tutorials or something that will take you through the whole process, from start to finish, because I've spent quite a bit of time on this and I'm nowhere closer than when I started.

Thank you

Hello,

I am a little confused. You are trying to stop codes from being assigned? The easiest thing to do then is not to add them to your import file at all. Only import the codes you want assigned.

Am I missing something?

Sorry Seyi, I didn't explain it right, partly because of my not fully understanding the concept behind it. I thought maybe an "inactive" code is one that's reserved for offline use and not automatically used when selling cards online. I want to generate a whole bunch of codes so that I can sell them offline, expos, etc. but I want those codes to be reserved so they won't be assigned automatically by the system when someone buys a card online. Does this make sense?

Thanks for the explanation. When codes are generated, AwoCoupon compares it to the coupon list, and if it exists, it regenerates a new coupon code.

So what you can do is import the coupon codes as a normal coupons and unpublish them. In that way, they will never be generated for any use.

Thanks, Seyi, for the explanation and your patience. One final question: after I import all the coupon codes how do I make them ready to be used at checkout for making purchases of items the site sells? Right now, you actually have to buy one online in order for the system to recognize the code. Here's a scenario:

1. I sell a gift card offline, expo, etc. with a code I've already generated on the site but the code's inactive


2. I then make the code active and the client goes to the site, makes a purchase and inputs the code at checkout and the amount is deducted from his purchases

So, at step 2, how do I get the active code to be ready for purchases without having to buy a gift card online? I know I must first publish the code (make it active) but the system thinks it's a code to be used for new online purchases of gift cards.not codes ready to be used at checkout. I want to be able to make the code available and ready for purchasing items online. I hope I explained it right.
Thank you.

Hello,

Think we might be getting a little confused, there are 2 import functions in AwoCoupon
- import of normal coupon
Using this will allow a customer to use the coupon code in your store and get a discount

- import of codes for gift certificate
Using this will only make the code available for purchase, and once the purchase has been made then the code is generated and the customer can then use the code in your store to get a discount

So If i understand you correctly, you want the normal import screen to import the codes that can be used by customers. This screen can be found in awocoupon->import.

Thanks for the reply. Now it's clear. If I go to Coupons and click on New and then choose Gift Certificate, I can generate as many Gift Certificate codes as I want--this is what I can sell offline. However If I create a template and then go to the Gift Certificate tab and start generating Gift Certificates I can use these to sell online only. Whereas under the Coupon tabs, I can create as many "Gift Certificates" as I want w/their codes and sell them offline in order to be used online. Yeowsers. While this isn't rocket science, it sure can be confusing.

Anyway, thanks for your replying to all my questions. I appreciate it. I'll post a favorable review on JED once I get all this setup and live.

Hello,

That is exactly right. Im glad its all clear now, apologize for all the confusion.