Getting Started

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Store Credit in Shopify


Store credit is an awesome tool for both customers and sellers alike. This feature allows for store owners to reward their customers for event wins, pay them for sold items, etc. By utilizing store credit as a payment option in-store, you are almost certainly keeping the money back within the store and encouraging customers to return again and again. While store credit is a great option for in-store purchasing, it might not be the ideal payment option for online sales. Because BinderPOS (BPOS) is based on a Shopify platform, it is important to be aware of the way that Shopify sees and processes store credit payments. Namely, as a discount NOT store credit. Because Shopify sees store credit as a discount and not as a valid payment option, the way that Shopify presents and reports taxes through these transactions can be really skewed or inaccurate. This article will focus on further explaining how store credit works in Shopify and showing how to disable store credit as a payment option in Shopify, if you so choose.


Further issue with how Shopify categorizes store credit as a discount can be seen in how Shopify will only allow for one discount at a time. This means that if a special discount is applied by the store or through a code (promotional or seasonal sales, for example) that customer cannot also apply store credit to the sale, as that would cause there to be two stacking discounts


How Store Credit is Applied

When a customer is shopping on your online store, they will be able to see their store credit amounts in the following places:

  • Customers/Account Page
  • My Store Credit Tab (on the right side of the page)
  • Your Cart


In order to apply store credit to an order, a customer will need to be in the Your Cart page. Here, they will be able to see their store credit amount below the items in their cart. It will look something like this:

Please note that this image is taken from Premium Theme Multi


As seen in the above image, just below the store credit balance, customers will be able to input how much of their store credit they would like to apply to their order, whether a partial amount or the entire balance.


Once the order is pushed to Shopify, the payment screen will show the discount/store credit application in this way:



Once the payment is completed, your customers will see this:



How to Disable Store Credit in Shopify

Because Shopify interprets and records store credit as a discount (and because Shopify does not allow more than one discount to be applied), at this time, our recommendation is to simply disable store credit for online purchases. Whether or not you disable store credit for your online store is up to you and your store; that being said, BPOS will always support store credit through our POS portal for in-store purchasing and selling, but until we can properly account for taxes and Shopify's discount workaround, disabling for online purchases is our advice. In order to disable store credit in Shopify, follow these steps:

  1. From your store's myShopify page, select Online Store > Theme
  2. From Theme, select Customize
  3. From this customization page, find the dropdown menu at the top labeled Home Page and select Cart from the dropdown menu
  4. Select the Cart Page section on the sidebar customization menu
  5. From the Cart Page section, find and select the Enable BinderPOS Store Credit check box to toggle store credit on/off
  6. Select Save to push these changes


Even though store credit is disabled for the online purchasing, customers will still be able to see how much store credit they have available on their account and use this store credit for in-store purchases. These steps will only disable store credit as a payment (or discount) method for Shopify use


Future Plans

While we do not have any set release date for the future, we are currently planning to work around these Shopify restrictions to allow for a legally taxable store credit payment option in the future. At this time, there are only a few changes that we can make with Shopify as a third-party program, but our goal is to continue to work towards making store credit something useful both in-store and online. We will keep you updated on any progress and changes from here on out. Thank you for being patient with us as we work towards this goal.