Shopping Credit Overview

Overview

Some businesses offer extra shopping credits if a specific product, service, or package is purchased. This tutorial explains how to track those shopping credits. This tracking system works if the shopping credits are dollar values or credit values.

How to Add Shopping Credit Products or Services To The Invoice

There are various ways of adding items to the invoice for a shopping credit. The key concept is that customer is not directly giving money for these items so the items either need to have a $0 price or have a discount applied to them otherwise the financial reports and sales tax will be inaccurate.

Option 1: Add the shopping credit product/service to the invoice with a $0 price
Option 2: Add the shopping credit product/service to the invoice with it's regular price but apply a line item discount to the product/server for the same amount as the product/service price

Click here for a tutorial on how to do a line item discount

Option 3: Add the shopping credit product/service to the invoice with it's regular price but apply a global discount to the invoice for the same amount as the total shopping credit

Cilck here for a tutorial on how to do a global discount

How to Show the Client that a Shopping Credit was applied to the invoice

If you want the customer to specifically know that the shopping credit was applied to the printed or emailed invoice you can do any of the following options:

Option 1: Add a comment to the invoice public notes which are located under the 'settings' tab that is similar to the following:

$150 shopping credit applied to invoice
15 shopping credits applied to invoice

Option 2: Add a $0 product to the invoice called 'Shopping Credit' and type in the shopping credit amount into the product description
Option 3: Add the shopping credit amount to the product description for the items they purchase using the shopping credit

Tips on Tracking Shopping Credits

If the shopping credits are immediately applied to the invoice than there is no need to track the credits and the steps below can be ignored

How to Track Unused Shopping Credit Using Client Notes

Create or Edit an Invoice
Click arrow next to "Search Clients"
Select the Edit Client menu option

Add the Shopping credit amount to the client notes
Once the shopping credit amount is used edit the client and remove the

How to Track Unused Shopping Credit Using Gift Cards

Create an Internal Only Gift Card that the Client Does Not See

To create a gift card to track the shopping credit do the following steps:

Create or edit an invoice
Click the Create menu bar in the bottom left
Click the Create Gift Card menu item
Enter "Shopping Credit" for the gift card name similar to the image below

How to Get the Remaining Shopping Credit Balance

To apply or redeem the gift card do the following steps:

Create or edit an invoice
Click the Gift Card Menu option on the bottom
Select the Manage Gift Card menu item

Note: The Manage Gift Card menu item is available in StudioCloud version 3.1.537 and later

Make a note of the shopping credit total and either delete the gift card or change the gift card balance to 0.