Letting some customers submit orders and not pay upfront

Just had a client ask about this - we've just launched a site with an eCart driven store, which is all working nicely.

He offers a discount to trade customers, which also works using a discount code they can enter at checkout.

But he's just realised he has a few customers on 30 days credit, so they don't need to pay at the checkout.

From the features list it sounds like this is possible in eCart, but I couldn't see much in the documentation.

Is it even possible for the same cart to allow some customers to pay via Paypal, and some not pay, or does it have to be one or the other?

If anyone could point me in the right direction for how to set this up, that would be appreciated.

you would need to create 2 sets of checkout pages using the checkout wizard, one with no gateway, the other set using paypal


make sure that the checkout pages get uniquely named in the last step of the wizard.

you will need to add logic to the checkout to tell it which set of checkout pages to use.

Thanks Jason.

Do I just need to run the checkout wizard again and create, for example:

confirm_2.php
checkout_2.php
checkout_success_2.php
checkout_failure_2.php

and used the existing cart object? Or do I need to create a second cart object?

Just want to be sure so that I don't do anything that undoes what's already working!

yes, exactly, use the same cart object, and create unique names for the second set of checkout pages that will be created.

Great, thanks Jason.

Might come back to you about how to determine which checkout the user is sent to.

So I guess I'm not sure at which point the visitor can go in two directions - is it from the cart page to two different checkout pages, or from the checkout page to two different confirm pages?

from the cart page, you would go to the separate checkout pages.

Thanks Jason - that makes the most sense. Would the idea be to have two checkout buttons, e.g. 'pay now' and 'pay later'?

I do wonder if this is opening up a can of worms in that regular customers might then select 'pay later' when really they shouldn't be able to!

yes, you would need to have 2 checkout buttons.


you will need to add an if statement around a the pay later button so that it will only be displayed to the correct users,

I assume this would mean having customers log in to use the online store, then if a trade customer was logged in, the alternate checkout button could be set to appear conditionally?

Trouble there is that the site owner prefers not to have that barrier to making a purchase.

duplicate post