Gift Certificates, how to automate in eCart?

I have an ecommerce site selling products that are shipped. We would like to also sell gift certificates where the gift certificate is created upon purchase in the db and an email is sent to the recipient. Is there an easy way to automate this without having to write a bunch of custom code?

Should we create a separate purchase and checkout process?
Thanks for any help.

You could use the OrderID in the database as the gift certificate ID and you would only have to add a field to keep track of when it was used.

Can you do it with zero hand coding? Probably not, but it probably wouldn't take "a bunch" either.

Ray,

Do know if anyone has done this. I'm about to and didn't want to reinvent the wheel.

In my mind, selling the gift certificates is easy. It's just another product. The hard part (semi hard part) is going to be keeping track of what is left on the gift certificate dollar wise.

I guess on checkout on the "thank you" page when you update the tables for the order you would need to update another Gift Cert table (either add or update) using the order ID code as the cerfiticate key.

Then you'd have to put a field on the check out form for a discount that evals the cert# to the cert table to see how much had be applied.

There seems to be many possabilities...I just want to make sure I'm thinking through all the scenerios.

Your thoughts.

Terry Middleton


PS. Same thing with coupons with the exception that there's no need to track the balance of the coupon; just that the coupon was valid and for what amount and what rule to apply.

I know that www.dimplesanddandelions.com/ did implement gift cards, coupons, and registry to their eCart site. I haven't done it personally, but I'd probably use a similar approach to inventory control where I keep track of the gift certificate used in the orders table and subtract it from the gift certificate amount in the SQL without ever really updating the amount itself.

Ray,

Thank you. I'm thinking you could select sum on the orders table with the key of the orderid and product id and subtract the total amount in the orders table (making sure it doesn't exceed 0) from the current order.

Doesn't seem too bad.

Terry