Wondering how others handle this situation. A cust...
# generalj
Jackie Yang
05/30/2024, 7:38 PMWondering how others handle this situation. A customer places an order for $100. They call to say they forget they had a coupon for $10 off their next purchase and would like for it to be applied on the order they placed. How do you handle this? Basically we need to refund/credit the customer $10 but we also want the order to still be "returnable/refundable" if the customer decides they want to return their order
a
alien4u
05/30/2024, 7:42 PMThe concept of coupons align with discounts, you could add a discount line to the Sales Order representing that coupon amount.
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Jackie Yang
05/30/2024, 7:43 PM@alien4u what if the order is already fulfilled and invoiced
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alien4u
05/30/2024, 7:45 PMThen is too late, the same happen on any online platform out there, take Amazon for example:
Once you place the order you don't have a way to add a coupon, once the order is in Preparing for Shipment you can't even cancel it.
alien4u
05/30/2024, 7:47 PMWhen I think about problems like these I often go down to:
• If the biggest Market Place/Sales Platform in the world (Amazon) have not implemented a way to handle these edge cases maybe is because there is no feasible or reliable way to do it.
alien4u
05/30/2024, 7:56 PMAnother way to go around this will involve leveraging Item Fulfillment Statuses, meaning:
• Picked
• Packed
• Shipped
You can still delete a Fulfillment in Picked or Packed status without any problem, once is Shipped then you have meaningful GL impact and you may not want to touch that.
If your are already using Fulfillment Statuses then this could be a solution, if you are not using those, then this may requiere some processes changes and a cost/benefit analysis; meaning:
• Does this happens very often?
• I'm losing money or valuable/important Customers if I don't find a way to make them happy (even if this is their fault because they forgot to enter the coupon?)
• Changing my business processes will impact my overall efficiency or introduce other errors/problems?
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Jackie Yang
05/30/2024, 8:27 PMI'm really against us doing these types of credits because it is such a pain. Need to go to business with strict reasons as to why we shouldn't allow for this to happen. Fulfillment is difficult for us to control since we use a 3PL we don't manufacture in house. Everything is outsourced
Jackie Yang
05/30/2024, 8:31 PM@alien4u
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alien4u
05/30/2024, 8:38 PMAnother reason to push back on this will be 3PL as you mentioned.
The way I see it:
Every online store out there does not allow this because simply put the complexity or adjacent problems outweigh the benefits.
If they forgot the coupon they must cancel the order before is shipped and re-order with the coupon, or use the coupon in another order in the future.
The more I think about this more reasons and analogies I find: You can't go back to Costco/Walmart after you paid and ask the cashier to process /discount the coupons you forgot. It simply does not work like that.