My client is a B2C company who is migrating to AbleC. Often users forget to give the coupon code when they submit their order (or in the old system mixed up the coupon field with the keycode/account field and put it there or in the order comments only, although the former would no longer be involved with the AbleC cart.) or someone places a phone order but calls back with the code released that day through an email blast, before the order gets shipped.

We realized a bit late that correcting this isn't possible in a similar enough method on AbleC and this is going to be a fairly significant workflow issue for them.

• Adding a coupon after the order is placed. (same example of a customer forgetting to add it and calling customer service)
• Adding an item to an order shipping segment that hasn't shipped yet, so the discount is only calculated (and displayed) for the products in each shipment segment, but also displays for the relevant amount in each subsequent shipment segment.
• How to handle when a product is returned or exchanged. The original coupon still applies to that customer's order, but the date could easily be outside of the promotional range.

We did find a discount could be added through the "Add Other Item" button when editing an order. But:
1) Primarily, it creates a trap/opportunity for human error via calculations and data entry. Especially if the cs rep is trying to work with a difficult customer on the phone while making the changes.
2) The text is free form which requires figuring out what approach to take with that field. Always use the code and hope no one makes a typo? Enter something like COUPON for later custom analysis programing?
3) Which leads to the fact of reporting issues. Now how to handle gathering the reports on these coupons as well as the discounts carried forward with multiple shipping segments of a an order or perhaps across multiple orders (if the exchange is perhaps purchased as a separate order, to not wait for the turn around of shipping back, refund and reordering an item.)
4) The discount appears as a a line item, but we haven't tested how that will impact packing lists (which would list the discounts and payments separately from the products).

It seems like the "Add Other Item-Discount" option is good for allowing credits given at the company's discretion, but there should be a way to Add a coupon code with the option to allow it outside of the original date range (perhaps across the store, or accessible only by particularly user groups).. I don't know if it makes more sense to put it under Payments, since that's what it is, or as an option under "Add Other Item" since there one can choose which shipping segment to apply it against.

This is a modified entry, originally posted in forum entry: http://forums.ablecommerce.com/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=18130

I could not find any original request for this. There is a similar request for Gift Certificate handling which is a similar issue of payment methods after the fact, but since gift certificates are a unique process involving their own ids etc, I thought this should be broken out as a request.

Thank you!