Reward Points PRO: spending limits, point lifetime and vendor wallets

Reward points you can govern: how many to accept per product, when they expire and whose program it is

Stock CS-Cart reward points can pay for a whole order and never expire. The add-on adds rules on top of them: a share of the price per product, category and order for each user group, a lifetime with letters, shipping paid with points, balance import and reconciliation. On a marketplace every vendor runs an own program: the customer earns points with a vendor and spends them only there.

What problem it solves

The stock CS-Cart loyalty program earns points for orders and accepts them as payment - in full and forever. A store needs more: accept no more than a tenth of the price in points for an expensive product, none at all for a promoted one, give wholesalers one set of terms and retail customers another, and let idle points expire, otherwise the liability to customers grows for years.

A marketplace adds the question "whose points are these": a vendor who pays for the discount out of its own revenue wants a program of its own, and the marketplace wants to keep it within bounds.

Checkout: how many points this order accepts and how many of them each vendor takes. The nearest expiry is shown below.

What you get after installation

• •  A "Reward points" section under Marketing: earning rules (the stock page), spending limits, point lifetime, point balances, points movement, lots against balances, add-on settings - all in one place.
• •  A "Pay with points" tab in the product and category cards and a bulk action that sets the percentage for selected products in the list.
• •  The line "You can spend up to N points" next to the points field at checkout: the customer sees what will be accepted, not the balance. An amount above the cap is reduced with an explanation.
• •  A "Reward points" tab in the customer card: balance, wallets, lots with expiry dates, recent operations. One journal with the wallet of every entry and a form that credits or writes off into the chosen wallet.
• •  Four letters - points are about to expire, have expired, credited for an order, balance changed by an import - in the stock "Notifications" section: switched on, off and edited there.
• •  A "My points" block for the customer account and a summary above the customer's points log.

Spending limits: the catalog-wide percentage and the order-wide cap per user group. An empty field means no limit.

Spending rules: product, category, catalog, order

• •  Product - an own share of the price on the "Pay with points" tab; zero forbids payment with points, and the stock "Price in points" is not shown for such a product.
• •  Category - the percentage is inherited by subcategories, a subcategory may override it; a product follows its main category.
• •  Catalog - a common percentage for products without an own rule or a category rule.
• •  Order-wide cap - trims the sum of product limits: whatever the products allow, no more than this share of the order can be paid with points.
• •  User groups - every rule has a row per group; a customer in several groups gets the larger or the smaller value, as configured.
• •  Spending conditions: whether to respect catalog discounts, whether to allow points with product and cart promotions, a minimum order subtotal, a minimum and a step for the amount.
• •  Shipping paid with points - with a configurable share; taxes are never paid with points. In Multi-Vendor the shipping share is split between vendors by their shipping cost.

The "Pay with points" tab in the product card: an own share of the price per user group; an empty field passes the decision to the category.

The product page on the storefront: the customer sees in advance what share of the price points will cover.

Point lifetime and letters

• •  A lifetime per user group: every accrual becomes a lot with an expiry date; zero or an empty field means points never expire.
• •  Spending by expiry: lots that expire first are spent first; a cancelled order returns points to the same lots.
• •  Points earned before installation get a start date from the settings - nothing expires at once; transferring balances is started with a button and runs in batches.
• •  Letters by thresholds: "14,3" sends a warning two weeks and three days before expiry; the same letter is not sent twice.
• •  A scheduled job with a password: it picks up point operations made outside the add-on, sends letters, burns expired lots and reconciles lots against balances. The command and the address are shown on the "Point lifetime" page.
• •  Order status rules: for each status you decide what happens to used and earned points - return, write off again or leave as is.

Point lifetime: lifetimes per group, transfer of accumulated balances and the scheduled job with a ready command and address.

The "Notifications" section: four letters of the add-on - each is switched with a checkbox, the text is edited in the template editor.

Vendor wallets on a marketplace

In Multi-Vendor the add-on runs in one of three modes: "Marketplace" - one program for everyone, "Vendors" - an own program per vendor, "Marketplace and vendors" - both at once. A wallet is the pair "customer and program owner": the core balance stays the common counter, while the add-on keeps the split by wallets and lots.

• •  Accrual - into the wallet of the vendor who fulfilled the order; if its program is off, the points go to the marketplace.
• •  Spending - vendor points pay only at that vendor, marketplace points at any. The order between two available wallets is a setting: by expiry date, marketplace first or vendor first.
• •  Vendor panel: "My points program" with a switch, own spending percentages and own lifetime - within the bounds the marketplace sets. A value above a bound is reduced to it with a warning.
• •  Cart: the cap is calculated per vendor, marketplace points are split between vendors once. The add-on is compatible with stock direct vendor payments: the conflict is lifted by a setting, and marketplace points applied in one vendor cart are deducted in the others.
• •  Payouts: the vendor compensation in the payout and the commission base counts marketplace points only - the vendor's own points remain its own discount.
• •  A vendor leaving: accrual stops, and the accumulated points either live out their lifetime or are burned by the scheduled job with a letter to the customer, as configured.

The "Marketplace" settings: who pays for the points discount, who runs the program, the spending order between wallets and the percentage ceiling for vendors.

Vendor panel: an own program with a switch, shipping paid with points and the bounds set by the marketplace.

The customer's journal in the admin panel: wallets with balances on top, the wallet of every entry, a wallet filter and one form to credit or write off.

Balance import, reconciliation and points movement

• •  Import from CSV or Excel: columns email, user_id, points, expires_at, comment and vendor; the separator is detected by the first line, the column order is free. A format table with an example sits right under the form.
• •  Two modes: "final balance" - the file says how many points should remain, "credit or write off" - by how much to change. The wallet is chosen for the whole file, the vendor column names it per row.
• •  A preview before applying: every row has a state - ready, customer not found, duplicate, invalid number, date in the past, balance would go negative, the vendor has no program. The import journal is kept.
• •  Balance export with lots and expiry dates to CSV.
• •  Lots against balances: customers whose lot total diverged from the core balance, with the last operation and a file export. A discrepancy is never fixed silently.
• •  Points movement: earned on orders and manually, spent on orders and manually, expired, net for the period, balance now - per wallet, filtered by period, wallet and customer, exported to CSV.

Balance import: file, wallet, mode, customer notification and the format table with required columns and an example.

The "Points movement" report for a period, per marketplace and vendor wallet.

What the customer sees

• •  On the product page - what share of the price points will cover; for a forbidden product - "not available for this product".
• •  At checkout - "You can spend up to N points", a breakdown by vendor when there are several wallets, and the nearest expiry. An amount above the cap is reduced with an explanation.
• •  In the account - a "My points" block with the balance, wallets, nearest expiry and recent operations; the same summary stands above the points log.
• •  In letters - how many points were credited, how many expire and when, the current balance. Letters go through the stock notification system and inherit the store design.

The points log in the customer account: a summary of wallets and nearest expiries above the stock table of operations.

What is new in version 2.0

• •  Vendor wallets: the "Marketplace", "Vendors" and "Marketplace and vendors" modes.
• •  Vendor panel: an own program, percentages and lifetime within marketplace bounds.
• •  Points for an order go to the fulfilling vendor's wallet; spending takes only wallets that can pay at that vendor.
• •  A cart cap per vendor; compatibility with direct vendor payments.
• •  One customer journal with the wallet of every entry and an operation form per wallet.
• •  Balance import with a file-wide wallet and a vendor column, the format described on the page.
• •  The add-on letters are events under "Notifications"; a new letter about a balance changed by an import.
• •  The "Points movement" report per wallet, payouts with compensation for marketplace points only, closing the wallet of a vendor who left.

What the add-on does not do

• •  It does not replace the stock reward points and does not change the rate: accrual for orders, the balance and the journal stay with the core, the add-on adds rules on top. The stock "Reward points" add-on must be enabled.
• •  It does not credit points for registration, a review or a birthday and does not defer accrual until the return period ends.
• •  It does not pay taxes with points.
• •  It does not create a separate point rate per vendor: the rate is one for the marketplace, the vendor controls percentages and lifetime.
• •  It does not work in the mobile application and does not exchange data with accounting systems.

Running costs

Rules are calculated during cart calculation and create no noticeable load. Lots live in the add-on's own tables and are parsed from the stock journal on every point operation. The lifetime needs a scheduled job once a day - a command from the server scheduler or an address from the hosting web scheduler; without it points do not expire and letters are not sent.

The add-on costs $99 per store licence. Updates come through the update center; the add-on requires the "Cart-Power: Add-ons Manager" add-on.

Frequently asked questions