Customers and store credit

#Customer records

Customers. Every order attaches to a customer record where one can be identified. Each record holds name, email, phone, notes, saved addresses, order history, and store credit balance.

Notes are free text for whatever staff need to remember about someone — an allergy, a usual order, a building with an awkward entrance. They can be written from the customer's page or from the till, and both surfaces read the same note.

The source field records where the customer came from: website, mobile_app, pos, or dashboard when a member of staff created them by hand.

Customers can be scoped to branches, which matters for chains where one location should not browse another's customer list.

#Guest orders

A customer ordering without an account still produces an order — attached to a device visitor id rather than a customer record, with a secret access token so they can track it from an emailed link. Turn on the Accounts extension if you want customers to sign in, save details, and see their history.

#Store credit

Store credit is a balance you hold against a customer, spendable at checkout.

Credit is granted by:

• A member of staff adding it manually, with a note
• A refund issued to store credit instead of to the original payment method

At checkout, credit is applied before payment and recorded on the order as creditsUsed — deliberately separate from discount, so promotion performance and credit redemption stay separately reportable.

Credit spends the same way at the counter. Attach the customer on the point of sale and the terminal shows the balance and what it redeems before applying it, under the same limits as the storefront. Voiding or fully refunding a till order gives the credit back.

Every movement is a transaction on the customer record, so a balance can always be explained.

#Data requests

A diner can ask for a copy of everything you hold on them, or ask you to delete it. Both are answered from Data and privacy on the customer's page, and the retention policy behind them lives under Settings → Privacy.

Deleting a customer's data anonymises the record rather than removing it — the order totals stay for your tax records.

#Merging and duplicates

Customers are matched on phone and email. A diner who orders once by phone and later by email will produce two records; merge them from the customer detail screen to keep history in one place.