Guides¶

Each guide is written for something you are trying to do. Every setting named here is on Extensions › Extensions › Modules › Loyalty unless it says otherwise, and every one is described exactly on settings.

Choosing a rate you can afford¶

Two numbers decide what the programme costs: Points earned, a percentage, and Points per unit of currency, under Spending. The What this costs block beside the form divides one by the other as you type, and says it as a share of every order once the points are spent.

Points earned	Points per unit of currency	What it costs
100	100	1% of every order
200	100	2%
500	100	5%
100	50	2%

So "5% back" is Points earned 500 at 100 points to the unit, or 5 at 1 point to the unit. The first gives customers bigger numbers to look at; the cost is the same. Choose the exchange rate before you start and leave it: see changing the exchange rate.

Counted on decides whether tax is part of the base. Shipping never is, and a coupon or points spent always come off it first.

Rewarding one customer group more¶

Under Rate per customer group, type a percentage beside the group, such as 200 for a wholesale or VIP group, and save. A group left blank earns the store's own rate. The rate an order earns is the one for the group it was placed in, so moving a customer between groups changes their future orders, not their past ones.

Giving a product a fixed number of points¶

Open the product, and on its Reward Points tab set Points for each customer group. While Product reward points is on in Loyalty, which is how it ships, a line of that product earns exactly that figure, times the quantity, instead of its share of the percentage. Switch it off to make every product earn by the percentage.

There is no way to make a single product earn nothing: zero on that tab means not set.

Welcoming new customers¶

Set Welcome bonus to the points a new account earns. It is paid once per account, for an account made on the register page, at checkout or by you in the admin, and only while the programme is on for that store. Accounts that already exist are not paid.

Paying a birthday bonus¶

OpenCart has no birthday field, so you add one:

Under Customers › Custom Fields, add a field of type Date at the Account location, and make it visible to the customer groups you want to celebrate.
On the Loyalty screen, choose it as Birthday field, and set Birthday bonus.

The hourly scheduled pass pays it once a year, on or after the birthday. A birthday that already passed before you switched this on, or before earning started, waits for next year. A customer who left the field empty is simply not celebrated. On OpenCart 4.1.0.4 the scheduled pass runs only from a crontab line of your own; see install.

Switching expiry on safely¶

Expiry takes points from customers, so check three things before you tick Expire dormant points:

Your store's mail works. Send yourself a password reset from the storefront. Nothing expires without its warning email, so a store whose mail is broken expires nothing, but it also warns nobody.
The scheduled pass runs. Under Extensions → Cron Jobs, Loyalty: the hourly scheduled pass should show a recent date. If it does not, your host is not calling OpenCart's cron.php.
The window is one you would defend to a customer. After this many months without a movement runs from 12 to 120, and Warning email, days before from 14 to 365. The shipped 24 months and 30 days are a reasonable start.

Then save. The first pass only warns: customers whose window has already run out get their email within the hour, and nobody is expired. After that, each pass warns the customers whose window is about to run out, and expires the ones whose warning is old enough. Only points Loyalty awarded can go; points you added by hand, or that were there before Loyalty, stay. The Due to expire in the next 30 days block on the right shows what is coming.

Switching expiry off again stops it at once, and brings nothing back.

Changing what a point is worth¶

Changing Points per unit of currency changes what every point already earned will buy, because points are stored as points. Raising it makes them buy less, so before such a save goes through, the screen names the effect in money for the points outstanding and asks you to confirm. Orders already placed keep the rate they were created at.

Lowering it makes every outstanding point buy more, straight away, and nothing asks you first.

Running more than one store¶

Pick the store with the selector at the top of the Loyalty screen. Rates, the exchange rate, limits, bonuses and the expiry window are set per store, and a store with nothing saved uses the default store's. The programme's Status is per store too, so it can run on one storefront and not another.

Balances are not per store. A customer has one balance, spendable on any store where the programme is on, and their expiry follows the settings of the store their account belongs to.

Correcting a customer's points¶

Use the customer's Reward Points tab under Customers › Customers, as you would without Loyalty. What you add or remove counts at once, because the balance is OpenCart's own sum. Points you add there never expire, and a correction there is not a points movement to Loyalty, so it does not restart the customer's expiry clock.

Moving over from OpenCart's own reward points¶

Points your customers already have stay theirs, and they never expire, because Loyalty did not award them.
Product Reward Points figures keep working, while Product reward points is on.
Switch OpenCart's Reward Points order total off, then install Loyalty's, as install describes. Customers spend their old points and their new ones through the same slider.
Orders OpenCart already rewarded are not rewarded again, because no order placed before you press Start awarding points earns.

Stopping the programme¶

Stop awarding points ends new awards from the next order. Points already given stay, reversal keeps working for orders that earned, and customers can still spend.
Status off stops everything on that store: nothing is earned, spent, taken back or expired through Loyalty, no bonus is paid, and the storefront shows OpenCart's own Reward Points page again.
Uninstalling keeps every point and every row. See limits.

Awarding points from another extension¶

Another installed extension can award or deduct points with one model call. The parameters, refusals and guarantees are on the award seam. Review Requests uses it to pay for an approved review.