Account Credit Vs. Coupon

Hello,
I just upgraded (FINALLY!) from Photocart and one thing I always had a problem with when using photocart before was that my clients would often finally get around to ordering and wouldn't create their account ahead of time so that I didn't really have time to add a credit to their account before they submitted their order. This meant that the credit that comes with their session fee would have to be manually updated by me before I could run their order. It wasn't a huge deal since I would take credit cards over the phone and call them in so I could fix their order before running the credit card. But now I want to get with the times and get online credit card payments and I want to make it so that they get their credit before they submit and pay online so that I'm not messing around with refunds.

Is my best option to use the flat rate coupon?

I was thinking this would be best and I could have a special code for different credit amounts that each person would get to use once. But then I realized that with returning clients they wouldn't be able to use that same coupon code. Is my best bet to just make a new coupon code for the returning clients?

Just looking for the best strategy to do credits for my clients. Thank you!

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An account credit applies to the order like a payment, so it will cover shipping & tax. A coupon will be a discount and does not cover shipping.

The best option would to create the customer account at the time of the session and give them their login details and add the account credit to their account and have them log in before ordering.

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Thank you, Tim! That sounds like a good option!

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