Starting April 1st, 2022 the “guest-checkout” will be replaced by the “sponsor-checkout”. This article describes the impact this change will have on the webstore, the online user experience and the school administrators who review and process webstore sales.
Historically, when a webstore product was marked “for Guest”, the transaction was anonymous. Any webstore visitor could purchase a Guest product without having students linked with the PushCoin account. For school administrators, the Guest sale was not linked with a User nor a Wallet.
As of April 1st, when a webstore visitor buys for the first time a Guest product on the school webstore, the system dynamically creates a corresponding user account in the school’s PushCoin account and records the sale under the new user. This user can be differentiated from all the staff and students by the title “SPONSOR”, per picture below. Over time there may be many SPONSOR users – in fact, as many as you have “Guest product” sales to unique online users. However, when a repeat customer buys a Guest product, they will reuse their existing SPONSOR user.
Below are properties of SPONSOR accounts:
- They are not student accounts, so they are not subject to a monthly fee.
- You can review prior purchases of a SPONSOR as they retain complete history of transactions.
- A refund of a webstore purchase goes back to the SPONSOR’s Wallet. The SPONSOR user is able to use the money in the Wallet to pay for another webstore purchase.
- The balance in the Wallet of a SPONSOR account can be transferred to a (linked) student.
- The first and last names of a SPONSOR account match the user who signed up for PushCoin.
From a parent perspective, a parent who bought something on your webstore will see the SPONSOR account as well. She can review the history of transactions, fund it, transfer or pay using the balance in the SPONSOR Wallet just as if it was a student in the district.
For school administrators, the introduction of the SPONSOR account has the following benefits:
- Ability to review the history of “Guest” transactions.
- Sales of Summer school programs and activities are recorded under the SPONSOR user. This should make it easier for out of district families to shop on your webstore. No more hassles for families who either don’t have a student in the district or have a student in the district but are shopping for a child that is not in the district.
- Refunds of “Guest” products do not require sending money back to the Credit Card or bank account. The money are put back in the Wallet of the SPONSOR and can be reused minutes or months later.
This sure is a lot of stuff to go over. If you have any questions regarding this new functionality or would like to talk to us to discuss it further, please reach out to ask@pushcoin.com