What is a voucher?

Vouchers find application as an element of financial incentive and employee motivation programs, as well as a tool used to foster customer loyalty. Currently, vouchers are observed to be growing increasingly popular as a form of loyalty or customer cards. Apart from their payment-related functions, vouchers can be used as ID cards for customers and their transactions, optimizing such business processes as the registration of item returns or verification of transactions.

Many trade companies, especially fashion retailers, more and more frequently reach toward the expectations of their customers, providing them with a possibility to buy vouchers and gift cards that can be given as presents.

Vouchers are appreciated by both employers and employees, as the range of places accepting this payment form is vast and varied, including shops offering clothing, electronics, perfumes, jewelry, sports accessories, grocery products, and many others.

Voucher is a document entitling its owner to the cashless purchase of specified items within a given period of time, at a given company, for a predefined amount which a given voucher has been assigned. Vouchers are issued by enterprises within which they can be used or by intermediate entities which provide companies with benefit programs (e.g. BonCard, SodeXo). A voucher can be purchased by a natural person or an enterprise, which in turn passes the voucher to a person finalizing a transaction through the cashless purchase of goods or services from the voucher’s issuing party.

On the POS workstation, it is possible to:

• Accept a payment with an own or external voucher, provided that the voucher has been attached to the center within which the POS workstation has been defined
• Sell vouchers with the use of SI and R documents, as well as debit memos
• Use a voucher number as a customer ID (loyalty card)

Selling own vouchers

Depending on the configuration of voucher sorts in the ERP system, selling own vouchers on the POS workstation may be processed through:

• R/SI documents
• Debit memos (DM)

To enter a voucher in a document, it is necessary to:

• Scan/manually enter a voucher number
• Select a voucher on the item list

In the application, vouchers may be added in documents under the following conditions:

• It is only possible to add one voucher, with no possibility to change its quantity
• It is not possible to change a regular price or grant a user discount for vouchers with a specified (non-zero) value
• It is possible to change a regular price and assign a price with the button [Change Discount] for vouchers with an unspecified (non-zero) value
• Vouchers are not subject to header discounts

Upon the confirmation of a R/SI document containing a voucher with the parameter Sell through debit memo selected, the application performs the following operations:

• It generates debit memo documents
• It deletes R/SI document items which related to vouchers. If a voucher-related item is the only document item, the R/SI document is not created.

Upon the confirmation of a R/SI document containing a voucher with the parameter Sell through debit memo deselected, the voucher is permanently saved as a R/SI document item.

Both R/SI documents and debit memo documents recording the sales of vouchers are available on the list of trade documents.

A voucher cannot be added to a manual correction document.

Handling vouchers in WM- documents

By associating items of the Voucher type with corresponding voucher sorts, it is possible to control the number of vouchers in the warehouse through their records in WM- and WM+ documents.

In the case of WM- documents, it is only possible to add one voucher by entering its number.

Voucher payment

A detailed description of voucher payments may be found here.

Correcting document

To process a payment for a correction, it is possible to:

• Top up an own rechargeable voucher
• Issue a new own rechargeable voucher

While transferring a return value to an inactive own rechargeable voucher, the voucher is activated and topped up with the return amount.

CD document

The user can also make a manual deposit with the use of a voucher. Such a case may occur when the attendant selects an incorrect payment form. To make a deposit, it is necessary to issue a CD document.

The application’s behavior depends on what payment form has been selected on the new CD document form:

• External Voucher – it opens a window where the operator may specify a voucher’s number and its value
• Own Voucher – it opens a window where the user may enter a voucher number

After confirming the voucher number window and confirming the whole CD document, the document’s value is taken into consideration in the daily summary.

CW document

The user may as well make a manual withdrawal with the use of a voucher. To make a withdrawal, it is necessary to issue a CW document.

A CW document for own vouchers is created in the case of:

• Topping up an own rechargeable voucher
• Issuing a new own rechargeable voucher

The application’s behavior depends on what payment form has been selected on the new CW document form:

• External Voucher – it opens a window where the operator may specify the voucher’s value
• Own Voucher – it opens a window where the user may enter a voucher number

The value of a contribution to the cash register processed through such a CW document is displayed in the field presenting a relevant payment form.

GS1 payments (Comarch ERP Enterprise)

Comarch POS enables payments with vouchers containing GS1-128 barcodes. The application correctly recognizes the voucher number, its type (emitter), value, and expiration date.

Each external voucher number is defined in the following way:

253|AAAAAAAAABCCCCCCCC|17|YYMMDD|3902|VVVvvv

You can now scan an external voucher with a GS1 barcode in the payment window of the following documents:

• Receipt
• Sales invoice
• Advance sales invoice
• Exchange process documents (if the receipt/invoice value is greater than the correction value)

Handling of a difference in cash register balance for internal vouchers (Comarch ERP Enterprise)

The application makes it possible to generate CD/CW documents at the start/end of day or correct a difference in internal vouchers with the use of such documents.

The feature is available after activating a relevant parameter in the ERP system.

Display of voucher quantities on the item list (Comarch ERP Enterprise, Comarch ERP Standard)

Before, each voucher has been displayed separately on the item list, which made the list longer in the case of a large number of vouchers. In order to improve ergonomics and to make it easier to search through the list of items, a change has been introduced in the display of vouchers. It will no longer be possible to have two or more vouchers with the same quantity or with a quantity lower than zero.

Personalized gift cards (Comarch ERP Enterprise)

In cooperation with Comarch ERP Enterprise, it is possible to strictly assign certain vouchers as means of payment to specific customers. Such personalized gift cards can then be sent to Comarch POS. The Personalized parameter is set at the level of gift card types and determines whether gift cards of this type are assigned to specific customers. You can configure this parameter in the Gift card types application in Comarch ERP Enterprise. A specific customer must be assigned to each gift card number. Therefore:

• If you use a voucher assigned to a customer in the ERP system, the customer is verified when you select or scan the voucher number in a sales document

• In the refund process, the customer entered in the source document is assigned to the generated voucher

In connection with the changes in voucher handling, a new tab Vouchers (hidden by default) has been added to the customer form. The tab displays active vouchers set as personalized gift cards and assigned to the selected customer.

The list of personalized gift cards contains the following information:

• Voucher icon
• Value
• Voucher type name
• Effective date
• Number
• Status – specifies whether the voucher is Active, Inactive, Used, or Expired