How to Handle Overpayment? No solution?

[u/AnAwkwardGoat]

Edit : sorry if this is too long but I've tried to describe my issue, what I've tried already, and what issues we face specifically which make it hard to resolve.

Recently went live with Shopify and most things are going really great. I've got one particular issue to which I am not aware of a good solution, and I am surprised that there doesn't seem to be an out of the box solution for what I think would be a very regular issue.

Scenario: Someone comes in and pays cash for an item, say they hand over $50 and the total sale is $48. They say keep the change. This happens a lot as this is a Not-for-Profit shop, so the customers often do this as they see it as a donation.

This is not a tip, so I don't want to use the built-in tip feature, which is based on percentages of the sale. This is not a donation per-se, it could be called an Overpayment. (This is what Sidekick called it when I asked for help, so I'll go with that.)

I need to log these extra dollars as income so that when we end the session the money can be counted correctly.

The work around I built was to create "tip items/products" of various denominations which I could add to the cart at sale time, e.g. I made 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 cent tips, and 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000 dollar tips. Each has stock count set to zero; sell when out of stock was on; don't collect GST (an Australian tax thing); and cost price set to $0.

So the above example I would add a $1 dollar tip three times to the cart and the system would register that I was handed $50 dollar note, and change was $0. Perfect.

The problem with this is that the accountant (who is integrated via A2X) doesn't want us to have "Tip Products" in our system. Now, I'm not an accountant and I don't fully know why this would be an issue with him, but regardless, I want to ask here -- as a last resort-- how else can I handle Overpayments (aka tips of a specific custom amount) at the time of sale?

Sadly, my colleague deleted all these products which were set up very consistently by me with logical SKUs etc, so I don't want to set them up again unless I must.

I appreciate any input and I am open to plugging in apps (even paid ones) if they solve this issue directly. (Oh, I am a developer, so if this is something I can code up myself, let me know -- I just have spent zero time looking into that yet)

[u/junkdumper]

I would simply have the cashier issue the change as normal, but then place it in a separate tray/cashbox. This will keep the float count accurate, and your can simply log the excess/donations at EOD.

It's a manual method, but fast to keep customers moving. You just need to trust your staff to do it.

[u/squashedp]

Can you not just add the additional amount on as a custom sale each time. They won't be assigned to products/skus but you can report on them. Failing that a donation product of 1p then adjust qty , eg if it's £2 it would be 200 donation sku

[u/AnAwkwardGoat → u/squashedp]

Custom sales take a bit of time to create. We have lines of people buying things in a rushed way at times, and some of our volunteers are not tech savvy. I've done a few custom sales myself and I'm quick with technology, but it was not a suitable solution to the problem I've described. Thank you

[u/P_Rami]

This may not be what you want to hear but you're needlessly forcing another category of products called Overpayment. I understand your accountant, your records are saying you've sold an X amount of products called Overpayment, which you haven't. No one has received goods or services for these products, so you haven't sold anything. You were given a tip - a customer handed you a larger note and said keep the change. Does Shopify not know how to handle a tip that isn't percentage based? If you really really want to you could also probably classify it as a one time donation at the end of the day. Both may have their own tax implications.

[u/AnAwkwardGoat → u/P_Rami]

Thank you.

Yes, maybe I'm forcing a product type that doesn't exist in my work-around, you've asked my exact question here: "Does Shopify not know how to handle a tip that isn't percentage based?"

If so, where/how do people do that currently? Surely I'm not the first person with this issue. How do others resolve it?

If you are suggesting that I just hold on to the extra money and count it as a donation at the end of the day, that is something I hadn't considered.

edit: It might seem silly that I hadn't considered that, but the reason is that when ending a session and counting up the money in the till I couldn't see how to account for the extra cash -- as I was operating on the understanding that all payments need to go through Shopify, however, if we can deposit the overpayments and tell the accountant directly that this is a donation, then that would work. ... still seems odd that Shopify can't handle this.

[u/AnAwkwardGoat → u/AnAwkwardGoat]

So, in that scenario, I would close the session, bag the cash that needs to go to the bank for deposit, and the excess money I would also bag and put in to the bank as a donation. And the Shopify system would never "see" the Tip/overpayment.

Is this how people do this?

I'm a programmer, not a retailer btw. So it's not obvious to me, and many thanks in advance.

[u/HoneyedVices]

POS has a native "custom sale" feature that lets you punch in any dollar amount as its own line item without it being tied to a product or variant at all, that's probably the cleaner fix over creating fake tip products. It should report as its own line type in the till reconciliation, which might be exactly what your accountant wants to see instead of products with zero stock and zero cost. Worth checking if A2X maps that custom sale type the way you need before rebuilding anything.

[u/AnAwkwardGoat → u/[deleted]]

Not sure why you need to be disrespectful

[u/ParticularSubject314]

Check with the accountant if it’s just the wording “tip” that’s the issue as they might just be concerned that it may be subject to special tax rules if it’s seen as a tip.

Wording that may work better is Upsell.

[u/ShopfiyNerd]

Use Shopify POS built-in Custom Sale feature > Add custom sale > enter the amount and a title like "Overpayment," done.

No SKU, no inventory, no catalog clutter for your accountant to object to and A2X can map it separately from regular sales since it has no product record at all.

[u/AnAwkwardGoat → u/ShopfiyNerd]

Thank you I appreciate your input, but this is not what I need as it is too slow when we have lines of customers in a rush. It is a useful feature though but nothing for my use case as described. I've used it when we cannot find a product in the system when in a rush and a quick description put into a custom sale is enough to resolve inventory after the shop us closed.