Loyalty & Online Retail · Zimbabwe
Sell online, reward the customer, and recognise them at the counter.
An online store with a loyalty scheme behind it. Customers browse and order online, earn on what they buy there and in your shop, and are recognised as the same member either way.
Overview
A loyalty scheme identifies the customer at the moment of sale and returns value to an account that lasts across visits. Put an online store in front of it and the same customer can buy from you at midnight and still be recognised at the counter on Saturday. Value is issued now and settled later, so a balance a member holds is an obligation on the business until it is redeemed or expires. That is why the reporting here leads with liability and redemption rate rather than sign-up numbers. Retail members are people, identified by a card, a phone number or a code on a screen. Wholesale members are trading accounts, where several buyers and several branches earn into one pooled balance and the reward is usually settled at the end of a period.
Core capabilities
A customer who orders from the online store and a customer who walks into the shop are the same member with one balance. What they buy in either place earns into that balance, and what they hold can be spent in either place.
Your items, prices and stock positions drive a storefront customers can browse and order from outside trading hours. Where you have your own payment arrangement, checkout can hand the customer to it; where you do not, the order is captured and reaches your team ready to fulfil. Which of the two applies is confirmed against your setup before implementation.
A rate per dollar, a stamp per qualifying visit, or tiers members move between on rolling spend. Rules can be held to a department or a brand, exclude categories whose margin will not carry a reward, and carry caps per transaction and per member. A balance can expire a fixed period after it was issued, or a set time after the member last bought anything.
A trading account earns against a target measured over a quarter or a year. Several buyers and several branches ordering under one account earn into a single pooled balance, because without pooling no individual buyer accumulates enough to redeem and the scheme stalls. Settlement is commonly a credit note against the account, which keeps the value inside the trading relationship.
Points are value, so issuing them is treated as a financial event. Permissions can separate looking up a balance from awarding, adjusting or redeeming one, with manual adjustments reason-coded and larger ones sent for approval. The controls appropriate to your business are agreed during setup.
How the workflow works
A typical workflow, aligned to the agreed scope and configuration.
Decide what a member earns, what a point is worth, how long a balance lives and who may award or adjust one. For trade accounts, agree the period, the targets and how a reward settles.
Publish the items, prices and stock you want sold online, and start enrolling members at the counter, at checkout or by scanning a code.
Sales post to the member's record whether they happened online or at the till. Retail members redeem against a basket; trading accounts build an accrual against their target.
Read what was issued, what was redeemed and what members are still holding. Settle trade accruals against the accounts that qualified, and take the outstanding balance to your accountant.
Reporting & visibility
Points and value issued over a period set against what members actually redeemed. The ratio between them is the redemption rate. A rate that stays low means the reward is not being taken up and the balance you owe is quietly building.
What members are holding and have not yet spent, in points and at your point value, aged by when each balance expires. This is the figure finance asks for at month end, and the ageing is what makes it forecastable.
How many sales carried a member number and how many did not, split by branch, by till operator and between the online store and the counter, with the share of turnover coming from identified members.
Each trading account's qualifying purchases against its target, what has accrued so far and what has been settled, showing the accounts still short of a threshold and the accruals still waiting to be paid.
Configuration & connections
Setup starts with the scheme itself: what a member earns, what a point is worth, how they are identified at the counter, and when an unused balance expires. Points, stamps and tiers all work, and which suits you depends on how often your customers buy and how much basket values vary. For trade accounts, the period, the targets and whether a higher rate applies to the whole period or only to volume above the threshold are settled before anything is switched on, because that choice decides what the scheme costs you. Paying a trade reward in cash rather than as credit is a decision to take with your accountant. Online payment depends on the arrangement you already have. Where you run the WhatsApp Business API product, member messages can go out over that channel. Anything touching a fiscal receipt runs through your ZIMRA FDMS setup and is scoped separately.
Useful answers
Yes, and the two behave differently by design. A shop customer is a person who earns and redeems inside the same visit. A trade account earns against a target over a period, pools what its buyers and branches spend, and settles once that period ends. Bring both sides of your customer base to the demonstration and the setup can be shown against them.
A balance a member holds is value you have issued and not yet given back, so it stands as an obligation until it is redeemed or expires. The reporting shows the outstanding total at your point value and ages it by expiry, so the cost is a figure you can plan around instead of a surprise.
Where you already have a payment arrangement, checkout can hand the customer to it. Where you do not, the order is captured and reaches your team ready to fulfil, and the customer settles the way they do today. Africube does not hold or process funds. Which applies to you is confirmed against your setup before implementation.
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