TESTED FOR .ASP
Confirmed! works for .PHP also.

Sometimes we need to collect additional funds from a customer on an order.
Often we send them an email with a link to the rebranded donations page that we call make-a-payment.
We have to give them a total amount to enter and it would be nice if they could click the link to populate that info.
With the magic of javascript, all things are possible.

This is based on my other tip here with applying a coupon code from the URL querystring. https://www.ecommercetemplates.com/support/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=108517

(If you need info on creating the make-a-payment page, https://www.ecommercetemplates.com/help/donations.asp )

Open your static (re branded donations page) in your html editor and at the very bottom of the page, just before the closing body tag, paste the following


Upload to the server, and that's it - all done.

Except to create the link for your customer

There are three fields and you can populate them all, or just the required amount. It's up to you.
You just need the ID's of the fields and remember if you add several words to the other two (text) fields, separate them with that is the "space" in URL language.
The three ID's are
amount
fromname
gcmessage

Here are a few example URL's you might use

www.somesite.com/payments.asp?amount=25.00 (will populate the amount field with $25.00)

www.somesite.com/payments.asp?amount=25.00&fromname=John%20Smith (will populate the amount field with $25.00 and the From field with John Smith)

www.somesite.com/payments.asp?amount=25.00&fromname=John%20Smith&gcmessage=Additional%20payment%20on%20order%2012345 (will populate the amount field with $25.00 and the From field with John Smith and the message field with Additional payment on order 12345)

With this feature, you can save any customer error and confusion by populating the field(s) for your customer and tell them - click the link, then click the submit button and proceed through checkout to pay the additional balance due.

We like to make email response templates where we can just fill in the blanks and quickly send the emails.
save this in a notepad file on your desktop.

Something like
*****************************************************************************************
Hello, firstname lastname
Here is the link to make the additional payment due on your order.
This link will populate the form with the details and you just click the "submit" button to load the shopping cart.
From there just complete the checkout process to pay the additional balance due.
If the link below does not populate with the amount due, you can type the amount in. It's amount

www.somesite.com/payments.asp?amount=amount&fromname=firstname%20lastname&gcmessage=Additional%20payment%20on%20order%20orderid

Thanks,
Acme Company
****************************************************************
With the template above, you can create the email in moments with 4 bits of info. Amount, first name, last name and order ID.





David
ECT Power User

Very handy. Thanks for the snippet of code.

thanks! very helpful

Thanks, we use it all the time here.

Thanks for this David.

Works perfectly on php

Will -
Bolton, Manchester UK

Oh man, we have needed this for so long! SO helpful

- Graham Slaughter

If there is interest, I can write some code that would be a basic html page where you can enter the info, click a button and the url is created for you.

Thanks for the offer. I'm guessing we would usually just use this in conjunction with a previously placed order. I'm asking my customer service guys for input to be sure, but we'll likely just create a button on the order page that would create an email with the link already there for them. I imagine both methods would be uniquely useful and valuable.

- Graham Slaughter

Hi Graham, We are already doing this in our admin. And we get the customer name and order ID right off the order.
We just have an input box to insert an amount, then click our button to create the URL.
We then fire that off in an email.

To take it a step further, we actually added some javascript that fires when they come from a URL and it activates the submit button to take the customer on to the cart.
Then, we use some javascript and css to hide the shipping options during checkout,
It creates a very simple and professional process for the customer.

If you have quite a few orders that customers owe you extra money, it's a beautiful thing to have them making the payment themselves rather than us jumping through multiple hoops to bill additional fees.