This article will show you the basics of selling on Groupon, how Groupon integrates with ROLLER including information on products, bookings, and redeeming in POS.
In this article:
- Overview
- Getting started with Groupon
- Configuring Groupon offers
- Guest view
- Checking in Groupon bookings
- Reporting on Groupon Sales
Overview
Groupon features daily deals, which are available for purchase during a limited period of time specified on the deal page.
The ROLLER Groupon Integration allows you to:
- List products from ROLLER on Groupon.
- Manage your Groupon offer's capacity and price in ROLLER.
- Check-in Groupon offers in POS using the same process as other ROLLER bookings.
- Include sales of Groupon offers in your ROLLER reports.
- Updates in ROLLER sync with Groupon every 1 hour.
Supported products & features
Groupon offers are configured as regular products in ROLLER with a few additional settings. Currently, the product types and features
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Product descriptions and images are not supported and will need to be added via the Groupon portal.
Getting started with Groupon
Before using the ROLLER / Groupon integration you must first:
- Decide what ROLLER products you wish to sell via Groupon
- Negotiate a contract with Groupon to sell those products at defined prices
Once you have completed the above steps, it's time to setup your Groupon products in ROLLER.
Configuring Groupon offers
To get started with this integration, you must have an account with Groupon and create or update your offers on Groupon.
Configure ROLLER products, prices & availability
- In Venue Manager, navigate to Products > Create product.
- Select to create a session or standard pass for your Groupon offer.
- Products should be configured as you would usually configure a session or standard pass. If you are a HQ Venue user, you can configure Groupon offers as HQ products and then pull those down to individual venues as you can other products.
- Ensure the ticket price is inclusive of taxes. Groupon requires that your product price includes all taxes.
Configure Groupon specific settings
In the product, navigate to Ticket Types and select the advanced settings for the specific ticket. Select Groupon > Item is sold on Groupon and complete the following mandatory fields from Groupon products:
- Sale Price – The price the item is sold for in Groupon
- Original Price – The value of the item before the Groupon discount. Shows as a strikethrough price on the Groupon checkout
- Merchant Price – The amount you receive of the sale price. If you don't have this set up correctly as per your agreement with Groupon it will negatively impact your reporting.
ROLLER & Groupon product mapping
ROLLER Product IDs must be given to Groupon for the products corresponding to the deals being offered. These IDs can be located in the ROLLER VM under Settings > Integrations > Groupon, as seen below.
Configuration Settings
Disable date selection - This removes the calendar on the Groupon checkout for Standard Pass products. This will create bookings with a booking date for the day of the transaction, and should be used for Passes that are valid for a date range from purchase date.
Report Groupon merchant price as revenue - This will use the Groupon merchant price (the value paid to you rather than the value paid by the guest) as the revenue value reported in ROLLER.
Modifying products
Once your products are live in Groupon, any modifications to the product name, pricing and availability may take up to an hour to sync through to Groupon.
Guest view
The ROLLER fields and settings that will be displayed on the Groupon checkout are:
- Ticket names & prices (not product name this is configured in Groupon)
- Groupon specific settings
- Available dates/times
When a Groupon deal is purchased, the shopper will receive a confirmation email from Groupon which contains their ROLLER booking ID. This can be scanned or typed into the ROLLER POS search field in order to locate and check in the booking.
Checking in Groupon bookings
Groupon bookings will appear like any other booking in ROLLER, with customer details and associated tickets that have been purchased.
Staff can Check in bookings made via Groupon as per any normal booking. Optional features such as attaching waivers and adding additional items to bookings can also be performed on Groupon bookings.
Checking in standard passes used as vouchers
Standard passes sold via Groupon can also be checked in as per any normal booking. However if the standard pass is being used as a voucher for a session pass product, then you will need to have a method to allocate a session time to guests in order to manage capacity.
For example, you could create a $0 Groupon Voucher product (session type product) where you can select session time, then complete the booking without payment in order to allocate the guests to a specific session time.
Reporting on Groupon Sales
Since Groupon sales create bookings in ROLLER, they will appear on your regular ROLLER reports.
There are some important differences in how Groupon sales report than regular ROLLER bookings, which are outlined below.
Groupon tender type
Groupon sales will have a transaction against them using the Voucher tender type, rather than Credit Card. This is because the transaction has not been processed via your payment provider.
Reports which have a Payment Type filter will allow you to filter specifically for these transactions.
Deferred Revenue
Bookings created in ROLLER from Groupon sales will generate deferred revenue. This deferred revenue is separated from your regular deferred revenue and gift card deferred revenue, into an ‘other deferred revenue’ field. This field appears as a column on the Revenue Recognition Report.
As per regular deferred revenue, this other deferred revenue will be shifted over to recognised revenue when the booking is redeemed or expired, along with any associated tax if applied to the Groupon product.
Reporting on Groupon Sales
The best way to report on the sales and revenue generated from Groupon products is to use the Detailed Product Sales Report. This report allows you to filter specifically to Groupon products.
Tax on Groupon Sales
Groupon requires that your product price includes all taxes.
For example, if you sell a $10 Groupon with a 5% tax rate set, $10 will be the after-tax sale amount and the 5% of tax will come off of the $10.