Common Questions

POS Integration / Core Concepts

Common Questions

Here are some answers to common questions regarding integrating LevelUp into your point-of-sale system:

Should I still print a paper receipt?

LevelUp users do not expect paper receipts. We email them detailed receipts showing any credit applied, any progress made towards unlocking loyalty credit and custom messages from the merchants. They also receive a push notification and in-app receipt instantly with all the same details. A paper receipt is not expected and potentially confusing as it won’t have all the information the LevelUp receipt will.

Why do I need to send LevelUp item level data?

For a number of reasons:

LevelUp uses this data to provide richer analytics to merchants. Merchants can target offers to specific items and we need to know what items were purchased to know what credit/discounts to apply.

Brand advertisers can target offers to incentivize purchases of their products at merchants. This drives additional sales to merchants, funded by someone else’s advertising spend.

Because these three features are core value drivers for the LevelUp merchant ecosystem, we require that POS systems deliver item level detail along with each transaction submitted to LevelUp.

Should I charge sales tax on the full amount of the order even the user is redeeming savings?

Sales tax should be calculated as normal per the rules already configured within your POS. Even if an earned reward is being redeemed by the consumer, sales tax should be charged on the full amount of the order as the “credit” is actually an earned currency (a form of money) and thus not exempt from sales tax. Individual state laws may vary on this point, but the guaranteed safest approach is to charge sales tax on the full amount of the order and pay that full amount of sales tax to the relevant government entity.

Can I store the merchant’s password in my point-of-sale for later usage?

No. You should not store anything but the merchant’s access token. You won’t need and shouldn’t use the password for anything but the initial authentication.

Do I need to do anything special for a split-tender?

A split-tender is any time part - but not all - of the check will be paid using LevelUp. If you are using our SDK then you do not need to do anything special to handle split-tender scenarios. Otherwise, some calculations are required to submit the correct values to the LevelUp API in a split-tender scenario. We recommend using our Proposed Order Calculator C# / Java which handles all the special cases for you. You tell the Proposed Order Calulator how much is owed on the check, how much the user wants to pay, and a few other small details, and it will generate the Proposed Order/Complete Order API inputs for you. The repositories’ readmes describe these calculations in more detail.