Skip to content

Loyalty & Rewards

VMX POS includes a customer rewards (loyalty) program: enrolled customers earn Reward $ on qualifying purchases and redeem them on later sales at the register. Every customer account carries a Loyalty flag and a Reward $ balance, and the register has a built-in $ - Reward redemption button.

Availability and per-client program rules

The rewards program is configured per-client by VMX. What is universal: the Loyalty flag and Reward $ balance on every customer account, the Earns Rewards checkbox on items, and the $ - Reward redemption button at the register. What varies by store — all set up by VMX for your specific program:

  • The earn rate (for example, a percent of qualifying purchases) and whether rewards accrue as dollars or points
  • Which customers earn (some programs also require a specific customer Class)
  • Which items and departments are excluded, and whether discounted items earn
  • Seasonal earning or redemption windows, and yearly or balance caps
  • Whether a sale that redeems rewards also earns them (most programs don't allow "double dipping")
  • Redemption rules: minimum amounts, $5/$10 increments, or per-sale maximums
  • Whether rewards expire

If you want to start a rewards program, change your earn rate or exclusions, or your register doesn't show a $ - Reward button, contact help@vmxllc.com.

Enroll a customer in rewards (the Loyalty flag)

A customer earns rewards only when their profile has Loyalty set to Yes. On the customer profile page (Customers, then open the customer):

  1. Find the Loyalty field — a Yes / No button pair. New customers default to Yes.
  2. Set it to No for accounts that should never accrue rewards (for example, wholesale or internal accounts).

Some programs additionally limit earning to specific customer classes (the Class field on the profile) — that list is configured by VMX for your program.

Customers can also self-enroll from their phone through your store's public signup form — see Signup Link for the QR code and printable counter card. Accounts created that way are tagged with a [Public Signup] memo, which is what the Rewards Signup Cohort report's Public signup only filter matches.

View or adjust a customer's Reward $ balance

The customer profile page shows the current balance in the Reward $ field. It is display-only for most employees.

Employees with the Change Credit Limit permission (set on the Admin permissions page) can adjust it:

  1. Open the customer profile and click the Reward $ value.
  2. In the prompt — "Enter NEW Reward Dollars amount:" — type the new balance and press OK.
  3. On success you'll see "Reward Dollars updated!" and the field refreshes.

This sets the balance outright (it is not an add/subtract), so use it for corrections and goodwill adjustments.

Exclude an item from earning rewards (Earns Rewards checkbox)

On the inventory item page, the Earns Rewards checkbox ("Do customers buying this item earn rewards?") controls whether purchases of that item accrue rewards. It is checked by default. Uncheck it for items that shouldn't earn — gift cards, labor, delivery, and similar are commonly excluded.

Programs that earn on qualifying items respect this flag. Department- and division-level exclusions for your program are configured by VMX — contact help@vmxllc.com to change them.

How customers earn Reward $

When a sale is completed for a customer whose profile has Loyalty set to Yes, the earned amount is calculated from the qualifying items on the receipt using your program's rules (rate, exclusions, windows — configured by VMX), added to the customer's Reward $ balance, and recorded on the receipt. Points-style programs work the same way; the balance is shown as points instead of dollars.

Notes that apply across programs:

  • Returns subtract rewards the same way sales add them, but the balance is never taken below zero.
  • On most programs, a sale where the customer redeems Reward $ does not also earn them.
  • Earning happens when the sale is completed — the customer must be on the sale at that point for the purchase to earn.

See a customer's rewards at the register

When a customer with a positive balance is attached to a sale, the register's customer status area shows a blue Reward: $ badge with their balance. Depending on your program's configuration this badge may instead read Points:, Redeemable Reward: $ (balance rounded down to your program's redemption increment), or show progress toward the next reward.

Redeem Reward $ at the register

On most programs, redeemed rewards are applied as a Reward $ discount line on the sale — they reduce the subtotal before tax. (A few programs are configured by VMX to take rewards as a tender instead, after tax.)

  1. Attach the customer to the sale. Without one, the register shows NO CUSTOMER SELECTED.
  2. To redeem a specific amount, type the dollar amount on the register keypad first. To redeem the maximum, skip this step — pressing the button with no amount applies the full sale subtotal, limited by the customer's balance.
  3. Press the $ - Reward button (a star icon on touch-screen register layouts; on some registers it is inside the $ - Other Tender... menu). Its tooltip reads "Apply a customer's reward points to the sale."
  4. The Reward $ line is added and the totals update. The customer's balance is reduced when the sale posts.

Rules the register enforces:

  • Rewards must be applied before any tender is taken — otherwise you'll see NO REWARD AFTER TENDERING. Remove the tender first if you need to add rewards.
  • The amount is capped at the sale subtotal and at the customer's available balance. If the balance is zero: "The customer does not have any available rewards."
  • On a return, an amount must be typed first — otherwise: $ AMT REQUIRED FOR REWARD RETURN.
  • Your program may enforce minimums, increments ($5 or $10 multiples), or per-sale maximums; the register shows a message with the allowed amount when one applies.

To take the reward back off the sale, click the Reward $ line and confirm "Remove reward $?".

Voiding a completed sale that redeemed rewards puts the redeemed Reward $ back on the customer's account.

Rewards Signup Cohort report

Reports, then Rewards Signup Cohort (under the Customers heading in the report sidebar). The report answers: of the customers who signed up during a specific window — typically a weekend event — how many came back, and what have they spent since? It compares two signup windows side by side, so you can measure whether a signup push (tent sale, QR-code campaign) produced customers who return.

As the page itself states: "The customers who signed up (record created) in the selected window — typically a weekend — and what those specific accounts did since they signed up." Its sibling, the Customer Acquisition report, counts first-time buyers; this report zooms into one signup cohort.

Rewards Signup Cohort — filters and presets

  • Signup window / Comparison window — start and end dates (YYYY-MM-DD) of the two cohorts. Defaults: last completed weekend (Saturday–Sunday) vs. the weekend before.
  • Include non-loyalty customers — by default only accounts with Loyalty = Yes are counted; check this to include everyone.
  • Public signup only — only customers created through the public web signup form (QR code / signup link). Excludes accounts created at the register or by online orders.
  • Only current store (activity) — shown on multi-store setups. Limits the activity numbers (visits, spend) to receipts from your current store; cohort membership itself is company-wide, since a customer record doesn't belong to a store.
  • Division (activity) — shown when you have multiple divisions; limits activity to receipts in that division.
  • Compare — runs the report.

Preset buttons fill the windows for you: Last weekend vs prior weekend, This weekend vs last weekend, Last 30 days vs prior 30, YTD vs last YTD, This month vs same month last year, and Last 8 weekends (breakdown).

Rewards Signup Cohort — reading the comparison table

Each row compares the signup window against the comparison window:

  • Sign-ups — customer records created in the window (with the percent change between windows).
  • Opt-in mix — of those signups, how many you can reach by email, text, or both ("both" = a complete profile).
  • Profiles completed — existing customers (created before the window) who added text-message opt-in during it; a measure of staff completing older profiles, separate from new signups.
  • Came back since — cohort members with at least one receipt after their own signup date, with the percentage.
  • Still active (30d / 90d) — cohort members with a receipt in the last 30 / 90 days.
  • Spend since — total receipt subtotals for the cohort after signup, with the average per cohort member.
  • Visits since — receipts after signup, with the average.
  • Rewards earned / used — Reward $ the cohort earned on post-signup purchases / Reward $ they redeemed.

Rewards Signup Cohort — weekends breakdown

The Last 8 weekends (breakdown) view shows one row per weekend cohort with columns Weekend, Sign-ups, Came back, Spend since, Avg spend, Visits since, Rewards earned, and Rewards used. Click a weekend's date range to open the full comparison view for that cohort.

Rewards Signup Cohort — per-customer drill-down and CSV export

Below the comparison table, Signup-window accounts lists every customer in the signup window: # (customer number), Name, Signed up, Email opt-in, Text opt-in, Visits since, Spent since, Last seen, Days to 1st repeat, Rewards redeemed (since signup), and Rewards balance (current). Check Show only "never returned" to filter to customers with zero visits since signup — a ready-made outreach list. Columns sort on click.

Export signup window CSV / Export comparison CSV download the same per-customer data plus contact columns (email, phone, cell phone, opt-in flags), suitable for a mailing list or spreadsheet follow-up.

Rewards on printed receipts

Receipts can print the customer's reward information after a sale. If your program earns seasonally and you'd like the rewards messaging hidden off-season (or shown again), contact help@vmxllc.com — VMX can toggle it for your store.