How the Cash Back Program Works (Plain-English Guide)

A non-technical overview of the cash back / wallet feature in the OrderSync app, written for non-developers: how customers earn money back, how they use it, and what happens when things change (like a cancelled order).

In Short

OrderSync now gives customers money back on their orders. When a driver delivers an order, the platform adds a small percentage of the order's food value to the customer's wallet as cash-back credit. Customers can then use that credit on a later order to pay less, like a discount they earned themselves.

The wallet is shown as a balance in EGP (Egyptian pounds). It has a few simple rules so everything stays fair for customers, restaurants, and drivers.

How a Customer Earns Cash Back

The customer places an order and pays normally.
The driver delivers the order. This is the moment cash back is triggered — cash back is only earned after delivery, not just by placing an order.
The platform adds cash back to the customer's wallet based on the food value of the order (not delivery fees).

Example: If the cash-back rate is 5% and the food total is 100 EGP, the customer's wallet goes up by 5 EGP.

Each restaurant can have its own cash-back percentage (and its own expiry, redemption threshold, and per-transaction cap). If a restaurant does not set a value, the platform-wide global default is used instead.

Two small conditions:

Cash back is only earned if the order had no discount/promo. If a coupon was applied, no cash back is earned for that order (no stacking to avoid double discounts).
The wallet balance is global to the customer — credits apply across all restaurants, not tied to the restaurant that earned them (even though each restaurant can set its own earning rate).

How a Customer Uses the Wallet

The wallet balance appears at the top of the app.
When checking out, the customer can pick "Use my wallet".
The chosen amount is taken off what the customer pays.
The restaurant still receives its full payment — the platform itself covers the wallet discount. So a cash-back redemption never reduces what a restaurant earns.

The amount used is limited to the wallet balance and to the order total, so cash back can cover the whole bill — including delivery fees — and bring the amount payable to 0 EGP.

The wallet credit stacks with item discounts, order discounts, and promo codes.

What Happens if an Order is Cancelled

Because cash back is "earned" only once an order is delivered, cancellation handles money fairly:

Cancellation refunds the order. Any cash back earned but tied to that order is taken back (removed from the wallet).
If the customer had already used wallet credit to pay for it, that credit is returned to their wallet so they don't lose it.
The wallet history shows exactly what was added and removed.

The result: a cancelled order never lets a customer keep cash back they hadn't really earned, and they never lose credit they legitimately had.

Credits Expire Eventually

Cash-back credit has a shelf life (for example 90 days by default). If a credit is not used before it expires, it is no longer available. This keeps customers engaged and keeps the program financially healthy.

How the Money Moves (for Business Owners)

There is a running ledger behind the scenes — a fully itemized history of every wallet change, including:

when credit was added (cash back earned, bonus, or a manual adjustment),
when credit was used (at checkout),
when credit expired, and
when credit was clawed back (cancel).

This ledger is write-protected — only the platform's system can change a balance; customers and restaurants can only view their own rows. Nothing can be edited or deleted once recorded, which keeps the money trail trustworthy and auditable.

What the Admin Can Do

Store/company administrators have a dedicated Cash Back section in their dashboard where they can set the platform-wide fallback defaults:

the cash back percentage (how much of the food value is returned),
the shelf life of credits (how many days until they expire),
the minimum order size before the wallet can be used, and
a cap on how much wallet credit can be redeemed per transaction.

Turning the program on or off is global and applies to every restaurant. Each restaurant page also has a Cash Back section where the partner can override the percentage, expiry, redemption threshold, and per-transaction cap for that restaurant. Blank fields inherit the global fallback, and a “Clear overrides” action restores full inheritance. The wallet itself remains global to the customer, so credits earned at one restaurant can still be used at another.

Admins can also manually add or remove credit for an individual customer (for example, goodwill compensation). Every manual change requires a written reason, and it all shows up in the ledger for transparency.

The One-Page Journey

 Place an order ──► Delivered ──► Cash back added to wallet (+)
                                          │
        Next order ──► "Use my wallet" ──► pays less (1)
                                          │
        Cancel?      ──► cash back removed, used credit returned
                                          │
        Too old?     ──► credit expires, no longer available

(1) Restaurant is paid in full; the platform covers the wallet discount.

Glossary

Term	Meaning
Wallet	The customer's cash-back balance, in EGP
Cash back	A percentage of the food value returned after delivery
Credit	A single piece of cash back in the wallet, with its own expiry date
Redeem / Use wallet	Applying wallet balance to pay less on an order
Claw back	Removing cash back from the wallet (e.g. due to cancellation)
Expire	A credit that was not used before its expiry date and is no longer available
Ledger	The full, locked audit history of every wallet change
Platform	OrderSync itself (as opposed to a restaurant or customer)

Notes for Developers

This is the plain-English companion to the fuller technical write-up in docs/cashback-wallet-engine.md. That document covers the data model, rules, and implementation details for engineers.