Virtual or Physical voucher option

I want to create a product that can be either an email voucher (and I control the text of the email) or physically posted. I want this to be the same voucher with the same price.

How to I use characteristics / variants to do that? (I'm using Business version)

Hello,

Using Characteristics / Variants can be a solution, but if you are using the business version and that there's no differences between the virtual and physical version, then the best solution will be to directly use custom item fields :
www.hikashop.com/support/documentation/1...orm.html#description

I don't understand how you'd use custom fields to do that.

I basically want the customer to choose whether to receive their voucher by email or through the post. If they choose email, a specific automatic email is sent otherwise that postal option is recorded on the order form.

Hi,

Like with the characteristics/variants system, you can create a custom field of the table "item" and of the type "single dropdown" with two values configured in it, so that the customer can choose between virtual and physical.

Then you have the problematic of sending the voucher by email based on what is selected.
In that case, I would recommend to use HikaSerial's voucher system and the characteristic/variant system.
In the virtual voucher variant, you can select a serial pack of HikaSerial so that HikaSerial will automatically attach the voucher to the order confirmation email that is sent to the customer after the payment.

Thanks.

It might be easier (and maybe even clearer for the user?) to have two categories of products - one delivered by email and one by post. The two related products could always use the related products feature.

If I go this way ... Is there a way for the system to create a PDF voucher with preset text and add the customer name to the pdf or can it send a plain automatic email in response to virtual product purchases with their name as the name field.

Hello,

If you mean have a virutal product which is generated in order to have different code from a customer to another, their no native solution in HikaSHop, and that's why HikaSerial exist.
For the automatic email, you can use the Order notification and provide with it a download url.
As we're not HikaSerial specialist, maybe that will required some custom in your email but can't be sure of it?
Maybe you can have questions for HikaSerial forum ?

Regards