Parent registration using a coupon

Joomla 2.5.1
Jomsocial 2.4.2
JSPT 3.4.767
Moodle 2.2.1+ (Build: 20120223)
Joomdle 0.7

I have managed to operate the our school website, uploading users manually for this school year, but I missed parent to student relationship since I didn't allow parents' registration. Now that I'm preparing for the next school year, I would like to have parents register and then add students to their account (the way joomdle relate parents to students) one important detail here is that our school does not accept any online payment method (so paypal is not an option for me) hence I want to control the registration to parents who payed their fees through the school accounting department. and that's what made me think of the following scenario:

1. Parent Pay the fees to the accounting department.
2. Accounting department give the parent a printed 100% discount coupon with unique number
3. Parent use this one-use coupon during the website registration processes to be allowed to register without paying anything online.
4. Parent add students to their account.

to achieve this I have some questions:
Which joomla shopping component to choose for this to work? (the component should support one-use unique coupons and bulk coupon code uploading)
Will I need to use AEC or Payplans for this to work?

any help or insight on this is greatly appreciated.

My first thoughts, Antonio may have others.

For what you have described, I don't think you will need AEC or Payplans. All three of the carts (Hika, Tienda, VM) will accept coupons, to my knowledge. I have not used the coupon process for either but recall a comment or two related to VM not necessarily handling the post 'payment' as well as they could when using coupons.

Another option would be for the accounting department to include the parents email address in the system as a pre-registration.

One final one, perhaps not that nice for you but nice for me:
- Parents pay me (through Visa / Paypal) and register
- I send a cheque to your school less a small administration fee
Clearly this option is the best

Thanks Chis for your reply, on a second thought I don't know why I thought about using AEC or Payplans in the first place! Its my first time to try any shopping cart component, I just hope one of them will support coupons csv/xls uploading. Do you prefer a shopping cart component over the others for reasons related to joomdle use?

Chis Rogers wrote: Another option would be for the accounting department to include the parents email address in the system as a pre-registration.

I didn't get your point here Chis! How would it help to have the email of the parent before registering?

Chis Rogers wrote: - I send a cheque to your school less a small administration fee

Haha I guess I should have thought of that first :evil:

Don't really have a preference for either shopping cart. I guess there are pros and cons of both and you really need to look at your specific needs. From Joomdle's perspective, it was easier to integrate Tienda and Hikashop compared to VM1. VM2 is better but still under going some changes I understand. I think Hikashop is probably the most stable but costs money. For me, I am still using VM1 because I need Interamind reports and VMBatch Invoice. Thus you really need to look at your full requirements to make a comparison.

With regards to the accounting department / admin, I was thinking of changing the process such that parents did not register on their own. Instead during payment, they provide their email address. That email address would be used to register a parent account by your admin staff. The parents would receive an email once created with their password, then they could create any other accounts they needed. So rather than providing a coupon, change the process. Again, this may not be feasible for you depending on your needs - just a thought.