magento - shipping to multiple addresses but keeping payment to one charge - php

Question

I'm trying to find a way to allow an order to be split for multiple shipping addresses, but to keep the charge to the customer as a one time payment rather than having to charge for each shipment separately. Is there a way to do this? Currently, customers are getting charged multiple times, corresponding to their "multiple orders", as magento splits the orders up into many smaller ones. This is a problem from the credit card company side since they are getting suspicious of so many consecutive charges to the card.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Well, I'm not going to be able to provide a full solution because to be honest, the solution would take quite a bit of time and testing but I'll give out comprehensive information that could you to the right direction instead.
Basically, upfront -- there isn't an option to do this in default Magento.
So instead, we are going to rewrite a certain model called Mage_Checkout_Model_Type_Multishipping. If you're into the proper way of rewriting a model, please read this post by Inchoo.
But if you're lazy and looking into a quick way of rewriting, then please copy the whole file app/code/core/Mage/Checkout/Model/Type/Multishipping.php to app/code/local/Mage/Checkout/Model/Type/Multishipping.php
Once you've finished either of the two above, you can move on to rewriting stuff we need into this class. Check out the function around line 498:
public function createOrders()
{
$orderIds = array();
$this->_validate();
$shippingAddresses = $this->getQuote()->getAllShippingAddresses();
$orders = array();
if ($this->getQuote()->hasVirtualItems()) {
$shippingAddresses[] = $this->getQuote()->getBillingAddress();
}
try {
foreach ($shippingAddresses as $address) {
$order = $this->_prepareOrder($address);
$orders[] = $order;
....
}
foreach ($orders as $order) {
$order->place();
$order->save();
...
}
....
Mage::dispatchEvent('checkout_submit_all_after', array('orders' => $orders, 'quote' => $this->getQuote()));
return $this;
} catch (Exception $e) {
Mage::dispatchEvent('checkout_multishipping_refund_all', array('orders' => $orders));
throw $e;
}
}
So we can clearly see here that it's trying to create an order for each address and then (the most important part), triggering the checkout_submit_all_after event which is monitored by the payment modules (order and quote information are passed to all of the available/active payment modules and the payment method set inside the quote will determine if a certain payment module receiving the dispatched event can process it or not).
With that in mind, you can have a couple of options now:
1.) if you can live with just one order, then try and rewrite the createOrders routine to just combine all items again into one order, ->place() it, then pass into dispatchEvent for good measure.
2.) if you need multiple orders, well -- this is where it becomes convoluted as there's a slim chance that you can do either of the following:
create a payment first then link it into the orders (almost impossible to do)
create the orders and another 'combined' order in which you will pass into the dispatchEvent. sounds filthy and/or wrong so don't bother maybe?
So yeah, you guys are pretty much asking for a lot here so the best I can do is to shed some light on where you can first do serious damage. I'd do it myself, but it's above my pay-grade here.
Some additional pointers:
Watch out for the session methods right after order creation, know where they lead too
Also be wary of all the dispatched events. They all have a purpose why they are there and where they are.
Good luck!

Answer 2

Make sure this option is enabled:
If I'm not mistaken, when customer clicks one page checkout button, ship to multiple adresses option wouldn't be shown to him. But if he clicks on main checkout button it would.