AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

I have a client that wants to use a web service to validate a customer on the site with another system. That system will return a number that needs to be applied to the customer’s order as a credit.

My current thinking is to leverage the Gift Certificate functionality to discount the order.

My second question is on adding additional customer fields to the user. There is a ac_CustomFields table that I have seen referenced in the forums for what looks similar to what I want. Should I use the CustomFields Table or add columns onto the User table? What do you recommend?

My second question is on adding additional customer fields to the user. There is a ac_CustomFields table that I have seen referenced in the forums for what looks similar to what I want. Should I use the CustomFields Table or add columns onto the User table? What do you recommend?

The functionality for adding additional customer field is already there,so no need for any database modification. You can add the information in User.Settings property, which connects to a UserSettingsCollection class.
Please read the following post
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=7228

thank you for the link. This will be very helpful.