Admin panels › Marketing
Gift Cards
Stored-value cards your customers buy and redeem, with balances, messages and a full history of where every amount went. 4 parts.
Quick links
Where to find it:WP Admin › EasyCart › Marketing › Gift Cards
The cards
List, record and behaviour
Every card and its balance, what sits inside one, and how redemption works at checkout.
The gift card list
Every card, its balance, and whether it is behaving
no stored settingsOne row per card, showing the code, the current balance, where it came from, when it was redeemed and its message. A gift card is stored value rather than a discount: the balance is money the customer already paid you, and spending it is not a reduction in revenue but the delivery of something already sold.
The tiles count All cards, the Outstanding balance across them, cards Used up, and cards Bought by customers. Cards arrive two ways. Most are bought by a customer through the store, and carry the order they came from. Others are made with Add gift card, typically as a goodwill gesture or a prize, and those show Created by admin so you can tell issued value from sold value.
Cards can be searched by code, and Columns chooses which columns show.
For a step by step walkthrough, see How to Sell Gift Cards.
💡 Note: Gift card balances are money you have already banked. They are not discounts, and they do not appear in the discount figure on Reports.
Inside a card
Code, balance, message and the full history
no stored settingsThe Code is what the customer types at checkout, 12 to 20 letters and digits, which Generate can make for you. It can be changed, and if you do, the purchase and redemption history moves with it rather than being orphaned, so correcting a code is safe.
The Balance is what is left to spend; redemptions at checkout reduce it automatically. The Message is the note that travels with the card, either written by the buyer at checkout or added by you. Card health confirms the balance available and that the code is valid at checkout.
The History is the important part. It records the purchase and every redemption, with the order each one was spent against and the amount. When a customer says their balance is wrong, this is the answer, and it is also what tells you whether a card was drained in one go or spent gradually.
Deleting a card sits in a danger zone, because the holder can no longer redeem it. Orders keep their history, and the delete can be undone for 15 minutes.
⚠️ Careful: Deleting a gift card stops the holder redeeming value they have already paid for. If a card is being misused, change its code instead: the history follows the new code.
How cards behave at checkout
What the balance can pay for, and where that is decided
no stored settingsWhether shoppers can redeem a card at all, and whether the balance can cover shipping, tax, fees and tips as well as the products, are settings on the Checkout panel rather than properties of an individual card.
That second setting is worth a moment. Allowing the balance to cover the grand total is what most customers expect from a gift card, and restricting it to the product subtotal leaves a recipient paying shipping on a present somebody else bought them, which tends to produce a complaint rather than a sale.
A card pays exactly what the order still costs, like any other payment: the price after any offer plus shipping, tax, fees and tips, so it is never charged more than the order and the total never goes below zero. A partly spent card keeps its remaining balance for next time; there is no need to issue a new one for the difference. A card with nothing left says This gift card has already been used up.
When an order paid with a card is cancelled, Give gift card balances back when an order is cancelled, on by default, puts what it took back onto the card; moving the order out of Cancelled takes it again. With PRO, refunding an order that a gift card paid in full offers Refund to Gift Card: the amount goes back onto the card and no money is sent.
💡 Note: The redemption box, whether a balance covers shipping and tax, and giving balances back on a cancelled order are set under Settings › Cart & Checkout › Checkout, not on the card. Most stores should let the balance cover the grand total.
Square gift cards
Take the cards you sell at your register, and sell cards that work there
no stored settingsWith WP EasyCart PRO and Square connected, Settings › Payment › Square has a Gift cards group:
Customers pay with Square gift cards: they type the card number in the gift card box. It pays what it holds, and while it is in the cart, only card payments through Square are offered for the rest. It needs Square as your payment gateway.
Gift cards you sell are Square gift cards: each card your store sells is made in your Square account once the order is paid, and its number is emailed to the recipient, so it works at your register too.
A store connected to Square before gift cards were offered is asked to Connect Square again and allow gift cards when Square asks. Refunding or cancelling an order that sold a Square gift card takes what is unspent off that card.
Keep going
Related panels
The redemption box and what a balance can cover.
Discounts, which reduce revenue where gift cards do not.
The orders cards are bought with and spent against.
Gift card emails and whether they carry product images.
The customers buying and holding cards.
Where gift card revenue appears, and where it does not.
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