Gift cards

A gift card is a voucher that a customer gives and that the recipient then uses at the workshop, in one or several goes, until the balance runs out. It requires built-in invoicing, the Gift cards feature turned on (Settings › Features; it also turns on Payments and cash register, see Without gift cards) and the Take payments, refunds and deposits permission (Administrator and Reception roles); the list in the Cash page requires viewing payments. See Roles.

Sell a gift card

Click New › Gift card, at the top of any page. The dialog has three steps, and nothing is recorded before the last one: the sale and its payment are recorded together.

1. Amount and buyer. Choose €25, €50 or €100, or enter another amount (€1 at least). The buyer is a customer of the directory; without a linked customer, the sale is made to a Walk-in customer, with no name: Garage+ keeps no buyer name for a walk-in.
2. Recipient, message and validity. The name of the person the card is for and a message are optional, are printed on the card and kept with it: a first name is enough, write nothing sensitive. Validity is 12 months by default, from 1 to 36 months.
3. Payment. Choose the method (cash, card, cheque, transfer…). For cash, enter the amount received: Garage+ shows Change due. Payment by a third-party payer or by another gift card is not offered.

Click Sell and take €X. The card receives an 8-character code, shown in large type.

Print the card

Print the gift card opens an A4 PDF; Print (80 mm) a ticket for a roll printer. It shows the garage, the value, “offered by” and “offered to”, the message, the expiry date, the code and its QR code. The mention “Multi-purpose voucher: VAT due on use” appears on it: VAT is only due when the card is used to pay, not at the sale. The PDF can be printed again at any time from the list (see below).

Use a gift card

In the payment dialog as in the one of the counter sale, choose the Gift card method (under Other ▾ when the four usual methods are shown):

• enter the code (spaces and dashes are ignored);
• Garage+ shows the available balance and the validity date, and suggests the smaller of the balance and the amount left to pay;
• if the balance does not cover everything, pay the rest with another method (“Pay the rest with another method”).

An expired, cancelled or insufficient card is refused, and nothing is recorded. The card keeps its balance until the next use.

Refund a sale paid by gift card

The share of an invoice paid by a gift card goes back to that card, never in cash or by another method: the card is credited again and its balance goes up. For a refund, choose the Gift card method for that share, then another method for the rest. An expired card is still credited, without becoming usable again. The credit note of a counter sale (Correcting a sale) returns these shares by itself: each card is credited again with what it had paid.

On the Z report

Selling a card is a payment taken the day it is sold. Using it is not a second one: the Z report shows the line “of which paid by gift card” and the “Collected excluding gift cards used” apart; the day’s total in the Cash page does not count it.

Follow the cards

In the Cash page, the Gift cards tab lists the cards from newest to oldest: code, issue date, buyer, recipient, value, balance, expiry and status (Valid, Expired or Cancelled). Print opens the card’s PDF again. The list is read in pages of 25.

Cancel a sale

A card sold by mistake is cancelled with the usual Cancel the payment action on the sale’s payment (see Take a payment): the card becomes Cancelled and can no longer be used. A card can be neither edited nor deleted.

Every sale and every use is sealed in the fiscal journal like any payment (Compliance).