Managing gift cards

Every gift card — bought or created manually — is listed in Gift Cards in the admin menu.

Statuses

• Active — has a balance and can be used.
• Fully redeemed — the balance is zero.
• Disabled — cannot be used at checkout (disabled by you, or because the purchase order was cancelled or refunded).
• Expired — the expiry date has passed (Pro).

The gift card screen

Click a code to open it. You can:

• change the recipient, sender name and message, and enable or disable the card;
• adjust the balance with a reason that is saved in the history;
• resend the gift card email;
• see the full history: issued, used for orders, returned from cancelled orders, adjustments and emails;
• delete the card (disable it instead if you want to keep its history).

Creating gift cards manually

Gift Cards > Add Gift Card creates a card without an order — for giveaways, store credit or replacements. Enter the amount, optionally your own code (at least 6 letters or digits), the recipient and a message, and email it right away.

Orders

• Gift cards used for an order are shown in the order totals (admin, emails, My Account) as Gift card ••••ABCD.
• The order total is what the customer pays with other payment methods. If gift cards cover everything, no payment method is needed.
• If the order is cancelled or fully refunded, the amount is returned to the gift card automatically. If the order is restored, the amount is taken again.
• Gift cards bought with an order are disabled when that order is cancelled or refunded, and enabled again if it is restored.
• If a paid order did not issue its cards (e.g. it was created manually), use the order action Issue missing gift cards.

Security

• Codes are 16 random characters (80 bits) from an alphabet without look-alike characters.
• Balances change with single conditional database updates, so a card can never be spent twice at the same time.
• Failed code lookups are limited per visitor (10 per 15 minutes by default) to stop guessing.