Gift cards, store credit and house accounts

Yes, and there is nothing to buy or connect. Gift cards are part of your restaurant management software here: you can hand one out over the counter, sell one on your ordering page like any dish, or let customers earn one. Every card is money you already hold, and the Gift cards page keeps the running total.

Open Marketing, then Gift cards, fill Amount in the panel called Sell a gift card and press Issue the card. The page comes back with the code so you can write it on a physical card and hand it over. That takes about ten seconds.

Add a menu item, give it a price, and tick This is a gift card. That is the whole setup. Customers using your online ordering for restaurants page add it to the basket like a sandwich, and the code reaches the buyer on WhatsApp once the order is finished.

Because that is where the money is. At the counter the customer has paid and is standing there waiting, so the code is made at that moment. On your ordering page nothing is paid until the rider is at the door, so the code is made when the order is finished. If the code appeared at checkout, anyone who could type an address would be handed live money.

No. A gift card here is a balance we hold for you, not a payment product. You take the money the way you always take it, and the card is a code the customer spends with you later.

Anything above zero and up to 50,000 in your own currency. The Amount box refuses anything outside that and tells you why.

GC followed by eight characters, in the shape GC-XXXX-XXXX. Letters and numbers that look alike are left out on purpose, so a code read out over the phone lands on the right card. Customers can type it with or without the dashes, and small letters are fine.

Only if you say so. When you issue a card by hand, Valid for (months, 0 = no end) starts at 12 and accepts 1 to 60 months, or 0 for no end date. Cards written by a rule use that rule's Expires after (days), which can also be left blank for never. Every card shows its expiry in the All cards list.

On the summary step of checkout there is a box marked Gift card code with a Use button beside it. They type the code, press Use, and the page shows how much is on the card and what is left to pay on the day. The rider then collects the difference.

On the Charge screen of your restaurant point of sale, your cashier picks Gift card as the way to pay and a panel appears asking for the Gift card code. Type or scan it, type the amount, and take the sale. We check the card is real, not cancelled, not expired, and has enough on it.

The rest is paid another way on the same sale. At the counter, take part on the card and the remainder in cash or on the card machine. On your ordering page the card comes off the total and the customer pays the difference when the order arrives.

Yes. A card holds a balance, not a single use. Spend 40 of a 100 card and 60 stays on it for next time. Click the code on the Gift cards page to see every movement with the order number beside it.

Yes. Click the code in the All cards list and use Top up. Type the amount and press Add. A cancelled card cannot be topped up.

Yes. Open the card and press Cancel this card. Whatever was left on it is written off and shows on the card's movements, so the story is still readable afterwards. Only an owner or a manager can cancel a card.

It goes back onto the same card, on its own, and exactly once. It does not matter whether the customer cancelled it from their order page or somebody on your team cancelled it on the orders board.

The money goes back onto that same card. The card is read from the sale itself rather than typed in, so a refund can never be pointed at a different card than the one that paid.

Nothing is lost. On your ordering page the code is only made when the order is finished, so a cancelled order never makes one. At the counter the code is made when they pay, so if you later refund that sale, the code is still live: cancel the card from the Gift cards page if you need to.

The Outstanding figure at the top of the Gift cards page. It adds up what is still sitting on live cards, which is money you have already taken and still owe. Beside it, Live cards counts how many are still worth something and Issued counts every card you have ever made.

Yes. Download CSV on the Gift cards page gives every card with its face value, what is left on it, its status and its expiry, plus a short summary block at the bottom with the one number an accountant writes down: what is still owed to customers.

No, and that is deliberate. In your restaurant POS system a sale paid with a gift card, store credit or a house account does not open the drawer and does not add to the cash your staff have to count. It shows on the shift report under its own name, because the money came in on a different day.

No. A coupon is a discount you give away. A gift card is money somebody has already paid you and can spend later. Coupons cost you margin at the moment they are used; gift cards were paid for up front and sit as a balance you owe.

A rule you write once that hands a customer a gift card the moment they reach a milestone. A hundred days of ordering earns a fifty card, and it arrives on its own with its code on WhatsApp. It is the simplest restaurant rewards program to run, because after you save the rule you do nothing. It sits happily beside a restaurant loyalty program of stamps and rewards, and neither gets in the other's way.

Five things, picked under What they have to do: Orders completed, Days they have ordered on, Total spent, Loyalty cards completed, and Years since their first order. Days means different days, so three orders on one day is one day.

Only for one of the five rules. Loyalty cards completed counts full sets of stamps, so it needs your stamp card switched on. The other four count orders, days, money and years, and work on their own.

No, and this is the most important thing to know about rules. A new rule counts from today. Somebody who has already ordered on two hundred days does not get two cards tomorrow; they get the next one they earn. Switching a rule on should never post a stack of cards for a past you never meant to pay for.

Yes, if you tick Give it again every time they reach it. A repeating rule needs a number of at least 2, because a repeating rule set to 1 would promise a gift card with every single order. The page refuses that and says why rather than quietly changing your number.

When an order is finished. Rules are checked at the moment an order completes, so a customer crosses the line on their next completed order rather than at midnight. Cancelled orders never count towards a rule.

Years since their first order counts whole years since a customer's first finished order with you. Because rules are checked when an order completes, the card reaches them on their first order after the year mark rather than on the date itself.

Three people, and none of it needs you. The customer gets a WhatsApp message with the reason, the amount and the code. Your managers group is told a card has been earned and what it cost, so nobody hears about it first from a customer at the counter. And if they carry your loyalty card on their phone, that says so too.

The buyer gets the codes on WhatsApp if you have their number, because a code written on paper in biro is lost by January and a message in their chat is not. Your managers group is told how many cards were sold and what they came to. A card you issue by hand from the Gift cards page messages nobody: the code is shown on the screen for you to write down.

Yes. Your words to the customer (optional) on the rule replaces our sentence with yours, up to 300 characters. Never type the amount, the code or the expiry yourself, because all three are added for you.

Cards already given keep their money either way. Switching off stops the rule handing out anything new. Removing it deletes the rule, and cards it already gave stay exactly as they are.

Store credit is money you put against a named customer, found by their phone number. A gift card is a code anybody holding it can spend. Use credit for an apology, a wrong order or a refund you would rather keep in the restaurant, and a gift card when somebody is buying a present.

Marketing, then Store credit, then the Add credit panel: their phone number, the amount, and a reason in the Why box. The reason is required, and it stays on the ledger with your name on it, which is what makes an apology from three months ago readable today.

Yes. Type a minus amount in the same Add credit form. Only an owner or a manager can do that, credit can never go below zero, and the adjustment sits on the ledger like everything else.

Not yet. Store credit is spent at the counter, on the Charge screen, by picking Store credit and typing their phone number. On your ordering page the balance customers can use is a gift card code.

The Who has credit list on the Store credit page, with the balance and the date of their last movement. Click a customer to read their whole ledger. Total owed at the top is the sum of everything you are holding for people.

A company or a regular who runs a tab and settles later. The office that orders lunch every Thursday and pays at the end of the month is the usual case. Your cashier picks House account on the Charge screen and chooses the name; you record their payment on the dashboard afterwards.

Set Limit on the account. The POS refuses the moment a sale would take the account past it, and tells the cashier what the limit is and what is already owed. Zero means no limit, which is what you want for somebody you trust completely and nothing else.

Open Settings, then House accounts, click the account name, set What to Payment received, fill Amount and a Note such as the transfer reference, and press Record. Their balance comes down and the payment appears on the statement.

A correction you make by hand when neither a sale nor a payment fits, for example writing off a small difference. Pick Adjustment (signed) and use a plus amount to add to what they owe or a minus amount to reduce it. Every adjustment carries your note.

The statement is on the account page: every sale with its order number, every payment, and every adjustment, newest first. Download CSV on the House accounts page gives you the same thing as a file to email or attach to an invoice.

Open the account and press Close the account. A closed account can no longer be charged at the counter, and the POS says so plainly. Its statement stays readable, and Reopen brings it back whenever you want.

These screens belong with the counter, so they are greyed out with Needs the POS add-on until the add-on is on. They are fully open while your free trial is running, so you can set everything up before you buy anything. Gift cards and store credit also sit with the loyalty features in your plan.

The balance lives with us, so the code has to reach Get Menu to be checked. While a device is offline the sale waits in the device's own queue and goes up on its own when the connection comes back, and the card is checked then. If you need the money to be certain at that moment, take cash or the card machine instead.

Anybody on your team who can reach these screens can issue a gift card, top one up and add store credit. Cancelling a gift card and taking store credit back are owner and manager only, because both take away money somebody was promised. House accounts are owner and manager only throughout: setting one up, recording a payment and closing it.

No. The total is worked out first, with any coupon, loyalty reward or member discount already in it, and the gift card then pays as much of that total as it can hold. It changes what is collected on the day, not what the food cost.

The Use button only allows a few tries from the same place before it stops answering for a while, and it never says anything about a card that does not exist beyond not knowing it. Codes are eight characters from a deliberately narrow alphabet, so guessing one is not a realistic way in.

Yes. Click the code on the Gift cards page and the movements table shows every step: issued, topped up, redeemed, refunded or cancelled, with the amount, the order number and a note. The same view exists for store credit and for every house account.

They are one of the few restaurant rewards programs that pay you before they cost you: the money arrives today and the food is served later, and a good share of every card sold is spent above its own value. If you take one thing from this page, sell a card at the counter today and write one earning rule this week.