Clearing Gift Cards

[SIDL]

I am a sole proprietor massage business. I don't sell a lot of plastic gift cards or e-gift cards. But this is changing rapidly. I think the availability to purchase gifts for clients with the card services is wonderful but it is a pain in the patooty!

Currently I am having to keep track of them manually (on paper). Why? Because when checking someone out if they don't have all of the documentation I can't clear them. Then, I have to remember to use my computer later to find the information, which is not easy*, and clear the balance or enter a new balance for them. Which is another step manually.

* This is a huge pet peeve at this time. Just locating the purchased gift cards and

e-gift cards to clear them is exhausting! 

I propose a Gift Card list be available in the Square Checkout App with full identifying information of the Gift purchase including the balance and a way to make the proper balance adjustments to each individual gift. Obviously this may be done manually, but so much more conveniently for the client and me.

Perhaps an automated receipt would be sent to the purchaser with a thank you.

When the balance is zero it should be moved to a completed gift list within the app.

This would be so helpful to have a simple place to review how many outstanding gifts are waiting in the wings. As a small business, knowing I have these financial obligations is important.  I have to be able to support these purchases for future sessions.

Now, I am not a tech wizard but surely this challenge is doable.  Hopefully one of your team members will be happy to take it on.

Thanks,

SIDL

[thefibreshop]

I am as well. Their only "resolution" was for us to contact customer support directly with the card number. I have a stack of maybe 20+ cards that I can't use until this is resolved. I'm not going to be on a call reading out each card number for them to try to manually reset. If the option on the POS is there for us to reset these cards, then it should work.

[JJ_]

After investigating this issue for you I was able to see that Engineer has been working actively to address this problem where clearing the balance doesn't unlink the card from the profile. It may sound redundant but we need both of you to reach out to be added to the current investigation to confirm the fix that is being worked on applies to the situation you are confronting  @LSBS and @thefibreshop. 

When you have a moment please reach out at 855-700-6000 between 6 am - 6 pm Pacific Time Monday-Friday. 

If you call outside of these hours, you will be required to enter your Customer Code to validate your account.

You can also get in touch with our Messaging and Email Support Teams here.

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @SIDL - 

Welcome back to the Community! 

I wanted to get some more information on your process and issues you're running into when it comes to those gift cards. These are the current steps for redeeming either type of Gift Card, but if this doesn't apply - please ignore. 

Are you running into an issue when a customer purchases gift cards for someone else? Or when they are trying to redeem this eGift Card? 

You mentioned wanting to access more of the purchaser's information through the app, correct? Is this just to find the card whenever a customer doesn't have the eGift Card number? 

What kind of hardware setup are you using for your business?

Appreciate your time for answering my follow-up questions. My goal is to make sure we are on the same page with what you're looking for. 

My goal is to gather as much information from you and what you're looking for, so the best course of action can be taken. 

[SIDL]

Hi there,

 I am using an iPad to check out my clients with app and the card reader. 

I will often have the non purchaser or gift recipient come in for their service without the actual printed e-card. Knowing the details of the original purchase in the app would make checkout much easier. It currently takes forever to find the details in the website for clearing.  It would be good to know the exact amount of the gift so charging for any amount over the original purchase could be adjusted.  

It usually takes a few months before the receivers of the e-card actually come in for their appointment. They forget to print out the gift or possibly even lost it. I still choose to honor them.  So you can see the need to have the details easily accessible. 

Thanks

[thefibreshop]

I'll send an email.

[thefibreshop]

Just spoke with support and according to the team it is working as intended. There is no way to remove the history on a card. You cannot reset a card to remove the transaction history. If there is already a $0 balance on the card you will get the error message. I just troubleshooted with the support team member by selling myself a $5 card and then resetting the card and it worked to zero out the gift card, but still did not remove the transaction history. 

One thing I did check though too is that when the customer checks the balance of their card online, they cannot see transaction history, only the current balance.

[thefibreshop]

I just got off the phone with support but I forgot to ask about the fact that these gift cards are most likely also linked to the initial customers' loyalty program, which would need to get wiped so it doesn't automatically register points to the next person who uses the card.

[rdemonds]

We have the same issue and it looks as if Square has decided to do nothing to solve this problem so that everyone can reuse these zeroed out plastic cards? From this thread, I see this has been going on a very long time.

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @rdemonds - 

Welcome to the Community. 

Thank you for adding your voice to this issue our sellers are seeing with the function of clearing Gift Cards. I have merged this thread with another in our Ideate Board. The Ideate Boards are a place where sellers can drop feature requests on what they would like to see across any platform with Square. 

Our Product Team will evaluate and let one of our Community Moderators will come back to update the status to keep everyone in the loop.