Gift Cards- multiple locations

[Juicegirl12345]

Hello,  My question is regarding Square plastic gift cards and E-gifts cards. I read some conversations on this topic from 2020 but am hoping for more current information. Thank you.

We just opened a second location (our first franchise) in a neighboring community. Same menu, same name, but different owners, banking info, etc

Will customers be able to use gift cards from my location at our new location? That seems like it would be best for the customer but what about redeeming location getting paid for the prepared food and merch?

If a customer buys a $100 gift card from location 1. Location 1 receives the payment for the gift card, minus the transaction fee. 

But the costumer then redeems the gift card at location 2. Does location 2 receive nothing for the $100 in food they put out for that order?

The second part of my question. I am in the process of setting up our second location weebly/square online store. I'm adding our first franchise to my online store as an additional location because that seems to make the most sense if we are sharing a large menu, descriptions and photos. 

How will this impact gift card sales and redemption? To avoid the issue described above: should I set our two locations up on entirely different locations? Separate pages and online, build their inventory from scratch to avoid the gift card issue?

This seems like a huge problem to me. With our locations being so close, we share the many of the same customers. How can we avoid customers being able to redeem a card at a store it wasn't purchased from. Our first location, the one I am running, sells a lot of gift cards. We are well established in our community. I don't want people purchasing $2,000 in gift cards in December and then redeeming them at our new franchise location as they are just starting out and we are trying to figure all this out. 

Thank you for your help.

[Donnie-M]

@Juicegirl12345 I know that for the gift card to be sharable the locations have to all be under the same account, at least that is how it is in my case.

You can always copy the item catalog and then import it to any other location or account.  I am not sure on pictures, but that wouldn't be too hard.

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5496-reporting-and-analytics-for-your-gift-cards 

"

Multiple Location Reporting

To track your gift cards from multiple locations, take a look at the "Inter-Location Payables & Receivables" report under the Gift Card tab in the Reports section of your online Square Dashboard.

This report shows gift card sales between your locations for the time frame selected. When the value is loaded onto a gift card, that location receives the gift card funds upfront. A location that redeems gift card value is owed sales value by the loading location:

• Receivable is the gift card value spent at this location that was loaded at another location.

• Payable is the gift card value loaded at this location that was spent at another location."

The actual sales are not realized until the gift card is redeemed.  Gift cards are considered a liability in accounting as it is you owe something to someone else.  For a franchise, if you owed the franchise money for the redemption of the gift card you would just simple pay that location or have the accountant enter that into the ledger on the back end.  That would be in your company books.  

I would never include a franchise in your company location, otherwise you gain the liability for the franchisee.  They should be a separate company and franchises are very specific and due to regulations, I would not want anything to close.  I think you could require access to check their sales/reporting etc., whatever your requirements would be.