Manual gift cards

[kkcarlton]

Hi,

I work at a small Cafe with a square system. They have been selling paper gift certificates. Wondering if there's an easy way to apply the gift certificates. Here is what we currently do. We have gone to the menu to add an item called gift certificate with a certain amount. When the customer comes in, after they have added all their items, they hand us the gift certificate. I then go back to the item menu, find that item, and change the amount on that item to the amount the customer has left. Then I back out to the checkout menu, select the gift card with the newl and right amount, and apply it. This is a lengthy process which takes way too long if we have customers in line. Is there a way to enter a manual gift certificate amount on the fly as I'm checking out the customer?

Thank you

[ryanwanner]

When we used paper Gift Certificates, we would do things a little differently. 

For issuing the certificates, we were pretty close with what you do: a variable-priced “Gift Certificate” item set with no taxes. When the customer would purchase it, we would write in the dollar amount they bought on the certificate. We also had some pre-printed dollar amount certs. 

When the customer redeemed the cert, we would use the Other tender type, typing in GC in the field that comes up when you choose the Other tender. We would then cross off the remaining dollar amount and write the new value post-transaction followed by the staff’s initials. We would do this even for a fully cleared cert just in case the cert made it back out into the wild. 

In the office, we coordinated with our bookkeeper to make sure all certificates sold went into a liability account on Quickbooks that was then deducted the dollar amount of the redemption when the certificate was redeemed. 

You should also  check out Square’s gift card program. You can get a pretty great deal on physical gift cards. Look for the gift cards link on your dashboard. 

Hope this helps!

[GlassJudy]

We use paper GCs too, and that's exactly the way we do it, @ryanwanner.

We found that even with Square's discounted fees for purchasing gift cards they were more than we wanted to pay when ours cost around 10-15 cents for the two-part paper ones.

[pessosices]

We do something similar, but instead we use a variable Discount called Gift Certificates for redeeming them. 
When someone uses a Gift Certificate to pay, the employee taps on the Discount, and types in the Amount left on the certificate. It's super simple and works really well for us!

[GlassJudy]

We did that for a while too @pessosices but the problem is that a discount is applied before sales tax, when for the gift card-redeemed sale, sales tax should be paid.  We found that a gift cert is different from a discount, so that's why we do it the way we do.

[pessosices]

Good point, @GlassJudy - Our tax is just included in our prices, not calculated on the register, so we don't have that issue.

[GlassJudy]

Don't you sell any items or to customers that are tax-exempt?  If so, how do you handle that with tax included in your prices?  We've thought about including sales tax in our prices; it would make some things a lot easier, but it would really mess up others.

[pessosices]

We've never run into that or there being an issue with that.

The other way you could do it, is doing the taxes through Square, but doing "Tax Included in Price"

[kkcarlton]

How do you create a variable discount?

[pessosices]

@kkcarlton - It's super easy to set up a Variable Discount - just create a new discount (https://squareup.com/dashboard/items/discounts/new) set it to be either Percentage or Dollar Amount (for Gift Certificates, it would be Dollar Amount), give it a name, and leave the $ field empty.

Each time an employee taps on the discount to apply it, they would manually type in the $ for the discount!

[kkcarlton]

@pessosices - thank you. I will try this tomorrow.

[pessosices]

Terrific, @kkcarlton !

Let me know how it works for you!