Gift cards

Open Products › Gift cards. The list shows each card by the last four characters of its code, its customer, its balance out of what it was worth, and whether it is Active, Used up, Expired or Disabled. The tabs keep one kind; search finds a card by the last four characters of its code, or by its customer’s name or email. The chooser beside the search keeps the cards Bought in an order or those Issued by hand, and Sort by orders them newest or oldest first, or by balance, highest or lowest first.

Owners and admins issue and change gift cards. Staff can look a card up to answer a customer, but not change it. Designers do not see them.

New gift cards last sets how long new cards work: forever, or one, two, three or five years. A card sold in your store takes it, and Issue gift card starts with that day, which you can change. Check how long gift cards must last where you sell.

Issue a gift card

Choose Issue gift card, then:

• Value: what the card is worth. A store with markets in other currencies can issue a card in one of those; a card pays only for orders in its own currency.
• Code: Storeloom makes one (16 letters and digits, without look-alikes such as 0 and O), or type your own (8 to 20 letters and digits). A code another card or a discount already uses is refused.
• Last day (optional): the card works through this day, in your store’s time zone. Leave it empty for no end.
• Customer (optional) and a Note only your team sees.
• Send it: tick Email the code to send the Gift card email, to the customer or any address, with a message of yours if you like. To follows the customer you choose; once you type an address of your own, it stays.

After Issue gift card, the card’s page shows the full code once. Copy it then: Storeloom keeps only a fingerprint of the code and its last four characters, so nobody, you included, can read it again later. To send a card again, give it a new code (below).

Sell gift cards in your store

Choose Add gift card product, then give it a Title and the Amounts shoppers can choose. It starts with 10, 25, 50 and 100; change them, remove some or choose Add amount. Create gift card product opens it as a product, where you add pictures, change the amounts (each is a variant) and put it in collections.

A gift card product is never counted in stock and nothing ships. On its page in your store, shoppers choose who it is for:

• Me: the card goes to the email they give at checkout.
• Someone else: they give the recipient’s email, and if they like a name, a message of up to 200 characters and a day to send it, up to 90 days ahead (the date picker offers only those days). If something is missing, the cart says what; with the cart drawer, the product page comes back with everything they typed still in place. Each recipient is a line of their own in the cart, and the buyer hears when the card has gone.

If you use a theme of your own, add the form to its product page. A theme that does not ask sends the card to the buyer.

At checkout, a cart with only gift cards asks for no address or delivery. Gift cards carry no tax when sold, take no discounts, cannot be bought with another gift card or store credit, and cannot be paid for by cash on delivery.

A card is issued only once the order is paid: one per unit, each with its own code, and the order then counts as fulfilled if nothing else ships. Until then nothing is sent. The email links to the card’s own page, with its balance, code and a QR code that opens the page on a phone. The card appears in this list, with its recipient and a link to its order.

Making an order paid yourself issues its cards too: creating an order as paid, completing a draft as paid, or Mark as paid on one order or on many. For an order with a gift card on it that needs the Issue and change gift cards permission (owners and admins have it; add it to a role of your own in Settings › Users). Someone without it is told why, and can still leave the order waiting for payment.

Cancelling the order stops its unused cards. Refunding a gift card item stops that card, and so does refunding everything that was paid for the order, with or without choosing items. A card that has been used cannot be refunded: its item is refused, and a refund of an amount can only reach the rest of the order, so the message tells you the most you can refund. You cannot change the quantity of a gift card on an order, or add a gift card to an order when you edit it: a gift card is sold in an order of its own, which issues its card once it is paid.

How customers use it

At checkout customers type the code where discount codes go (Discount codes or gift cards), with or without the dashes or spaces. The summary shows the card’s part and To pay:

• When the cards pay the whole order, checkout says so and asks for no payment method, and there is no cash on delivery fee.
• When they pay part of it, the customer pays the rest the way they choose; for cash on delivery the courier collects only what is left.

Several cards and discount codes can be used together, up to five codes. Cards pay last, after discounts, in the order they were typed. The order page, the order status page and the order emails show what each card paid and what is left to pay. A card cannot pay for a subscription, which renews with a saved card.

A card’s page

• The arrows at the top right move to the previous or next card of the list you came from.
• Balance, what it was worth, its customer, last day and note (Edit changes the last day and note). A card you added money to since it was issued says both, for example “€30.00 issued, €20.00 added since”; the list of cards says “more added since”.
• History: when it was issued, each order it paid for, money given back and adjustments, each with the balance after it.
• Adjust balance: add to it or take from it, with a reason kept in the history. The balance never goes below zero. A double-click, or pressing again while it works, changes the balance once.
• New code: the old code stops working at once and the balance stays. Use it when a code was lost or shared, or to email the card again. For a card bought as a gift, the new code goes to the person it is for, unless you enter another address.

Last emailed shows when the card’s email went. A card bought as a gift for a later day shows Sends on that day until then.

• Disable: for good. It asks first and shows the balance left on the card. Nothing more can be spent from it; orders it paid for keep what it paid.

Refunds and cancelled orders

Cancelling an order puts what gift cards paid back on them at once, recorded on the order as a refund, up to what the order still holds: money you already refunded another way is not given back a second time. When you refund an order, choose how much goes Back on the gift card: all of it for an order paid only with gift cards, otherwise none unless you say. The rest goes back the way the customer paid: through the payment provider when they paid online, or by you for cash on delivery, bank transfer and your own payment methods. The form says which.

Export (CSV) downloads your gift cards with their balances and who they went to. Codes are never in the file.