Gift cards

[Dale Harris]

As many of you know I am struggling mightily to add a "gift card" and "other" payment methods to the POS program.

However I have some questions since I do not sell gift cards at my store.

1. When you sell a gift card you get the money for it (obviously), does that money go into you sales for the day? If so, then what happens when they later pay for merchandise using the gift card, does that go into your sales for the day? You can't have it count toward you daily sales twice.

2. Is a gift card considered a debt that you owe the purchaser? How does that affect your sales for the day?

3. What if they purchase a gift card and then lose it or for any other reason it is never redeemed?

4. If you sell a gift card through X-Charge do you owe the money to X-Charge and then they pay you back when the card is used?

5. Anything else I have not thought of?

[peewee3ie]

hi Dale

1. in the shop where I work, we have a book that all the giftcards are enterd into by a number that the on the giftcard. the giftcards go into account for giftcards only. when the giftcard is exchanged for goods then it is entered in to the daily sales.

3. we need the name of the person that bought the giftcard and all our giftcards have a expery date on them.

4. where I live we will not be able to use x-chrage.

5. you should take a break before your bran goes on fire.

[Bobby]

Hello,

Here is what I have experienced:

1. Yes, the sales of giftcards go into a seperate account. They are not counted towards sales until they are redeemed.

2. It is concidered a debt, but since it is a seperate account, it does not affect your sales until it is redeemed.

3. eventually, the gift card account is expensed off of the books.

4. never used x-charge.

[ibmsystems]

1. Yes gift cards enter our bank until reedmeed

2. It is consdired a debit but is in a second account so it dosent effect sales until reedmed

3. experation dates take care of that

4.will never use x-charge

[Dylan2]

Where I work (not my company, but that undisclosed company.)
from my understanding gift cards are counted on that days sales and there is an item for them. BUT, when we redeem them, we treat them as cash, well, credit actually. where we charge whatever off of them and expect that amount to go into the stores bank acct from whatever bank acct the amount is in as it sits on the card. our GC distributer company is P2W, inc. i think

[Andrew]

One store over here has shifted from vouchers printed as receipts, to cards people purchase, they must take them to checkout and "activate" them by telling the cashier how much they want to put on the card (between $10 and $1000).

The card can be re-used over and over like a store account (hence I think this feature could tie in very nicely with customer accounts). A customer account could be setup in DHPOS, with a $0 credit limit, but be in credit for the amount of the gift card - once the credit is used up, the account is useless because it is now at $0.

[ibmsystems]

Yes thats what i'm working on in my store i will use gift cards (like what you find at wal mart) and pass them through a mag stripe writer to tell the card how much is to be added or subtracted from the card

[grahamsw]

Most of the stores I support dont us PC based solutions or dont even accept credit cards, I t would be nice if giftcards were in a localy stored database as well or instead of a bank DB

Just my $0.02

Graham

[MMI]

In my store when we sell gift cards, you take the money from the customer, and put it in the till. (we don't use DHPOS) and press sell GC. this will then deduct the cash from the drawer at the end of the hight, and we are instructed to deposit the cash into a separate account (known as a rebate) when we take a gift card, it is entered as a debit transaction, & in the back office program as a payout for the purchase value used.

[ChrisKraus]

One thing about Gift Certificates/Cards:
In the State of Massachusetts, Gift Certificates or Gift Cards are not allowed to have an expiration date. Maybe there could be an option to turn off the expiration date.

- Chris

[Tris (not logged in)]

In most cases the customer pays X-charge

[bdude]

I don't think Gift Cards should be handled through X-Charge - not many people can access it.

[Dale Harris]

Ok then, here is the plan.

Gift cards may be sold through X-Charge (which means that they keep track if them) or though the POS software (which means that the POS software keeps track of them.) If sold through the POS software it will keep a database of the issued gift cards. This means that if the computer crashes all the issued gift cards become void so making a backup of the database is real important.

Gift cards will be in the category list in slot 254 as "Gift cards" which means that you must be using a stock table to sell gift cards but you may also have several different gift cards in the stock table.

When you sell a gift card the amount paid will be added to the "gift card" line in the stock table and the "?????? in reg." on the closing screen and receipt but not into sales.

When someone uses a gift card to pay for merchandise it will be treated as any other payment method.

If you have set up the register to use only one payment method per sale you will still be able to use gift cards and one other payment method per sale incase the gift card will not cover the sale.

Anything else?

[bdude]

Will there be an option to use reciept printed gift cards or your own printed gift cards, also will you have to have different stock numbers for different ammounts or will you just tell DHPOS the amount you want when it's sold.

Also, will the gift cards be able to have a 'check balance' function for a casheir to tell a cust. how much balence remaining?

[ChrisKraus]

Heres an Intresting Idea that I've seen in some stores: A combination price checker and Gift Card balance checker. It would be a kiosk with a barcode reader (for price checking) and a magstripe reader (for Gift Cards). In some cases, the kiosk also had a printer. Would it be possible to put something like this in the price check program?

Just my 2 cents,
Chris