Gift Cards

A gift card holds an amount in your brand currency. Customers spend it on bookings, credit packs, passes and memberships online, and at the Point of Sale, until the balance runs out. Gift cards have no location, so a card works at every location.

Getting there

• Sidebar path: Sales → Memberships → Gift Cards tab.
• Permission: gift-cards:read to see cards, gift-cards:create to issue them, and gift-cards:update to redeem, void or reactivate them.

Sell gift cards online

Customers buy gift cards from the gift card widget (<sauna-gift-card-purchase>) on your website. See the Widget reference to add it.

1. The buyer picks a preset amount or enters their own. The presets come from the embed's amount-options attribute and default to 50, 100, 150 and 250.
2. They enter their name and email, and optionally the recipient's name, the recipient's email and a message. They don't need an account.
3. They pay through your connected Stripe or Square account, or PayPal once our team turns it on for you. See Payments.

When the payment completes, Elara creates the card. With a recipient email, the Gift card delivery automation emails the recipient the code, the amount and the message. It is on by default, and you can edit it under Notifications. The buyer sees the code after paying and can copy it, so they can share it themselves.

Cards sold online have no expiry.

Issue a gift card

1. Select Issue Gift Card.
2. Enter the Amount, and optionally a Recipient Name, Recipient Email, Expires date, Custom Code, Gift Message and Internal Note.
3. Create it; you'll then see the gift card's details.

Without a Custom Code, Elara generates one. A custom code can be 4 to 32 letters, digits or hyphens. With a Recipient Email, Elara emails the recipient the code and any Gift Message right away. The Internal Note is for staff only: it is never sent to the recipient. A card a customer buys online shows the message they wrote as its gift message.

Issuing a card records no payment. If someone pays you for a card you issue, that money is not recorded in Elara.

Look up or check a balance

Use the search box (Code, name, or email), which matches a card's code or its recipient's name or email, and Look up by code, or filter by Status (All, Active, Redeemed, Void, Expired). A failed lookup shows No gift card found with code "{code}".

Columns include Code, Recipient, Balance, Initial, Status, and Expires. Select the view (eye) icon to open a card's full details, including its redemption history.

Customers have no separate balance page. Checkout shows the balance a card will have left after the purchase.

Redeem a gift card

A card's balance goes down with each use, and the card shows Redeemed once it reaches zero. One gift card can be used per checkout.

Online

Customers can use gift cards in booking checkout, on the passes and memberships page, and when buying a plan from their account. Gift cards can cover a purchase in full or combine with a card payment for the rest. Checkout shows the purchase total, the gift card credit, any other payment and the balance left on the card.

• Renewing memberships: gift credit applies to the first term only, and renewals bill the member's card at the normal price.
• Plans with tax: online checkout does not take gift cards for a pack, pass or membership that includes tax.

See Customer billing for remaining balances, minimum payments and cancelled checkouts.

At the Point of Sale

Choose Gift Card in the payment step and enter the card's code to look it up. If its balance covers the sale, the card pays for it. Otherwise Elara applies the whole balance, and you collect the rest under Collect remainder with: Card (recorded as an external card payment) or Cash. A split can't use a card on file or a card reader. See Point of Sale.

The Point of Sale takes gift cards as payment but does not sell them.

By hand

Open a card's details, enter an amount and an optional note under Redeem, and select Redeem. The redemption is added to the card's history.

Expiry, void and reactivate

• A card with an Expires date can be used until the end of that day in your studio's time zone. Elara then marks it Expired. An expired card can't be used, reactivated or extended, and its unused value shows as Expired in the Gift Card Report.
• Void an active card to stop it being used. A void card can be reactivated, unless a refund of its purchase locked it or it has passed its expiry date.

Refunds

• A gift card purchase can be refunded only while none of the card has been used. The refund voids the card. See Disputes & refunds.
• A purchase paid with a gift card: refunding it returns the gift card's share to the card. If the card has since expired, been voided or been locked by a refund of its purchase, the balance is not restored and Elara raises an alert for staff to reconcile the card by hand.
• Cancelled bookings: when a customer cancels a confirmed booking paid by gift card, staff refund it. Withdrawing a booking request that is still waiting for approval returns the gift card's share automatically.

Gift Card Report

The Gift Card Report, on the Financial tab of Reports under Point of sale, shows the value issued and redeemed in the period, the balance customers can still spend at its end and the value that has expired. It includes cards staff issued, and it exports to CSV. Gift cards have no location, so the report is empty when a single location is chosen. See Reports & analytics.

Bring gift cards from another system

Gift cards import from Kenko with their codes, remaining balances, status and expiry dates, but not the recipient's name or email. The Mindbody import does not bring gift cards over, so issue a card in Elara for each outstanding balance. See Migration.