Gift Cards

Gift cards in REV23 are stored value with a full ledger: every activation, redemption, reload, and retirement is on the card’s history with a running balance, and redemptions link to the sale they happened on.

Admin → Gift Cards is the management surface — outstanding balance, active cards, what’s been issued and redeemed lately, and every card with its history. Managing cards takes Gift Cards → Manage (gift cards are bearer instruments, so browsing them is manager territory); redeeming rides on the ordinary register permission, Checkouts → Process Payment, which is why the front desk can take a card at the register they can’t browse. Reloading happens from the Gift Cards page, so in practice it comes with the manager territory.

Codes: physical or generated

A card’s code is its identity. Scan or type a physical card’s number when creating it, or leave the code blank and REV23 generates one. That’s the whole physical-versus-digital distinction: a physical card carries its printed barcode, and a generated code prints on the receipt.

Scanning works anywhere a code is asked for: hardware scanners on any platform, the camera on iPhone, iPad, and Android. See Barcode Scanning.

Selling

Add a gift card to any sale from Add Item → Gift Cards: amount, optional code, optional expiration. The card activates the moment it’s added — it’s live even while the sale is open. Voiding the sale doesn’t touch a card sold on it: the card stays active and is retired by hand. (A card redeemed as tender on a voided sale is different — its balance is restored automatically.) A card sold on a customer’s sale records them as the purchaser; a walk-in sale — or a card created directly from the Gift Cards page — sells an unassigned card. On multi-location studios, Redeemable at tags a card to one studio or leaves it good anywhere; the tag decides which studio’s book the card counts toward.

Gift card sales aren’t revenue yet — the money is a liability until it’s spent. Reports treat it that way: the sale shows in its own bucket, and revenue is recognized when the card redeems. Gift card lines are never taxed, never picked up by checkout rules, and earn no commission.

Redeeming

At payment time, a gift-card tender looks the card up by code, shows the balance, and pre-fills whichever is smaller — the balance or the amount due. Partial redemptions just work; the remainder stays on the card. A card past its expiration date is refused unless you accept it deliberately with Override expiration and accept this card — an expired card is honored on purpose, never by accident.

Reloading

Reload balance on an active card adds funds. Reloads land on the ledger like everything else.

Retiring a card

Retire on a card has two outcomes, and they differ in what happens to the card number:

• Free this card number — the card is deactivated and the number becomes available for a new card. Any remaining balance stays in history but can no longer be spent. For a card that’s done, when you want to resell the plastic.
• Reserve this card number — the balance is zeroed and the number stays locked; no future card can use it. For a lost or stolen card.

Either way the card can no longer be redeemed or reloaded and any remainder drops out of your liability — including a partly-used card’s, so retire deliberately. The record and its ledger survive.

Expiration

Expiration is optional and per-card — there’s no default expiry. An expired card drops out of your outstanding-liability numbers but keeps its record, still shows on lookup, and can still be honored with the override. Check your state’s rules before setting expirations; several ban them.

Where the numbers live

The Gift Cards page carries the operating stats. The Balances report includes outstanding gift cards alongside deposits and store credit — the full stored-value liability, as of any date. Close of Day lists gift cards sold under collected-not-sales, and redemptions show in the tender breakdown under your gift-card payment method.