Gift Vouchers

Without a POS

You do not need a POS integration to sell vouchers. Payments, delivery of the voucher and your sales reporting all work the same way. What changes is redemption: staff check and record vouchers manually instead of scanning them at the counter.

This is a reasonable way to start, particularly if you want to be selling before Christmas and can sort the POS connection out afterwards. You can connect a POS at any time without taking your storefront offline.

What still works

  • Customers buy vouchers from your storefront and receive them by email.
  • Physical gift cards, pickup and delivery.
  • Gift experiences, bulk vouchers and complimentary vouchers.
  • Sales, liability and voucher records in your Dashboard.

What you handle yourself

Without a POS connection, nothing draws the balance down automatically. Your team is responsible for checking a voucher is genuine before honouring it, and for keeping track of what has been spent.

Redeeming a voucher at the counter

  1. Ask the customer for their voucher, on their phone, printed, or as a physical card.
  2. Find it in your voucher dashboard using the Reference code from the voucher. Searching the reference is more reliable than searching a name, because the person redeeming is often the giftee rather than the buyer.
  3. Check the Status is active and the voucher has not expired.
  4. Check the value.
  5. Apply the value to the sale in your till as you would any other payment, using a gift voucher tender or equivalent.
  6. Record what was spent so the next person serving that customer knows what is left.

Keep your own record

Because the balance is not tracked automatically, a voucher can be presented more than once. Agree with your team where redemptions are written down, and check that record before honouring a voucher, not just the dashboard status.

Part-spent vouchers

A customer will often spend less than the full value. Decide in advance how you handle the remainder and put it in your terms and conditions, so staff are not making the call at the counter. Common approaches are to note the remaining balance on the voucher itself, or to record it against the customer’s name in your own system.

Things worth setting up

  • A written process. One place redemptions are recorded, and one person responsible for checking it. This matters most when you are busy, which is exactly when vouchers get double-redeemed.
  • A staff briefing. Show your team what a genuine voucher looks like and where to look it up before their first shift over a voucher period.
  • Reconciliation. Compare what you have recorded against the liability figure on your Dashboard regularly, so the gap does not grow unnoticed.

When to connect a POS

Manual redemption works, but it takes staff time at the counter and relies on your own records staying accurate. Connecting a POS is worth doing once vouchers are a steady part of your trade, or as soon as you are handling enough of them that double redemption becomes a real risk.

See Point of Sale to get started, or OneTap and Kounta if you are on one of those.