Gift cards and store credit

What this does

Creates a balance a customer owns and can spend with you. The same thing serves two purposes: a gift somebody bought, and credit you hand over when an order went wrong and a refund is not what either side wants.

Before you start

• Nothing. A card can be issued to a named customer or to nobody in particular.

Steps

1. Open Customers → Gift cards and select Issue.
2. Enter the amount. Add a customer's email to tie it to them, or leave it blank for a gift with no name on it.
3. Add an expiry and a note if you want one — the note is for you, and says why you issued it.
4. Give the customer the code.

To spend one:

1. Open the unpaid order.
2. Under Gift card or store credit, type the code and select Apply.

What happens next

The card pays as much of the order as it can and leaves the rest owing. A $50 card against an $80 order pays $50; the customer still owes $30 by another method.

When a card covers an order completely, the order becomes paid. No card payment is taken and none is invented — the money arrived when the card was issued — so Torva will correctly say it cannot refund that order to a card.

Every movement is kept on the card, so a balance can always be explained rather than just stated.

Common problems

The outstanding total is the number that matters. Gift cards are a liability, not revenue: the store owes that money until it is spent. The total at the top of the page is what you currently owe.

"That card no longer has enough on it." It was spent somewhere else between you reading the balance and applying it. The balance shown is always what is really left.

A card in the wrong currency. A balance in one currency cannot pay an order in another, because converting it would invent an exchange rate nobody agreed to.

An order was edited after a gift card paid for it. If it was edited down below what the card paid, the order page says so: the customer's own money is sitting against an order no longer worth that much. Use Put back on the card and the difference returns to it. Torva does not do this on its own — with two cards on one order there is no right answer, and a merchant halfway through re-adding a line should not have their correction undone underneath them.

I need to cancel a card. Open its history and select Cancel card. The balance stays on the record rather than being zeroed — what the customer was owed at that moment is the fact a dispute turns on.

Apple Pay and Google Pay disappear when a customer applies a card. On purpose. A wallet sheet opens with an amount the browser worked out, and a gift card is applied afterwards, when the order is priced — so the sheet would ask the customer to approve one number and charge another. The card form takes its amount from the server after the gift card is applied, so it is always right.

Customers using a card themselves

Your checkout has a Use a gift card box under the promotion code. The customer types the code, sees the balance, and places the order; the payment they are asked for is the balance's remainder, not the order total.

A few things that follow from doing it there rather than on the order screen:

• A card that cannot be used stops the order. Expired, cancelled, empty, wrong currency, or simply mistyped — the customer is told which, and no order is created and nothing is charged. The alternative is to ignore the card and charge full price, which is worse: they would believe they had spent their balance.
• A card that covers everything takes no payment at all. The order arrives paid.
• A card that would leave less than 50¢ to pay holds a little back. Card processors refuse charges under 50¢, so a $78.70 card against a $79 order applies $78.50 and leaves 20¢ on the card. Nothing is lost, and the customer is not stuck with an amount nobody can collect.
• Refunds are still bounded by what was actually charged. A $79 order paid with $50 of gift card and $29 on a card can only be refunded $29 to that card. Put the rest back on the gift card from its history.

The code is never stored in the browser between visits. A balance read ten minutes ago can already be wrong — somebody else may be holding the same card — so it is looked up fresh each time.