Question
We have recently put gift cards on the website. there are a few things I need answers and help with regarding them. Let's say they buy a $200 gift card and they buy a shoe online for $140, what happens with the balance of their gift card? How do we keep track of that? Will we still have to activate the card in our POS even if they are using it online only? What if they use it online and in the store?
Answer
Hello,
There is no system for using actual "Gift Cards" online. You can offer Gift Cards if you have a system in -store. The Cards could be entered into your POS and in Store Manager you could use the "allow backorder" button so that they are online with out worrying about inventory.
But if you have actual cards you mail out to the customer they would only be usable in-store.
Currently, some of our clients are using coupon codes to issue gift cards. We don’t recommend this as coupons were never designed or intended to be used as a gift card. This issue rears its head when the value of the coupon is greater than the order causing the Order Total to be NEGATIVE.
Modern Retail understands the desire for stores to sell gift cards and certificates online, and therefore, we need to enhance Store Manager and Checkout to accept gift cards. Until we do, please use the following temporary solution when you have Order Totals that are negative:
When Shipping items, enter the Order Total sans the Coupon Amount into the Coupon/Discount field. This value shows up in green directly under where you need to enter in the Coupon/Discount amount. You will need to enter this value as a NEGATIVE number with 2 decimal places (i.e. -225.47). You will get a warning message stating you are charging the customer too much, this is a bogus warning and can be ignored by hitting OK. You should see the ONLINE CHARGE say $0.00 and the Remaining Balance to be whatever is left on the Coupon. To be safe you should also UNCHECK Process Credit Card if you process your cards online through Store Manager (Authorize.Net). Finally, since there's still a Remaining Balance left on the Coupon, you will probably want to issue a new Coupon for this Remaining Balance and e-mail it off the shopper.
Thank you
Question
Is there a way to process a gift card sale online and allow the customer to print the certificate at home? If there is not system for this, when can we expect that to be available?
Answer
Currently, the only way to issue "Gift Cards" is by creating a Coupon in Store Manager. You can issue a Coupon using any naming convention you'd like including using the customer's email address, some sort of numbering system, etc. However, there is no automated way to create these coupon codes, email them for the consumer or have them access it from My Account. I'm sorry but we have no plans to implement anything like this in the next 6 months.
FYI, a Gift Card implementation may be dependent upon your POS Integration. Currently, none of our POS integrations send us Gift Card codes from their system. Modern Retail may have to eventually implement a "stand-alone" Gift Card system, one that's not integrated with your POS system. The disadvantage of such a system would be that your sales clerks would need to check Store Manager if you allowed consumers to use Gift Card in-store.
Date Created: 03/10/13