Gift cards for attractions: balances, part-spending and expiry

Gift cards for attractions work when each card is a stored value in one currency, its balance kept as a ledger of every movement, spendable in part online and at the box office, with an expiry you choose within the law where you sell. Decide first whether you are selling money to spend or one particular visit. The two behave differently on almost every count.

Gift cards are bought for birthdays and holidays and spent in another season, which is why venues value them. They are also money you owe the holder until it is spent. Everything below is how iTravel Attractions handles that, and where the decision is yours.

Gift card or experience voucher: which are you selling?

A gift card holds an amount. An experience voucher promises a visit. Attractions sells the first as a gift card. For the second, the nearest thing is an open-dated day ticket: sold without a day, usable on any day within the window you set (up to a year from purchase), sent to the buyer, who passes it on (unless you made it a named ticket, which is never transferred).

A gift card suits "treat yourselves". The open-dated ticket suits "a day out on us", where the giver wants the visit covered whatever it costs next summer. If the gift is a day at two of your venues, that is a combo ticket, which is always for one dated day.

Selling gift cards online and at the box office

Online. Switch gift cards on per venue in Products → Gift cards. Choose the amounts you sell, or any amount between a minimum and a maximum, and how many months a card is valid. The buyer picks an amount, can name the person it is for and add a message, and pays through your own payment page like any order. Once the payment arrives, each card is issued and emailed to the recipient's address when the buyer gave one, otherwise to the buyer. The email is in the language of the order and carries the amount, the code, the message, the expiry and a link to the balance page. The buyer's order page shows each card too.

At the box office. On an open shift the cashier takes any amount in cash or on the terminal. The card is issued at once, its code shown to print, and emailed if the guest gives an address.

By hand. You can issue a card yourself from Products → Gift cards, for a complaint, a prize or a partner. Its code is shown once and not kept, so print it or send it before leaving the screen.

Why a balance has to be a ledger

A balance kept as one number gets overwritten. Two tills spend the same card in the same minute, a payment is retried on a bad connection, and the number is now wrong with no record of why.

In Attractions a card's balance has one writer. Every change is a movement: issued, spent, put back, expired or cancelled, each with the balance after it and a unique key. Spending happens under a lock on the card and never takes more than is on it. Two tills at once can never overdraw it, and a retried spend takes nothing more.

The code is 16 characters, printed in groups of four and typed leniently (case, spaces and dashes do not matter). It is stored only as a hash, with the last four characters shown to staff. A wrong code and a cancelled one get the same answer, and guessing is throttled. The holder checks what is left on a private balance page reached by its own link, never by the code, because the code is what spends it.

Products → Gift cards lists cards with search, each card's history, and the total owed per currency.

How does a guest spend part of a card?

Online, there is a gift card field on the product page and in the basket. The card's part is taken when the order is made, and your payment page asks only for the rest. A card that covers everything confirms the order at once, with no payment page. If the rest is never paid, the order lapses after an hour: its places go back and so does the card's part.

At the box office, the cashier types the code and sees what it covers. The card pays first, the rest is paid in cash or on the terminal, and the shift records two payments. The card's part never touches the drawer's expected cash (more in box office cash-up).

A card pays tickets and add-ons alike. It holds one currency and pays only in that currency, which matters if you sell in more than one.

Expiry: your policy, within the law where you sell

Whether your cards expire, and how soon, is your policy. The law where you sell limits it, and that law differs between countries and sometimes inside them. As an example of how specific it gets: in the United States the federal rule, Regulation E §1005.20, generally stops funds on a store gift card expiring within five years of issue or the last load. The same section excludes cards "redeemable solely for admission to events or venues at a particular location or group of affiliated locations", and states add their own rules. So what your card can buy can change which rule applies. Check with someone who knows consumer law where you sell before you choose.

In Attractions the choices are 6, 12, 24 or 36 months from the day the card is issued, or no end date. If your rules need longer than 36 months, choose no end date. The date is on the email and the balance page. A card past its date expires on your account's own day: what was left leaves it as an expiry movement, so Reports show it went rather than the balance quietly vanishing.

Refunds, cancellations and closed days

When an order paid partly or wholly by a card is cancelled, whatever your cancellation policy refunds goes back onto the gift card first, up to what the card paid. Only the remainder goes back the way the rest was paid. A card's part is never paid out in cash or to a bank card.

If you close a slot or a day for weather, the guests affected can cancel for everything they paid, and the card's share returns to the card (see weather closures).

Two edge cases to decide now:

• A refund onto an expired card. The money goes back, but an expired card stays expired and cannot be spent. Decide what you do for that guest; issuing a fresh card by hand is one answer.
• Paying a balance out. If your policy or the law has you hand a balance back, cancel the card with a note saying why. Its balance leaves as a recorded movement, and the payout itself happens outside the card.

Reports, under Members & gift cards, show what is owed on cards now per currency and what moved in a period: issued, spent, put back, expired and cancelled. How your accountant treats those figures is their call. The same report covers memberships.

A worked example: one card, sale to empty

Illustrative numbers. Your venue sells cards of 25, 50 or 100, or any amount from 20 to 200, valid 12 months.

1. 1 March. A buyer pays 100 for a niece and types her email. The card is issued and emailed to her.
2. 10 April. She books online for 10 May: two adults at 30, one child at 15, and parking at 10, so 85. The card covers it all; the order confirms with no payment page. Balance 15.
3. 9 May. You close the next day for weather. She cancels for everything paid, and 85 goes back onto the card. Balance 100.
4. June, at the box office. An order of 120: the card pays 100, she pays 20 in cash. The drawer expects 20 more in cash, not 120. Balance 0; the card is used up.

Now change one thing. Say she had stopped at step 2 and left 15 unspent. Twelve months after issue the card passes its date, the 15 leaves as an expiry movement, and the owed total in Reports falls by 15.

Checklist before you sell the first card

• Choose card or open-dated ticket for each kind of gift you want to offer.
• Set the amounts or the range per venue, in the currency that venue sells in.
• Choose the expiry, or none, after checking the consumer rules where you sell.
• Write your terms: expiry, refunds back onto the card, what happens to a balance on an expired card.
• Decide when your team issues cards by hand, and tell them the code is shown once.
• Train the box office: the card pays first, the rest in cash or on the terminal.
• Buy a card yourself, spend part online, part at the desk, cancel one order, and read the card's history.
• Add the owed figure to the report you read every month.