Feature Request - Stop Counting Gift Cards as "Products" and Double Counting as Sales

[FERALGR]

Shopify considers a gift card a product. No biggie right? Wrong. We just realized that Shopify is counting gift card purchases in Net Sales.

Why is that a problem? Simple. A gift card purchase is not a sale. The usage of a gift card is a sale. You can't book it twice. Accounting 101. A gift card purchase is NOT revenue. The usage of that gift card is.

Example:

A customer comes in and buys a $100 gift card for a friend. Shopify books that as a $100 sale.

Two days later that friend comes in and buys $100 worth of merchandise, and uses that gift card. Shopify also books that as a $100 sale.

Only $100 worth of value has been created, but Shopify has booked $200 worth of sales. What the actual cuss.

We just spent hours building a custom report so we can get our true sales number. How is it possible that Shopify is double-booking gift cards?

Am I missing something here?

[Cpointpond]

We are also having issues with the return/ exchange and partial payments on sales tax.

Basically Shopify is backdating it to the original purchase after sales tax has been reported and paid.  I took a partial payment in October.  It accounted for sales tax rather than considering it a deposit.  Final payment came today and it booked the additional sales tax back to October when the initial purchase was made.  They need to do deposits and categorize gift cards and deposit payments as non taxable.