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Re: What happens when Gift Cards expire?

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What occurs when a gift card expires?

ChildFundNZ
Tourist
6 0 1

Hi there - 

I am wondering what happens to the fund balance of a Shopify gift card once the card expires? Is it transferred to the store owner?

 

Accepted Solution (1)

Cal
Shopify Staff
989 103 174

This is an accepted solution.

Hey @!

Cal here from Shopify, thanks for reaching out to us. This is a great question and I'd be happy to give you some insight into this. 

Gift cards can be set to expire after a specific amount of time. By default, gift cards don't expire because it is illegal in some countries for gift cards to expire. If you set an expiry date, then, by default, the cards expire after five years. However, you can change the length of the expiry date. Verify that you are following the rules and regulations for gift cards in your country. 

There is further information on how you can alter the gift card expiry date here

When a customer purchases a gift card, you are receiving their funds at that point. It is then up to the customer to redeem the gift card on your store for your products/services. 

I suggest giving our help center document on Gift Cards a read here. It goes into great detail on what gift cards are and their applications! I hope this helps.

Cal | Social Care @ Shopify 
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 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

View solution in original post

Replies 10 (10)

Cal
Shopify Staff
989 103 174

This is an accepted solution.

Hey @!

Cal here from Shopify, thanks for reaching out to us. This is a great question and I'd be happy to give you some insight into this. 

Gift cards can be set to expire after a specific amount of time. By default, gift cards don't expire because it is illegal in some countries for gift cards to expire. If you set an expiry date, then, by default, the cards expire after five years. However, you can change the length of the expiry date. Verify that you are following the rules and regulations for gift cards in your country. 

There is further information on how you can alter the gift card expiry date here

When a customer purchases a gift card, you are receiving their funds at that point. It is then up to the customer to redeem the gift card on your store for your products/services. 

I suggest giving our help center document on Gift Cards a read here. It goes into great detail on what gift cards are and their applications! I hope this helps.

Cal | Social Care @ Shopify 
 - Was my reply helpful? Click Like to let me know! 
 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

ChildFundNZ
Tourist
6 0 1

Thank you Cal. It was unclear that the funds would be transferred upon the purchase of the gift card. For some reason, I was under the impression that the funds would only be transferred upon redemption. 

Thanks again for your help!

Cal
Shopify Staff
989 103 174

No problem! Glad to help. Let us know if there's ever anything else you need assistance with. 

Cal | Social Care @ Shopify 
 - Was my reply helpful? Click Like to let me know! 
 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

RobS
Shopify Partner
24 0 18

Related to this, I've noticed that when gift cards expire unredeemed then althought the card can no longer be used, the balance remains in the gift card liability in Shopify. Surely this isn't correct? By definition, if it has expired we can no longer be liable for the value. Does this mean I have to manually work through all the gift card purchases to figure out the actual real liability for our accounts?

Cal
Shopify Staff
989 103 174

Hi @RobS, how are you keeping? 

I'd be happy to look into this with you. Can you give me a little more information on where you are seeing/pulling this data from? If you could attach some screenshots that illustrate this that I could run past my team here, that would be great! 

Thanks! 

Cal | Social Care @ Shopify 
 - Was my reply helpful? Click Like to let me know! 
 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

MatW
Visitor
2 0 5

Hi Cal - I'm also looking for an answer to the issue that @RobS raises here. I've just discovered that per Shopify's own guidelines:

 

When a gift card expires:

Any remaining outstanding balance on the gift card will continue to count toward your outstanding gift card balance, which is shown in the Liabilities finance report.

 

I don't understand why an expired gift card would continue to count towards liabilities - can you explain this? It has significant implications for tax reporting, so if this is in fact the case, we'll need to know if there's a simple way to purge/disable expired cards and what disabling these expired cards might mean (presumably it means something, otherwise why would Shopify keep these balances active as a liability...?).

 

Thanks for your help

Freda2
Visitor
1 0 1

Hi,

 

I am also looking for the answer to all that @MatW raises here.

 

Any reply Shopify?   (Thanks)

RobotSocks
Visitor
1 0 0

I am also looking for the answer to questions posed by @RobS.  How / why do expired gift cards remain in the gift card liability balance in Shopify?

klk1
Visitor
1 0 0

I am also looking for an answer - why do expired gift cards remain in the gift card liability balance?  Why do expired gift cards appear when searching Gift Cards  "Redeemable" ??   Is it necessary to go in and manually deactivate expired gift cards?   If so, why???  We are on Shopify Plus which is extremely expensive and shouldn't require time sucking work arounds.

LauraC1
Tourist
8 0 15

Hi Cal, 

 

Similar to the several other people below who have asked you for clarification over the years, I would also like to understand what happens to expired gift voucher value. The Help Centre article says it remains in our Liability on Shopify but that is completely against all accounting practices and makes zero logical sense. Previous ecommerce and POS providers we've used would export expired gift card value to Xero as revenue ("Expired Gift Voucher Revenue" in our case) and remove the corresponding figure from our liability account in Xero AUTOMATICALLY. Does Shopify genuinely not do this basic function??

 

If you want us to manually do something to account for the figures (surely not though..) then what exactly is the process that we should be doing?