Free Gift Cards in Sales Reports

AshlynH4RL · ‎01-21-2022

We have recently swapped over from Square to Shopify POS in our b&M. When issuing a store credit to a customer, we issue it on a gift card. I have seen where you can issue a free gift card on shopify, but my question is: How are free gift cards counted in your sales report? Are they counted immediately or when the customer makes a purchase using the gift card?

OR are "free" gift cards not counted at all? Because the customer has already given us their money, so really the store credit should not be counted again towards our sales.

Any info?

Andrew · ‎01-24-2022

Hi @AshlynH4RL,

That's a great question! When you issue a gift card, there has not been an exchange of money so:

When the customer comes back eventually to use that gift card, then the sale is included in your reports:

You can read all about that in our help guide on Gift Card Amounts in Reports.

It's great that you're issuing free gift cards, and you may also be interested in offering discounts to online shoppers. Usually, the best practice is to include discounts in any follow-up emails you send your customers. You'll want to set up email campaigns to keep the conversation going with your customers and to build brand loyalty!

Do you have an email strategy in mind? It's a very big part of the customer lifecycle that you want to have some sense of when planning ahead for the long-term success of your brand.

I hope this helps, let me know if you have any more questions.

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

AshlynH4RL · ‎01-25-2022

Thank you for responding. To dive a little deeper into my question, here is an example:

A custumer brings in a $20 top to exchange.

We issue a gift card for $20.

Later, this customer comes in and spends the $20 gift card.

My question is, where is this going to shop up in reports, and how is it going to show up?

Because she is not spending an extra $20. She has already spent the money, so it does not need to be counted twice on our reports, or we will be paying taxes on it twice. This is where I am most confused. I just need to know that a FREE gift card issued as a store credit is not going to cause me to have innacurate reports.

ajbromley · ‎02-10-2022

I am having this problem. I issued free gift cards last year for giveaways and they now pop up under my gift card sales/payments, since they were used to "pay" for the purchases and my reports are not accurate. I have researched and still haven't found a way to correct/edit those transactions so I don't have to pay taxes on money I gave away! In the future, I will just issue discount codes instead, I think. Let me know if you figure anything out!