How to sell and manage gift cards

A gift card is a prepaid balance your customers spend on your tours. It is a payment, not a discount: when a customer uses a card at checkout, the booking keeps its full price and the card pays part or all of it. Anything left stays on the card for the next booking.

Two kinds of gift card

• An amount, for example €50, that can be spent on any of your tours.
• A tour (a tour voucher), for example "Sunset Cruise · 2 Adult", that can only be spent on that tour. It is priced from the tour's current prices. If the price goes up before it is used, the customer pays the difference.

Turn gift cards on

1. Connect Stripe first: customers pay for gift cards by card. See How to connect Stripe. Without Stripe, your gift card page only offers the balance check.
2. Go to Gift Cards › Settings (/admin/gift-cards/settings) and check Sell gift cards on my website (on by default).
3. Under Amounts, set your Quick-pick amounts (up to 6, for example 25, 50, 100, 200). Each one is shown on your website as a gift card customers can pick.
4. Leave Let buyers choose their own amount on to also offer any amount between the Minimum and Maximum, or turn it off to sell only your quick-pick amounts.
5. Choose how long cards are Valid for (12 to 60 months, or no expiry) and add Your terms if you have any. They appear on the page, in the email and on the printable card.
6. Click Save settings.

Help customers find your gift cards

Your gift card page is at yourname.goiaba.net/gift-cards. There are five ways in:

• Top menu: while you sell gift cards, a Gift cards item with a gift icon is added to your menu automatically. Once you edit your menu yourself, add it in Website › Website Builder › Header › Menu › + Add to menu… › Gift cards.
• Footer: Show a "Gift cards" link in the footer in the settings (on by default).
• Homepage block: in the Website Builder, click Add New Block and choose Gift cards. It shows your quick-pick amounts as cards plus "Or gift a tour"; each one opens the gift card page with it already picked. You can change the title, the description and the button, and hide the tour card. The block only appears on your site while gift cards are on sale. See How to build and publish your website.
• Tour pages: every tour shows Give this tour as a gift, which opens the page with that tour picked.
• Google: the page is in your sitemap while gift cards are on sale.

Tip: before Christmas or Mother's Day, add an announcement bar in Header that links to your gift card page.

What your customers see

1. Choose your gift: one of your amounts, their own amount, or a tour with how many people.
2. Make it personal: a design (Classic, Christmas, Birthday, Thank you) and a message.
3. Who is it for?: email it to the recipient (the buyer gets a copy) or to themselves to print or forward, now or on a chosen date (sent at 09:00 that day).

A live preview shows the card as it will look. After paying, the buyer sees the code and a link to the printable card (PDF). The recipient types the code in the Have a gift card? box at checkout.

Create a gift card yourself

Go to Gift Cards and click New gift card (/admin/gift-cards/new). First choose why you are creating it. This decides how the card is counted in your report:

• Sold at the desk / by phone: a customer paid you directly, in cash, by card terminal or by bank transfer. Goiaba does not take the payment; you choose How was it paid? so your records match. Counted as Sold in the report.
• Complimentary: a free card you give away, for example a raffle prize, a partner hotel, an influencer or a staff reward. No money comes in. Counted as Given away.
• Compensation: a card to make up for a problem, for example bad weather, a tour you had to cancel or an unhappy customer. No money comes in. Counted as Given away.

Then set the Amount, optionally Only for this tour, the Design, the recipient and a message. Tick Email the card to the recipient now, or untick it to hand the card over yourself: the card's page has a printable PDF. The card is active straight away.

Batches and your own codes

• Set Number of cards to more than one to create a batch, for example 50 cards for a company's staff, and give it a Batch name. Gift Cards › Batches (/admin/gift-cards/batches) shows how many were used, lets you download the codes as a CSV and Void unused cards.
• For a single card you can type Your own code, for example the code printed on a plastic card. Leave it empty and Goiaba generates a secure code.

Using a gift card on a booking

• Online: the customer enters the code in Have a gift card? at checkout. The card pays up to what is due; the rest of the balance stays on the card.
• New booking in the admin: type the code in the Gift card code box and click Check to see how much it pays.
• An existing booking: open it, click Add Payment and use Or pay with a gift card.

Give a gift card instead of a refund

When you cancel a booking, Refund as offers A gift card for the customer. No money is paid back: a new card for the amount is created and emailed to the customer. Any part of the booking that was paid with a gift card always goes back to that card. See How to manage, cancel and refund bookings.

Manage a card

The Gift Cards list (/admin/gift-cards) searches by code, name or email and shows what is Still on cards and Expiring in 90 days. Open a card to see its full history and to:

• Resend the email, or open the printable PDF;
• Disable it (it can no longer be spent) and enable it again;
• Adjust balance: add or remove an amount with a reason, never below zero.

Report and reminders

Gift Cards › Report (/admin/gift-cards/report) shows, for a period, what was sold, given away, spent on bookings and put back by cancellations, plus what customers can still spend. Thirty days before a card expires with money left on it, the recipient gets a reminder email automatically.