No doubt, selling gift cards is one of the most promising marketing tools out there. Imagine increasing your sales, introducing your brand to new customers and getting upfront revenue with every gift card bought.  And of course, you get to help your customers pick out a great gift for their loved ones!

Lightspeed Gift Cards allows you to set up and process gift cards with ease so you can start reaping all these benefits.

BONUS: In the same way, you can use Gift Cards functionality to facilitate deposits for bookings!

What’s in this guide?

Enable Lightspeed Gift Cards
Generate your Gift Cards
Printing your cards
Add Funds, Check the Balance, and Sell the Gift Card
Apply a Gift Card to a sale
Check Gift Card history
Frequently Asked Questions 

Before you begin

• Lightspeed Gift Cards feature is not available outside of APAC. This is set by the address you enter into your My Site details.

Enable Lightspeed Gift Cards

1. From the Features Page in Lightspeed Back Office, find the Gift Cards feature

Note - You can use the search function to find the feature you are looking for

2. Enable the Gift Cards feature by selecting the blue Enable button

Importing your unique Gift Card numbers

1. Navigate over to the Gift Cards section via Company Settings in Back Office:

2. Select 'Export'. If your Gift Cards list is blank, selecting export will download the Gift Cards template to your browser, if you've previously created Gift Cards, this will export your current list of Gift Cards in to a csv file.

3. Once you've exported and downloaded the Gift Cards file, you'll then be able to create your unique Gift Card numbers. Simply input your Gift Card reference numbers in to the 'Card Number' column in your Gift Cards file.

The example below shows 10 unique Gift Card numbers, however, you can add as many Gift Card reference numbers as you like, we'd recommend limiting the total per import to 500 card numbers to ensure the import is quick. It is important to also ensure the balance field in the balance column contains a value for the import to be successful. If you want to load money on to the cards via the POS when customers purchase a Gift Card you can just put a 0 into the balance column(as we've done below). If you wanted to make it so your Gift Cards have money preloaded on to them, you can add in your desired balance against the Gift Card of your choosing.

Note - The Gift Card number cannot include any special characters (e.g ?#$%) or spaces.
You also cannot have two rows with the same exact Gift Card number as this will cause the import to fail. The Gift Card balance column needs to contain a value for it to import properly (it can't be left blank), so ensure you add in a number in to the balance column before uploading even if the number is 0.

4. Save the Gift Card file as a csv. file:

5. Head back to the Gift Cards section in Back Office, click 'Import' and then click 'Select file to upload' and select your Gift Card csv file.

6. Well done your import is complete! Once the import is complete, you'll see all of your newly created Gift Cards and their balance created in your Gift Cards section. Head to the 'How to add funds to your Gift Cards' section at the bottom of this guide to find out how to load funds on to your newly created Gift Cards!

Generating your Gift Cards via Back Office

1. Immediately after enabling the Gift Cards feature, you will be redirected to the Gift Cards page. 

Note - To get to this page manually, simply select Company Settings - then select Gift Cards.

2. Select New Cards.

3. You will see the dialogue box below. Fill in your desired Prefix, Suffix, and then enter how many cards you want to generate.

Note - The Prefix and Suffix of your gift card could be used to note store names, batch numbers or card amount. Only numbers and letters can be used in these fields

4. Success! You’ve generated your Gift Card reference numbers(if you wanted to create your own unique Gift Card reference numbers, head to the 'Importing your own unique Gift Card numbers' section!)

Right now, all the generated gift cards have a balance of $0. (see image below)

On this same page, you can extract your Gift Card’s reference numbers - simply select 'Export' (see image below). Do this step to get a list of your gift card’s reference numbers outside of Back Office - whether it's for printing or just to give to your staff as a document they can refer to.

Printing your cards

Lightspeed doesn’t currently offer gift card printing services, but the export function (see the previous image) makes it easy to generate a list of card numbers for the printer of choice.

Why print your cards?

This gives customers something tangible to gift and it can be printed with the gift card number for your staff to enter when a customer is redeeming the card, or a barcode (for scanning) which will speed up service for staff on the front line.

What if you don’t print your cards?

If you choose NOT to print your gift cards (i.e. sending them as digital cards instead), your staff can look up the balance of a card number when quoted by the customer, and then check out the sale against this card number if there is a remaining balance. 

How to add funds to your Gift Cards

1. From the Lightspeed POS, select the menu icon in the upper left corner.

2. Click on Add-ons and then select 'Gift Cards'

3. A pop up will appear, select Gift Cards

4. This step is where you can enter one of the Gift Card’s reference numbers generated from the previous section - once you've inputted your gift card reference number select Confirm

Note - This field can also be populated by a barcode scanner.

5. In this screen you'll see three options; to check the balance of the card, add funds or transfer funds to another card. Select 'Add Funds' to add funds to the Gift Card.

6. Select the amount you’d like to add - then select OK.

7. Now select the payment method for the gift card top up.

8. You will receive a notification that the Gift Card top up was successful.

Note: If your receipt printer is connected to POS, this will also print a Gift Card top up docket that can be issued to the customer at the time the Gift Card was topped up. The Gift Card top up docket can only be printed at the time the Gift Card is topped up. The Gift Card top up amount will not appear in your Sales Feed until the Gift Card is used to purchase goods. 

How to check the balance of a Gift Card via POS and Back Office

1. From the Lightspeed POS, select the menu icon in the upper left corner.

2. Click on Add-ons and then select 'Gift Cards'

3. A pop up will appear, select Gift Cards

4. Enter in your Gift Cards reference number

Note - This field can also be populated by a barcode scanner.

5. Select 'Check Balance' to check the balance of a Gift Card.

You can also view the balance of all of the Gift Cards in your system via your Gift Cards page in Back Office:

Note - Only users with admin permissions can access the 'Gift Cards' section in Back Office

Apply a Gift Card to a sale

The Gift Card payment method is automatically set up for you to use. All you’ll need is the Gift Card’s reference number.

1. Simply add in items to your order like normal. Once you’re done, select Check Out.

2. Select Gift Cards.

3.  Enter the Gift Card’s reference number in the field provided then select Confirm.

4. You’ve just processed your first Gift Card payment. Well done!

Note -  When the Gift Card is used to pay for goods, you will see the Gift Card payment amount within the Payments History on POS (like you would any POS sale), on Back Office Reports and on Lightspeed Insights. Gift Card top ups will not appear in the Payments History until the Gift Card has been used to purchase goods. 

How to transfer funds from one Gift Card to another

1. From the Lightspeed POS, select the menu icon in the upper left corner.

2. Click on Add-ons and then select 'Gift Cards'

3. A pop up will appear, select Gift Cards

4. Enter in your Gift Cards reference number

Note - This field can also be populated by a barcode scanner.

5. Select 'Transfer'

6. Enter in the card number of the card you'd like to transfer the funds to and select 'Transfer balance'.

Note - You can only transfer the full amount of one Gift Card to another, you cannot transfer partial amounts.

You'll then receive a confirmation banner at the top of the POS screen to confirm the transfer is successful. 

How to delete Gift Cards

Navigate to the Gift Cards section, tick the boxes on the left of the cards that you'd like to delete and select delete. A pop up will appear to confirm the amount of cards you'd like to delete, hit 'Delete Cards' to proceed with the card deletion.

The cards that you selected are then removed from the Gift Cards list.

Note - You can also delete Gift Cards in bulk by selecting the check box at the top of the Gift Card list next to the 'Card Number' column header, selecting this check box will select every Gift Card in the list on the page that you are on. 

Check Gift Card history

Lightspeed Back Office allows you to check Gift Card transactions.

Go to Company Settings -> Gift Cards
You can then select a date range and click 'All Gift Card Activity'

You will then see a transaction history for this date range for your gift cards. Transactions performed after June 17th 2024 will also include the logged in staff member that performed the transaction.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I extract or download my gift card’s reference numbers from Back Office?

This can be easily done from Back Office. We discussed this in the section on how to generate your gift cards.

Can I load my gift cards before anyone decides to buy them?

This is not advisable as loading the gift card’s reference numbers with funds would show up in reconciliation.

How do Gift Card transactions affect my end-of-day takings/reconciliations?

Lightspeed Gift is automatically reconciled on your end-of-day takings. (see image below)

When a gift card is purchased, this registers on the end-of-day takings as a negative value since these are liabilities (orders are yet to be made.) So as more gift cards are bought, this adds to the negative value of Gift within the reconciliation period.

Meanwhile, when customers consume/redeem their gift card values, these register as positive values on the end-of-day takings. These add to the negative value of Lightspeed Gift, bringing it closer to $0 - that is, if gift cards were bought in the same reconciliation period. Otherwise, there would be no negative value at all. This is because the Lightspeed Gift field is reset to 0$ after each end-of-day takings is done.

For example, in the image above, $2000 worth of gift cards were sold within that reconciliation period. But during the same reconciliation period, a total value of $272 was consumed/redeemed via gift card. This brings the total value of Lightspeed Gift at $-1728. On the next reconciliation, this will reset. 

Individual transactions with the Gift Card (such as top-ups) will be recorded as a Money-In/Money-Out from the respective payment method used.

Can gift cards be reloaded and used as a cash card?

This is entirely up to your policies. But as we talked about in the section on how to Add Funds, Check the Balance, and Sell the Gift Card there is an easy way to do this on POS, should you decide to.

What if I want to charge more than the added fund amount for my gift card?

If you’d want to charge more than the added fund amount for your gift cards, you’d need to create this fee as a separate product in Back Office.

What user permissions are required to access the Gift Cards section in Back Office?

Users will need admin permissions to access the Gift Cards section in Back Office

Can gift cards be used to process on-account payments?

It is not possible to use Gift Card to settle on-account invoices.

How can I sell gift cards in bulk?

To avoid repeating the process of selling a gift card, topping it up and taking payment one-by-one, and still maintain your accounting data, you should create a "gift card" product set up as a variable price prompt. Then, map the product to a liability account in your accounting software. 

What else might I do to create a better customer experience?

Start building better, more personalised customer relationships. View this article on how to add your customers to Lightspeed. From here you can learn all about your customer’s spending habits, give them personalised discounts, and enable them to earn loyalty points!