Gift cards

Gift cards let customers buy or receive prepaid money value that can later be used toward bookings in Periode.

Use gift cards when the customer should receive money balance. Use punch passes when the customer should receive a fixed number of sessions or visits.

Gift card concepts

What a gift card is

A gift card can be:

• Sold through a customer-facing gift card product.
• Created manually by an admin.
• Sent directly to a recipient.
• Connected to a customer account balance.
• Used as a refund method, depending on product refund setup.

Gift card balance can currently only be redeemed on bookings. It cannot be used to pay for subscriptions, punch passes, or single payment products.

Gift card versus discount code

A gift card is stored value. It represents money the customer can spend later.

A discount code reduces the price of a purchase. It does not create stored customer balance.

Use a gift card for prepaid credit. Use a discount code for a campaign, offer, or limited price reduction.

Gift card and customer balance

A gift card and a customer’s gift card balance are two different things:

• The gift card is the code. It carries a value, and it can be redeemed once.
• The customer balance is money value stored on one customer’s account with you. This is what is spent on bookings.

When a customer redeems a gift card, either on their account or by entering the code at checkout, the full value of the code moves to their balance. From then on the gift card is marked as redeemed and is just a record of where the value came from. Bookings are paid from the balance, not from the gift card.

Example

Anna receives a 1,000 NOK gift card from a friend.

1. Anna logs in and enters the code on her account. The gift card is now redeemed, and her balance is 1,000 NOK. She has not booked anything yet.
2. Anna books a 300 NOK sauna session. The 300 NOK is taken from her balance, which is now 700 NOK. The gift card itself does not change.
3. Anna’s friend gives her another 500 NOK gift card. When she redeems it, her balance becomes 1,200 NOK. There is one balance, not one per gift card.

This is why a gift card can show as redeemed even though the customer has not used any of the money, and why the remaining value is found on the customer, not on the gift card.

Where to look

Balance can also come from somewhere other than a gift card, for example a booking cancelled with a refund to gift-card credit, or value an admin added by hand.

Selling gift cards

Create a gift card product

Create a gift card product when customers should be able to buy gift cards themselves.

From the Backoffice, go to the Gift card area and create a new gift card product.

Review:

• Product name.
• Description.
• Available values or amount setup.
• Customer-facing text.
• Email delivery behaviour.
• Redemption instructions.
• Product link.

When the product is active, share the purchase link from your website, email, social media, QR codes, or customer communication.

Customer purchase flow

The customer buys the gift card through the customer-facing purchase flow. After purchase, the customer or recipient receives the gift card details according to the product setup.

Test the purchase flow before launch so you know:

• The payment works.
• The email is clear.
• The gift card can be redeemed.
• The value appears correctly.
• The purchase appears in reporting.

Manually issuing gift cards

When to issue manually

Admins can create gift cards manually when the gift card should not be purchased through the public customer flow.

Use manual gift cards for:

• Goodwill credit.
• Campaign prizes.
• Compensation.
• Internal testing.
• Manually handled sales.
• Gifts for volunteers, partners, or staff.

Create one or many gift cards

Use the Gift card area to create a gift card manually. Choose the amount and number of gift cards, then complete the setup.

If emails are entered during setup, gift card emails can be sent automatically according to the product setup.

Internal messages

Use internal notes or messages when you need later context for why a gift card was created.

This is useful for accounting, support, and campaign tracking.

Gift subscriptions

A gift subscription is different from a gift card. It is tied to a specific subscription or membership product, and the recipient activates it on their own customer account. Because gift card balance can only be redeemed on bookings, a gift subscription is the only way to give a subscription or membership as a gift. See Gift subscriptions.

Finding and editing gift cards

Find a gift card

Use the Gift card area to find issued gift cards, check status, and review remaining value where available.

Use this when a customer asks whether a gift card was created, sent, redeemed, archived, expired, or still has value remaining. Refunds are checked on the payment record in Payment overview.

Adjust customer balance

To adjust a customer’s gift card balance, search for the customer from the top-left search in the Backoffice.

Open the customer account overview and edit the balance inline in the Accounts card.

Use this when you need to:

• Correct a balance.
• Add manual credit.
• Move value after a customer redeemed to the wrong account.
• Handle compensation.
• Resolve a customer support case.

Balance adjustments should be made carefully and recorded in your internal process.

Deactivate a gift card

How you take a gift card out of use depends on whether it has been redeemed:

• Not redeemed: choose Deactivate in the gift card’s menu under Gift cards > Overview. The code can no longer be redeemed, and you can choose Activate to undo it.
• Redeemed: the gift card cannot be deactivated, because the value has already moved to the customer’s balance (see Gift card and customer balance). Open the customer from Redeemed by and lower their balance in the Accounts card instead, see Adjust customer balance. Setting it to 0 removes the value completely.

Gift card refunds

To refund a gift card the customer bought, open Gift cards > Payments, search the gift card code or the buyer’s email, then See details on the row and Refund. The gift card itself has no refund action, because the refund belongs to the payment. A gift card you issued manually has no payment behind it, so change the balance instead, see Adjust customer balance.

Booking products can also refund cancellations to gift-card credit depending on the product’s Refund type, and admins can choose gift-card credit when cancelling manually. Every other place a refund can be started is listed in Where to refund, and the mechanics, including how to avoid refunding twice, are described in Refunds.

Before correcting a gift-card refund, check the original payment, the booking status, and the refund history.

Gift card reporting

What to review

Use reporting to review gift card activity, issued value, redeemed value, and outstanding balances where available.

Gift card reporting is useful for:

• Accounting.
• Reconciliation.
• Customer support.
• Understanding prepaid value sold but not yet used.
• Reviewing manual gift cards.
• Checking refunds that became gift card balance.

The report columns and sources are described in Gift card report.