Gift Vouchers

[eni]

I would like to offer my customers gift vouchers for Christmas but am unsure how to process them. For instance when adding vouchers to my stock should they have a value of 0.01p and then a retail value of say £10.00, presumably I would then tender these off as a voucher when it comes to payment. How do you print your own gift vouchers, do they have barcodes, any legal information needed on the vouchers etc Any ideas/pitfalls would be appreciated!

[Toby B]

Hi Morele,

We don’t have any functionality for gift vouchers as we can't print them off the system. If you use pre-printed vouchers they usually have a barcode on them, different barcode for each value, etc. So you can setup 'Fast Buttons' on your sales screen and add products for the different value vouchers. You can sell the vouchers as if they were a products. When you take a gift voucher back in 'as payment' then you add a voucher payment in the Tender screen. Your day end Z read will show the amount of 'Vouchers' taken in as payment.

[Simon Bridges]

Dear Toby,
Jumping in on this Gift Voucher thread, we have sussed the 'selling a gift voucher as aproduct@ bit but am struggling to understand the 'taking a gift voucher as payment' bit. When you say "add a voucher payment in the Tender screen" how exactly do we do this and will the sytsem then ask for a value once this is set up?. Do we need to to do this for each till or on the back office server?
Many thanks
Simon Bridges

PS any new on the latest EPOS upgrade - Usually speak to James but I understand he is on to new pastures

[Luddite]

I'm pretty sure that adding a tender is in the user guide, maybe from 'set up' - if not i'll reply tomorrow when I am back in the shop.

There is however another problem relating to this that we havn't found a work around for:

We have our vouchers set up as products. Suppose we had only 2 transactions in one day, the 1st was selling a £10 voucher, the 2nd redeeming that £10 voucher. At the end of the day the till will tell me that we have taken £20, but the reality is that we have only taken £10. Obviously this can get sorted outside of epos when doing accounts etc - but its abit unweildy.

What do you think - am I making a problem where there isn't one?

Nick

[Neil_P]

Just thought I'd add my bit FWIW.

Firstly Simon, to add a voucher as a tender type -
From the Main Menu > Setup > option > tender Types. You should already see it there as an option, its simply a case of ticking the box to turn on the functionality. You'll then see it appear as a seperate button on your payment screen and an extra line on your Z report so you can track it.

Luddite, you are right about the £20 thing, but you should set up the cost price as the face value of the voucher then there is no margin in the voucher itself, only in the products that it is ultimately redeemed against. Incidentally the way I do it to avoid confusion with sales figures - set up your vouchers in their own category and simply ignore it in your accounts, but use it to track your voucher stock. Once redeemed, the sales will obviously report as normal in their correct categories.

Hope this is of some use.

[Simon Bridges]

Thanks Neil, got it sorted, easy when you know how.

[mrjkj]

Please can anyone tell me how: If a customer buys a gift voucher/card for £50 and then redeems just £25 of it, how can it be monitored to know the remaining value on the gift card.

I think I follow all of the previous comments but not sure how to administrate this.

Thanks
Mandy

[glasgowmike]

We have a log book and reduce the recorded amount in the book and cross off the original amount in the book. We then write the new (lesser) amount on the voucher. cumbersome but it keeps track of it (although not within epos).

[miketait]

Why not make original £50 voucher totally redeemed, and issue new one for outstanding £25 - then it could all be in epos system

Mike

[glasgowmike]

We could if it was even sales they did. We had one customer use a £100 voucher about 10 times! She would come in an buy £4.73 of something; quite frustrating but she was kind and frugal so can't blame her. Most do spend the full amount (when they use them) but there are those that just spend a portion that just isn't tidy to deal with. For accounting purposes we track vouchers uniquely - no sale price only when redeemed. So we don't pay VAT on what isn't redeemed (or I think that is how we do it:)

[miketait]

Typical - business would be so much easier if it wasn't for customers!

[mrjkj]

I got another idea given to me today, to open a client account for each gift voucher, i.e. call them GV1, GV2 etc then apply the amount to the account...what do you think of this idea?

Why haven't actinic written this into the programme, considering the amount of retailers that actually do gift cards nowadays!!

Mandy