A gift card is money paid to you now and spent with you later. The customer buys one on your booking page, the balance sits on their account with you, and it comes off the bill at checkout.
Everything about them lives in one place: Catalogue → Gift Cards. That page has two tabs — Settings, where you set the rules, and Sales & balances, where you see what has sold.
Turning them on
On the Settings tab, switch on Sell gift cards at the top. That is the master switch: on, and they appear on your booking page and profile; off, and customers never see them.
Changes on this tab aren't live until you press Save changes.
Setting the amounts
Fixed amounts are the quick-pick values a buyer sees — £25, £50, £100, whatever suits what you charge. Each one has two figures:
- Value — what the card is worth to spend
- Sell for — what the buyer pays
Set them the same for a normal gift card. Set Sell for lower than Value to run a promotion, and the buyer is shown what they're saving. A £100 card sold for £85 is a good December offer.
Custom amount lets buyers type their own figure instead. Turn it on and set a minimum and maximum so nobody buys a £2 card or a £5,000 one by accident.
You can offer fixed amounts, a custom amount, or both.
Expiry
Under Expiry, choose Expires after a number of months from the date of purchase, or Never.
If you set an expiry, customers get a reminder email three days before their credit runs out. Anything unspent at expiry is forfeited, and shows up as breakage in your figures.
Check what your local rules say about expiring gift vouchers before you set a short window.
Where they're sold
If you have more than one location, Where they're sold limits gift cards to the locations you pick. Leave it alone and every location sells them.
What they can be spent on
Two choices:
- Anything you offer — the balance is plain account credit and comes off any bill
- Only selected services, classes & bookable types — pick a kind, then narrow it to specific ones if you want
Restricted cards still behave like money. The customer sees the same Pay with credit step at checkout; the restriction only decides which lines it applies to.
How it appears on your profile
Profile display decides how loudly you advertise them:
- Banner — a prompt in the main column, more prominent
- Side panel — a row in the info panel, more discreet
What the buyer does
On your profile the customer picks an amount, then chooses Buy for myself or Send as a gift.
Sending as a gift asks for the recipient's email address and an optional personal message. The recipient gets an email with a claim link; they sign in or create an account, and the balance lands on their account with your business, under My credit.
Buying for themselves puts it straight on their own account.
Spending it
At checkout the customer gets a Pay with credit step. Credit comes off first and they pay any remainder on the card as normal.
What you actually receive
You receive the full value of the card. The BookUp booking fee — 1% of the amount, minimum 25p, maximum 99p — is added on top and paid by the buyer, exactly as it is on any online booking. A £50 card costs the buyer £50.50 and is worth £50 to spend with you.
Nothing is deducted when the card is later spent, because that money is already yours.
Keeping track
The Sales & balances tab gives you three figures:
- Sold — how many cards, and how much in sales
- Outstanding — money you still owe customers in unspent credit
- Breakage — credit that expired unspent
Below them is every purchase, with a Refund button on each.
Outstanding is the one to watch. It is a real liability — work you have been paid for and haven't done yet — so don't read it as money in the bank.
Refunding a gift card
Find the purchase on Sales & balances and click Refund.
Only the unspent part is refunded, worked out pro rata against what the buyer paid. If half the card has been used, half comes back. A card spent in full has nothing left to refund, and you'll be told so. The BookUp booking fee is not returned.
Giving credit without a sale
You can also hand someone credit directly — to honour a paper voucher from before you joined BookUp, or as a goodwill gesture. See the article below.