Gift cards are set up in the business side of the app on iPhone and iPad, and sold and spent on the Till, the counter on an iPad. Your customers keep theirs in the app on iPhone or Android.
What a gift card is.
A prepaid balance for your business. A customer pays for it now and spends it with you later, all at once or a little at a time, until it runs out or reaches its use-by date. It works only with you, never at another business on Places 360.
There is no VAT when you sell a card. VAT is charged when the card is spent, on what it buys, at each item’s own rate. That is the UK’s rule for multi-purpose vouchers: a card could buy a zero-rated cake or a standard-rated coffee, so the VAT can’t be known until it is spent; for your own situation, ask your accountant.
Until it is spent, the money on a card is owed to the customer in goods. It is not a sale yet, and Places 360’s figures treat it that way.
Turning it on.
- Sell gift cards. In the business side of the app, open Ordering › Gift cards and turn on Sell gift cards. Only a manager can change it.
- Use within. Choose how long a card lasts: 6, 12, 24 or 36 months, No expiry, or Custom: any number of days, up to 1,095, or of months, up to 60. It starts at 24 months. Each card gets its use-by date when it is paid for, so a change applies to the cards you sell from then on, never to cards already sold. A card sold with No expiry has no date at all.
- What the screen shows. Gift cards owed (what customers hold on their cards right now), Open gift cards, and Sold this month.
- What customers see. Nothing changes on your page or menu. Cards are sold at your counter, so a customer can’t buy one in the app or on the web. Once they have one, it shows in their Wallet under To spend, with your name, the card’s code, what is left on it and its use-by date.
Selling one at the Till.
- Add it to the sale. On the Till, open More › Sell a gift card…, choose the amount and tap Add to order. The quick amounts are £10, £20, £30 and £50, and the keypad takes any amount from £1 to £1,000.
- As many as you like. Several cards can go on one sale, on their own or with coffee and cake. Each card is its own line on the bill.
- Paid for with money. By card, in cash, or part of each. A gift card can’t be paid for with another gift card or with cashback.
- The code. Once the sale is paid, the paid screen shows each card’s code, live at once. Tap Print to print it on your receipt printer, ready to hand over, or Email… to send it to whoever it is for. The printed card and the email both carry the amount, the code, the use-by date and how to spend it.
- Never offline. Places 360 makes the card, so while the Till is offline Sell a gift card is switched off, and a sale with a card on it can’t be paid until the connection is back. Take the card off the sale, or wait.
- Discounts never touch a card. A promo code, money off, a reward or a perk comes off the goods in the sale, never off the gift card.
- No cashback on a card. If you run cashback, it is earned on the goods in a sale, never on a gift card bought.
- On the receipt the card shows as Gift card — no VAT, and stays out of the VAT summary.
Tip from Dalve: email the card when you can. An email doesn’t get lost in a coat pocket, and it keeps the code, which is what you need to block a card that goes missing.
What your customer does with it.
- Add it to their Wallet. In the app: Wallet › Have a code?, then the code from the card or the email. It goes in under To spend, with what is left and its use-by date. They need to be signed in; a guest is asked to sign in first.
- Or just bring it. Adding it is optional. A printed or emailed code works at your counter as it is, which suits a card given as a present.
- One Wallet per card. Once a card is in someone’s Wallet, nobody else can add it. Guessing doesn’t work either: after a few wrong codes, the app makes them wait.
- A bit at a time. Whatever isn’t spent stays on the card for next time, until its use-by date.
- Spent in person. A gift card is spent at your counter, through the Till. It can’t pay for an order in the app or on the web.
Spending one at the Till.
- Their QR. Add the customer to the sale by scanning the QR in their app (Wallet › My QR). The customer sheet shows what they hold with you, gift cards and cashback, and at payment Their money pays from it.
- The card’s code. At payment, tap Gift card code and type the code from the printed card or the email, or scan it in with a scanner.
- Only the QR opens a balance. Typing a customer’s card number finds their stamps and rewards, never their balance. For that, the Till needs their live QR or the gift card’s own code, and says so: “Their balance needs their QR — ask them to open My QR.”
- Part of the bill, or all of it. The card pays what it holds, up to the total. The rest is paid by card or in cash, as a split bill, and more than one card can pay one bill.
- The receipt. It shows the card, what it paid and what is left on it, so the customer knows where they stand.
- The VAT. A gift card is a payment: the sale carries its full VAT as usual, however it was paid. Cashback is different, see below.
- Online only. Spending a balance needs the connection, as selling a card does.
Tell your team this: “Got a gift card with us? Open My QR in the app, or show me the code.” One sentence, said the same way by everyone, before they reach for a bank card.
Refunds.
- A sale paid with a gift card. Refund it from the order as you would any other. What the card paid goes back onto the card; what was paid by bank card or in cash goes back that way. A part refund goes to the bank card first, then onto the gift card, then in cash.
- An unspent card, within 14 days. On the Till, More › Refund a gift card…, type the code, Find, then Refund. Only a manager can. The money goes back the way the card was paid for, and the card stops working. A card that has been spent, even in part, can’t be refunded this way.
- The sale that sold a card. A refund comes off everything else in that sale first, and reaches the card only after that. If it would hand back money already spent from the card, it is refused, and the app tells you the most you can refund.
- Cashback comes back too. Refund an order that earned cashback and the cashback it earned is taken back, in proportion to what was refunded.
What your customers are told.
Every card carries the same short terms: on the printed card, in the gift card email, on the receipt that sold it and in the customer’s Wallet.
- Its date. “Valid until 4 Dec 2026”, or “No expiry date” for a card you brought in without one. A card is valid to the end of that day.
- Your venue only. “Spend it at your venue only.”
- Never cash. “It can’t be exchanged for cash.”
- The refund rule. “If none of it has been spent, it can be refunded to the buyer within 14 days of purchase.” A card you brought in from before Places 360 doesn’t say this, because it wasn’t sold here.
- One reminder before the date. About 30 days before a card’s date, the customer whose Wallet holds it gets a notification, or, if it isn’t in anyone’s Wallet, the address it was emailed to gets an email. Once per card, in the daytime, and never for a card that is spent, blocked or refunded, or has no date.
A lost or stolen card.
On the Till, open More › Block a lost gift card…, type the code and tap Find, then Block and move. Only a manager can, and not while the Till is offline. The old code stops working at once. Its balance and use-by date move to a new code, which you print or email to the customer, and the block is logged with your name. If the card was in a customer’s Wallet, the new one takes its place there. Anyone who tries the old code is told the venue blocked it and to ask for the new one.
Cards you sold before Places 360.
If you sold gift cards before Places 360, on paper, on another till or on your website, bring each one in with what is left on it. It becomes a Places 360 gift card with an opening balance: not a sale, no VAT, nothing in your takings, and not counted in Sold this month.
- One by one. On iPhone, Ordering › Gift cards › Add an existing gift card, or on the Till, More › Add an existing gift card…. Only a manager can. Enter the code printed on their card (leave it empty if it has none), what is left on it, its use-by date or none, and if you know them, the date it was sold and who has it.
- Its own code keeps working. The code printed on their card works at the Till, typed or scanned into Gift card code, written any way: “pv 0123” finds PV-0123.
- And it gets a Places 360 code. Print it or email it to the holder. That is the code that adds the card to the Wallet in their app; the old printed code works at your counter only.
- Its use-by date is kept. The date you enter is the card’s own. A card with no use-by date never expires.
- Nobody is contacted. Holders’ details are kept for your managers, and nobody is emailed or texted unless you send it.
- From then on, a card like any other. It is spent, blocked and moved the same way, and spending it is the sale, with its VAT. It can’t be refunded as a sale, because it wasn’t sold through Places 360.
A long list? Send us a spreadsheet and we will bring them all in at once. One row per card, with a header row and these columns, in any order:
- code, the code printed on the card. Required.
- balance, what is left on it, in pounds. Required.
- expires, its use-by date (30/06/2027 or 2027-06-30), or the word none. Required: an empty cell is never read as no expiry.
- issued, name, email, phone and note, if you have them.
We check every row before anything goes in. If any row has a problem, we tell you which and nothing is added until it is fixed, and running it again never adds a card twice. A card already past its use-by date is turned down unless you ask us to honour it. Afterwards you get the list back with each card’s new Places 360 code beside its old one.
Tip from Dalve: bring your old cards in before your first day on the Till, so every card a customer walks in with already works.
Your figures, and your accountant.
Selling a card is money taken, not a sale: you owe it in goods until it is spent. Spending it is the sale, with its VAT. Every figure in Places 360 follows that rule.
- Sales leave gift cards out. Analytics › Sales, the Till’s Today screen, the drawer’s X and Z reports, Sales today on the business home and the monthly report count the goods only. A sale of nothing but gift cards is not a sale.
- Gift cards sold, on a line of its own. Under the sales, with how many and how much: “Money taken, not sales — you owe it in goods until it’s spent.”
- Money in, and paid with gift cards. Money in is every penny taken: sales and gift cards sold. Paid with gift cards is what was spent from gift cards: a sale, with no money in. Cashback spent is a discount, so it comes off the sale instead, and shows as Cashback with your other discounts.
- A card’s refund isn’t a sales refund. It shows as Gift cards refunded, apart from your sales refunds.
- Owed, apart. Ordering › Gift cards shows Gift cards owed (money customers paid) and Ordering › Cashback shows Cashback owed (your own credit): two figures, never added together.
- The Gift cards & cashback report. In Reports & exports, for the period you choose. Gift card balances runs from At the start to At the end: sold, carried over, spent, refunded onto cards, card sales refunded, lapsed and reinstated, with cards blocked and moved shown alongside, and the cards still open. Cashback has its own: earned, spent, taken back on refunds and lapsed. Refunds that couldn’t take it back lists any refund that paid out for a card or cashback already spent, worth a look with your accountant. It shows once you sell gift cards or run cashback.
- The Gift card ledger CSV. Every entry in the period, with each card’s balance after it. A card is shown by its last four characters, never its whole code.
- The Transactions CSV. Six columns at the end. Card, Cash, At the counter, Gift card and On account add up to each row’s Amount Paid; the last, Cashback discount, is the part of the row’s Discounts that was cashback. A card sold is its own row, category GIFT CARD, with no VAT, and a card’s refund is a GIFT CARD REFUND row.
- Lapsed cards. When a card passes its use-by date, what is left on it lapses and is no longer owed; the report shows it as Lapsed. When that counts as income is your accountant’s call; Places 360 records it on the day the card lapses.
- Reinstating one. If a customer brings a card in past its date, you can still honour it, however long ago it lapsed: in the report, Gift card balances › Lapsed cards › Reinstate. You choose there how long it then works: 14, 30, 90 or 180 days, a custom number of days or months, or No expiry. It starts at 30 days. Only an owner or a manager can, and it is logged with your name.
Cashback, and how it differs.
Cashback is your own credit, given back on what customers pay. Turn it on next door, in Ordering › Cashback, and choose three things: how much comes back on every order, when it can be spent, and how long unused cashback lasts. The choices are 1 to 10% back; spendable immediately, after a day or after 7 days; and lapsing after 3, 6 or 12 months unused, a custom number of days or months, or never. A change to when it lapses applies to the cashback customers already have too, and never shortens it.
- Who earns it. Customers the app knows: their QR at the Till, or their own orders in the app and on the web. It lands when the order is complete.
- What earns it. What they pay with money. Never tips, never a gift card bought, and never what a gift card or cashback paid.
- Spending it. At the Till, from their QR, like a gift card. Their Wallet shows what they have and what is on its way.
- Refunds take it back. Refund an order and the cashback it earned comes off.
- Alongside your stamps. It runs next to your stamp cards, not instead of them.
How the two differ:
- A gift card is money a customer paid you. Cashback is a promise you made, and it is never cash.
- A gift card can be bought, given and refunded. Anyone can buy one, give it away or bring it in, and an unspent one can be refunded within 14 days. Cashback belongs to the customer who earned it and can’t be bought, passed on or cashed in.
- They are reported apart. Gift cards owed and Cashback owed, and their own sections in the report.
- VAT on cashback. Cashback is a discount. It is your own credit, not something a customer bought, so when it is spent it comes off the price, like a promo code, and VAT is charged on what the customer pays after it. It takes off the goods, never a tip. A gift card is money already paid, so an order paid with one keeps its full VAT. This is our reading of the UK rules; check it with your accountant.
More on the day to day is on the help pages
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