Finding gift card balances and transactions

Everything about gift card money in the dashboard lives under Store → Giftcards. Which page you want depends on whether you're asking about one card, about your whole programme, or about individual movements. Your contacts can also check a card's balance themselves on your contacts portal, without asking you.

What's left on one card

Go to Store → Giftcards.
Open Cards and enter the card number in the search bar.
Click the card to see its full detail.

Cards only lists the programme selected at the top of the sidebar. If you have more than one programme and don't know which one the card belongs to, click the magnifying glass next to Giftcards at the top of the sidebar instead. Find giftcard searches all your programmes at once.

This is the one to use when someone is standing in front of you asking what they have left.

Let contacts check their own balance

The contacts portal has a gift card balance checker. Anyone with a gift card can use it: they don't have to log in, and they don't have to be a member of your loyalty programme.

To switch it on:

Go to Apps → Contacts portal and click Edit contact portal.
Open Settings and select Features.
Under Gift cards, turn on Gift card balance checker.

The switch saves straight away. If the Gift cards switch is greyed out and hovering over it shows "This feature isn't enabled on your account.", your account doesn't have gift cards switched on.

The checker lives on the portal's gift card page, which is your portal's address followed by /giftcard, for example loyalty.yourcompany.com/giftcard or yourcompany.app.leat.com/giftcard. Nothing on the portal's login page links to it, so a visitor who opens your portal's address lands on the login page and won't find a way to check a balance there. Share the /giftcard address itself, for example on your website, at your till or on the back of your physical cards. Contacts who are logged in can also reach it from a Giftcards section on the portal's home page, if you've added one. That section's button says Buy a giftcard unless you change its label.

Under Check balance, they enter the card's code in Giftcard code and see:

the current balance
how long the card is valid, or that it's valid indefinitely
the locations where they can use it
for a digital gift card, Show QR-code, which opens the card's QR code. Physical gift cards don't get this button.

They don't see the card's transactions. Those are only in the dashboard. Logged-in contacts don't have a list of their own gift cards on the portal either: every card is looked up by its code, logged in or not.

The code they enter is the card number, the code shown as Hash on the card's page in the dashboard. The easiest way to get a recipient there is a link that goes straight to their card: add the URL tag from the Giftcard tags to your gift card recipient email. It opens your portal on that card's balance, so the recipient doesn't have to type anything. That only works while Gift card balance checker is on. To find that email, click the gear icon at the top right of the dashboard to open Settings, then click Giftcards under Functionalities. This isn't the Settings item in the sidebar of Store → Giftcards. That one holds a programme's own settings, like its name and expiry, and no emails.

If you also have Sell gift cards switched on, a logged-in contact sees the option to buy a gift card on the same page. With Sell gift cards on and the balance checker off, a visitor who isn't logged in sees the gift card page with nothing on it. With both switched off, the page isn't available: visitors who aren't logged in are sent to the login page, and logged-in contacts go to the portal's home page.

A recipient lost their gift card email

The quickest fix is to send the email again from the card in the dashboard. It carries the card's QR code and the link to its balance:

Go to Store → Giftcards, open Cards and click the card.
Open the Recipients tab and click Send to recipient.

See How to re-send a digital gift card email for every option in that dialog. The card's page in the dashboard doesn't show its QR code itself.

While the balance checker is on, the recipient can also open your portal's /giftcard page, enter the card number and click Show QR-code, as long as it's a digital card.

Your whole programme

Analytics gives you the programme at a glance, including:

Outstanding liability, the total balance still on the programme's cards, and how many cards have a balance. This is what you still owe, as it stood at the end of the last day in the date range you pick. Set the range to end on the last day of a month and you get that month-end balance; a range ending today gives you today's.
Redemption rate, the share of issued gift card value that has been redeemed.
Expired gift card credit, the value of gift cards that expired without being redeemed, up to the end of the date range you pick.
Top redemption locations.

Need the balance of every card in a file, for example for your accountant? Open Cards, click Export and include the Amount column: that's what's left on each card. See How to export gift card data.

Every individual movement

Transactions is the ledger of the selected programme. Each row shows the card number (under Giftcard), the amount, the Business profile it was booked at, the Type, the Channel and when it was created. Top-ups and withdrawals show the type Standard. Balance written off when a card expired shows Expired, and a booking that was undone shows Reversal.

Use the Filters button in the top left to narrow by Giftcard, Amount in cents, Business profile, Channel or Created at. The Export button on the right of the overview takes whatever you've filtered to out as a file.

Pending transactions

The Pending transactions tab under Transactions shows gift card transactions that a till integration, such as Lightspeed, has started but not finished yet. A payment with a gift card waits there until the order on the till is completed, and a top-up until it's paid.

While a payment is pending, its amount is already set aside on the card, so it can't be spent a second time. A pending top-up isn't added to the balance yet, so a card never gets value that wasn't paid for.

Normally the integration confirms or cancels the transaction itself, and it disappears from the tab. You don't need to do anything.

An integration can also give a transaction a deadline. One that's still open after that deadline shows the type Requires review, and Leat emails you about it. That usually points at a problem on the till or in the integration, so check the related order first. Then use the buttons on the row:

Commit books the transaction on the card.
Decline drops it. An amount that was set aside becomes available again.

The emails are on by default. To change that, go to Store → Giftcards → Settings, click Edit notifications under Pending transactions, choose Send email notifications or Don't send email notifications, and click Save changes.

A note on accounting

Outstanding gift card value is a liability, not revenue, so the transaction data is as much an accounting record as a marketing one. It's worth agreeing with your accountant which of these figures they want and how often, before you need them at year end.