Issuing gift cards to a group of contacts in one go

An issuance hands out gift cards to a group of contacts in one go: you build a list of contacts and amounts, check it, and then create every card at once. Each contact gets their own card, and can be emailed about it automatically.

Use it for staff gifts, a compensation round, a corporate order, or anything where you'd otherwise create cards one by one.

To find it, go to Store → Giftcards → Issuances. An issuance belongs to the gift card program selected at the top of the sidebar, so pick the right program first.

Setting one up

Click New issuance and fill in:

Name. How you'll recognise it in the list.
Add an optional description. Turn this on to add a Description. It's internal: only your team sees it, so use it to record why these gift cards went out.
Business profile. Required. The cards are created at this location.
Send by system email. On by default. Turn this off to issue the gift cards without telling anyone. If your account has more than one gift card recipient email, you also pick which one announces them.
Upgradable. Off by default. Whether the cards can still be topped up after they've been loaded. Leave it off and a card can't be topped up again after its first load. It can still be spent.

Click Create. The issuance opens as a Draft, with no recipients yet.

Adding recipients

On the Recipients tab, while the issuance is still a draft, there are two ways in.

One at a time. Search for the contact, enter the amount, and click Add recipient. The amount stays filled in for the next person, because handing one figure to a list of people is the normal case.

A contact can only be on an issuance once. If you add someone who's already on the list, a dialog opens: This contact is already on the list. It shows the amount they're set to receive. Click Update amount to replace it with the new one, or Cancel to leave it as it was. Either way they get 1 card, not 2. Use the bin icon on a row to take somebody off again.

From a spreadsheet. Click Import recipients to start an import. Start it from the issuance itself, not from the imports page, so the import knows which issuance it's filling. The file needs 2 columns:

the contact's email address, which has to belong to a contact you already have. A row with an email address that isn't a contact fails.
the amount, in your currency, not in cents: 25 means 25 euros. It has to be more than 0.

The import only fills the list. No card is created and no email goes out until you issue.

An import doesn't warn you about contacts who are already on the list. It quietly overwrites their amount: if a contact is in the file twice, the last row wins, and running the same file again overwrites the amounts again. So check the list before you issue.

Issuing

Click Issue giftcards. The confirmation tells you exactly what's about to happen: how many cards, their total value, and whether every contact is emailed. It can't be undone.

Two things stop the run before a single card is made:

an issuance with no recipients
a recipient email that doesn't pass its checks, which is deliberate: a broken email would mean handing out cards nobody is told about

While it runs the status is Issuing, and the recipient rows switch to Issued as their cards are created. A large issuance can take a few minutes. You can leave the page.

The statuses

Draft. Still being built. This is the only state in which you can change the settings or the recipients.
Issuing. The run is in flight.
Completed. Every recipient got their card, and every email went out.
Completed with errors. At least one recipient ended up without a card, or without their email. That includes anyone the run never got to. The banner tells you how many cards were issued, and the recipient rows tell you what went wrong.

Once issuing has started, the recipient list is the record of what was given away, so it's read-only from then on.

Reading the recipients table

Each row shows the contact, the amount, the status, the card that was created and when.

Pending. Not yet issued.
Issued. The card exists and is linked in the row, so you can open it.
Failed. No card. The reason is shown under the status.
Email failed. The card exists, but the announcement didn't go out.

These two need different fixes. An issuance can't be run again and has no resend button of its own. For Email failed, open the card from the row and use Send to recipient on its Recipients tab. For Failed, create the missing card yourself, for example with New giftcard under Cards, or with a new issuance for just those contacts.

When the issuance sends an email, an extra column follows its delivery: Created, Sent, Processed, Deferred, Delivered, Bounced, Dropped, Spam report or Failed to send, with the opens and clicks next to it. Everything past Sent comes from the mail provider, so it can take a moment to appear.

The other tabs

Information shows the settings you filled in at the start, split into sections:

Details: the Name and Description. Change them with Edit details.
Business profile: change it with Edit business profile.
Email: whether the cards are announced. Click Edit email and choose Do not send system email or Send by system email. With 2 or more gift card recipient emails, you also pick one under Email to send. The chosen email's name links to that email's own page.
Recipients: how many recipients there are and their Total value, plus a link to the import if you used one.

Click Save changes to save a section. The edit buttons only show while the issuance is a draft.

Activities is the log: issuance created, issuance changed, gift cards issued, issuing finished, each with a timestamp and the totals.

A few things worth knowing

The email is pinned when the run starts, so editing or republishing that email halfway through can't split one batch across two versions, and the issuance still shows what was actually sent.

One bad contact doesn't stop the rest. A recipient that fails records why, and the other people on the list still get their cards.

Gift cards that were issued stay with their contacts. If you need to undo one, deactivate that card on its own page. How to deactivate a gift card explains how.