Purchasing gift certificates

Providing a smooth gift certificate purchasing process helps Customers buy and send gifts with confidence. In this guide, you’ll learn how Customers select certificate options, personalize their details, choose delivery preferences, and complete payment, giving you insight into the full purchasing journey.

Learn about the Customer's experience when purchasing a gift certificate, including recipient details, custom amount, delivery date, payment options, and receiving the gift certificate PDF.

New to Gift Certificates? Read the first article in this series for an introduction to the Gift Certificates feature.

Accessing the features mentioned in this article

Where can I find this feature using the top menu?

• Customers > Customer Booking Page or Booking Widget
   

What more do I need to use this feature?

• The Gift Certificates feature is activated within your account (Manage > Integrations).
• Admin or restricted permissions to Manage Gift Certificates and Manage Gift Certificate Templates.
   

Which Checkfront version supports this feature - classic items, classic products, or both?

• This feature is available in both our classic items version, which uses classic items (Inventory > Items), and our classic products version, which uses classic products (Inventory > Products).  → Learn more about products

Detail Booking Page	Hero Booking Page

Once you create Gift Certificates, Customers can purchase them directly through your company website. The gift certificate displays to your Customers in just the same way as your other bookable inventory.

When Customers select a gift certificate for purchase, they are presented with a modal where they can provide further information about their purchase.

From here, the Customer provides:

• the name of the recipient (To)
• the name of the sender (From)
• the Recipient Email address
• and a Message to the recipient.

Customers can change the theme of the gift certificate by selecting one from the drop-down menu. This is only an option if you have kept default themes (e.g., Celebration, Seasonal, or Summer) or have added multiple custom themes.

The Start Date and Expires date are displayed for reference purposes. Depending on the configuration of your gift certificates, the Expiry date may be specific, or it may Never expire!

If the Customer purchases more than one gift certificate, they can specify unique information for each gift certificate.

If the gift certificate is configured to support a custom amount, an input field displays in place of the price. The acceptable range of values is displayed above the field for guidance purposes, for example, Between $5.00 to $1000.00.

If you have the Allow customised delivery dates setting enabled for the gift certificate, the Customer is also presented with the option to specify the delivery date. Customers select the delivery date from the calendar provided.

After filling out the gift certificate details for all gift certificates and clicking the Continue button, the Customer is sent to the Create Booking page, where they can complete their purchase and payment, just as with standard bookings.

Customers cannot pay for a gift certificate using a gift certificate When on the Payments page, if a gift certificate is in a Customer's cart, the option to pay with a gift certificate is not visible on the page.

After the purchase is completed, the sender receives their usual purchase confirmation, and the recipient receives their gift certificate as a PDF attachment to the email.  

This attachment contains a barcode that your business can scan via a third-party barcode scanner. The Customer can either print out the gift certificate or present it on their mobile device screen.

Gift certificates issued for PAID bookings only A gift certificate is only issued after the booking status is marked as PAID.

< Setting up email notifications for gift certificates    |     Issuing gift certificates Staff-side by email >