How do I discount Gift Certificates?

Prerequisites:

A plan that includes Gift Certificates.
Gift Certificates activated and configured within your account.
Admin permissions manage Discounts and Booking Page layout.
Your account must have access to items (Inventory > Items), which is a key feature of our classic version of Checkfront.

New to Checkfront - Products ✨

Products (Inventory > Products) is the successor feature to (Inventory > Items) and is available in our newest version of Checkfront.

Not yet on our newest version and interested in upgrading? Please contact our Technical Support team for more information.

Discover more product-related help articles here: Products (New).

While we don't have official functionality for discounting Gift Certificates, we hope this workaround does the trick!

Please feel free to reach out to Technical Support to add your name to the existing feature feedback, if this solution does not suffice.

If your plan does not include Gift Certificates and you would like to upgrade, then learn more here.

Overview

Discount Button

Please follow these three steps, details are provided below.

Finally, you can Preview the Customer Booking Flow to get a sense of the Customer Experience.

Create an item that allows you to apply the discount.

Go to the Inventory menu at the top of the page and select New Item.
Choose your gift certificate category from the Category menu.
Give the item a name that makes sense to you, such as Holiday Promo.
Add a photo that conveys that this is a promo!
Next, go to Attributes and set the item to Unlimited Inventory.
Then, under Parameters, click Attach an Existing Parameter. This opens the Attach Parameter modal from which you can select a Parameter, such as QTY. This Parameter should Control Inventory, be one that Sets Pricing, and is Hidden to All (Visibility).
Attach this parameter to your item.
Make sure the Allocation is set to per Day, so that a discount can be applied.
Under, Pricing you want to set the Default Calendar Status to Disabled, and manually set the item to Available, when you are ready e.g. for a holiday promotion at a specific time of year. Alternatively, you can leave it set to Available, if you need to make use of it right away.
Before moving on to the next step, click Preview to generate the URL we need when we Add New Booking Form Field below. Select and then copy that URL to save for later.

Create a discount to associate with the discount item.

Go to the Inventory menu at the top of the page and select Discounts.
From the Inventory list, click on +New Discount.
Give the discount a Name that makes sense to you, such as Holiday Promotion.
Skip entering a Discount Code as this adds extra steps to the process for Customers.
Enter the Discount Amount and set to Per Booking, Before Tax or Per Booking, After Tax. Either work as gift certificates are not taxed. Important: Gift certificates are not discounted if you specify Per Item.
Next, make sure the discount is set to only Apply to the Discount Item that you created in the Create a Discount Item section above.
Click Create to save your new discount.

Add a booking form field in the form of a button, that allows the Customer to add the discount item.

Go to the Manage menu at the top of the page and select Layout and then select the Booking Form tab.
Click on +Add New Field at the bottom of the list of form fields. This opens the Create Form Field modal.
Choose </> HTML Output from the Type dropdown.
Add an ID that makes sense to you such as holidaypromo.
Enter the HTML in the Value field, for example:
```
<a href="" class"myButton">Add your discount here</a>
```
Note: The text between the HTML tags is what displays on your button e.g. Add your discount here.
Now, paste the URL that you copied in the previous step, Create a Discount Item, into the HTML code as the href="" value. For example: HREF="tourspace.checkfront.com/reserve/?item_id=1"
Go to the Advanced tab, make sure the field is Item Specific to the gift certificates that you would like to discount.
Move the field to the top of your form, so that it is prominently placed and before your Customer information fields. You can do this by dragging and dropping the field with your mouse.
If you use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), then you can enhance the look of the button, by adding CSS via the CSS Editor ( Manage > Layout > Booking Form > CSS Editor).

Preview the booking flow from your Customer's perspective.

Go to Customers and select Customer Booking Page.
Choose the Gift Certificate category.
Choose any Gift Certificate (other than the discount item).
Fill out the required forms within the Buy Gift Certificate modal, then click Continue.
From the Create Booking page, you should see the Add your discount here button (or whichever name you gave it when adding you added the new field in the step above). Click the button to be taken to the promo listing.
Click the Book Now button and the Book Now modal opens.
Click Continue to return to Create Booking page with the discount applied.
The Customer would then complete the booking as per usual!

Learn more about gift certicates here: