Home → Arctic Reservations → Gift Certificates → Creating Gift Certificates
25.1. Creating Gift Certificates
To create a gift certificate, go to the "Invoices" menu and choose "Gift Certificates".
This will take you to the "Browse Gift Certificates" page. Click the green "+Create Gift Certificate" button at the top of the page.
This will open the "Create Gift Certificate" form.
To enter your customer's information for the purchase of the gift certificate, click the "Select Person" button. This will open the "Select Person" page.
If your customer is a new customer, click the green "+Create Person" button at the top of page to create a new Person record for your customer. Once you complete the Person record creation, Arctic will add the customer's name to the "Select Person" field on the "Gift Certificate Form".
If your customer is already in your People database, you can search for their name by scrolling through the list or by entering their name in the "Search Box". Once you find their name, click the "Select Person" button next to their name to add them to the "Select Person" field on the "Gift Certificate Form".
If your customer is an existing customer in your People database, when you select their record besides adding their name to the "Select Person" field, Arctic will also add several invoice options for you to choose from. If you want to add the gift certificate purchase to an existing invoice select the correct invoice number and the gift certificate purchase will be added to the existing invoice. The "New Invoice" option is selected by default.
Note: Arctic displays the invoice options in order of newest to oldest. If you are selecting an existing invoice to add the charges to, you will most likely want the invoice listed right next to the "New Invoice" option.
In the "Amount" field enter the dollar amount for the gift certificate and in the "Expiration Date" field enter an expiration date for the gift certificate. If you do not use expiration dates for your gift certificates you can leave the "Expiration Date" field blank.
Once the form is completed click the "Submit" button. This will take you back to the "View Gift Certificate" page.
The "View Gift Certificate" page displays the Gift Certificate Number, the Amount of the gift certificate, the Available Balance, the Customer, the Invoice, the Status, and Expiration if applicable. The "View Gift Certificate" page will also display any invoices the gift certificate has been applied to.
The Gift Certificate Number displayed on the "View Gift Certificate" page is the number the customer will use to redeem their gift certificate when making a reservation online or over the phone. The Gift Certificate Number is unique for each gift certificate created in the system. We will discuss how to redeem gift certificates later in this chapter.
The Invoice displayed on the "View Gift Certificate" page is clickable so you can easily access the invoice associated with the gift certificate. To process a payment for the gift certificate you will click the invoice number which will take you to the "View Invoice" page where you can process a transaction for the purchase of the gift certificate. We will discuss processing payment for the gift certificate purchase in the next section.
Notice, that currently, even though, our gift certificate has a value of $200.00; it shows that it has a $0.00 Available Balance. This is because a payment for the gift certificate hasn't been processed. Once a payment has been processed and settled for the gift certificate invoice, the amount of the gift certificate will be reflected in the Available Balance. This balance will show a running total of the balance still available on the gift certificate after each invoice it is applied to. This will allow your customer to use the gift certificate for multiple transactions, if they wish, as long as they use the remaining balance before the expiration date of the gift certificate. Once a gift certificate has expired, Arctic will zero out any unused balance shown in the Available Balance. The customer will not be able to redeem the remaining balance, unless you decide to extend the expiration date for the customer by editing the gift certificate.
Also notice there are buttons for editing the gift certificate, emailing the gift certificate information to your customer, and deleting the gift certificate.
By clicking the Edit button you will be taken to the "Update Gift Certificate" page where you can edit the customer, the amount, the expiration date etc.
The Email button will only appear if you have created a Gift Certificate email template. The gift certificate email template can be used to send just the basic information about the gift certificate, i.e. the amount and the gift certificate number or it can be configured to send a "printable" gift certificate so your guest can print the certificate if they are presenting it as a gift. This latter option requires creating an email design that looks like a gift certificate (The Email chapter has helpful documentation about how to create email templates and email designs.)
The Delete button will remove the gift certificate from the system. Clicking the Delete button will not delete the invoice associated with the gift certificate. Any gift certificate that has been applied to any invoice as payment will not be able to be deleted.
In the next section we will discuss how to process a payment for the gift certificate.