Gift cards are a great solution for retailers to embrace, as they not only attract new customers, but they also keep old ones engaged. The popularity of gift cards in times of birthdays and celebrations are such, that eschewing gift cards for your business, would almost be doing it a disservice, certainly for your customers

Which is why Hike has designed its point-of-sale platform to get retailers selling their gift cards right from the get go. With its seamless built-in feature that make it easy it to sell, your customers can come into your store and purchase a product with it, simply by scanning the barcode. You can even create custom payment types, to mix and match cash or credit card payments with gift cards.

Additional, Hike’s robust reports means that retailers will be easily able to identify gift-card sales on the Hike Dashboard. Customizing your reports to show gift card sales, can give businesses important insight into how gift cards are being used in-store. Embrace gift cards to expand your store’s ability to attract new customers and keep your old ones engaged.

• Important Things to Know Before Setting Up Hike Gift Cards
  
• Gift Cards Overview
  
• Activating Gift Cards in Hike
  
• Importing Gift Cards in Hike
• Purchasing Gift Cards
  
• Selling Gift Cards to a Customer in Hike
  
• Make Purchases with Gift Cards in Hike
  
  • Checking a Gift Card’s Balance
    
• How to View Gift Card Sales in the Cash Register
  
• Cancelling a Gift Card in Hike
  
• Hide last 3 digits in Gift Cards

Important Things to Know Before Setting Up Hike Gift Cards

Before you begin activating, issuing and actioning gift cards in Hike, there are several important things to take note of:

1. Hike gift cards will not currently work with our e-Commerce integrated applications, like BigCommerce, Shopify and WooCommerce. This is a feature we are working on however, so stay tuned.
   
2. If your Hike store is integrated with accounting platform Xero, you will need to map the correct account code to the payment type as well as your account for liabilities in Hike. Find out more about Hike and Xero Integrations
   
3. If you are currently using an existing gift card solution, you will need to stop, as these won’t be compatible with Hike.
   

Gift Cards Overview

Before we look at how to how to issue gift cards to your customers in Hike, let’s look at the Gift Cards section in Hike itself, for you to familiarize yourself with the various information on the screen.

To begin, select Products on the Hike menu and navigate to the Gift Cards screen.

This is where you’ll find all the information you need relating to Gift Cards in your Hike Store, including the ability to have them activated.

Activate Gift Cards

Please click on the 'Activate Gift card' box, to enable Gift Card functionality to your Hike store.

Find out more about activating and de-activating Gift Cards in Hike

Summary Boxes

Summary Boxes are four distinct values that indicate various reporting features of the gift cards you have in circulation and ones that have also been redeemed.

Cards Sold

The total number of Gift Cards sold.

Total Value

The total value of all gift cards issued, including cards that have been redeemed.

Redeemed Amount

The total value of the amount redeemed from all gift cards that have been issued.

Remaining Balance

The total value of the amount that has not been redeemed from all gift cards that have been issued.

Gift Card List View

The Gift Card List View is in reference to the columns occupying this section. Below we’ll go through what each column means:

Find…

Search for a specific gift card by their gift-card number.

Card Number

The card number assigned to this gift card. By clicking on the card number, a window will slide out, that will detail the list of purchases that have been made with the gift card.

Customer

The customer that has purchased the gift card.

Note: Names are not necessary to purchase/redeem gift cards. Only the card number.

Purchase Date

The initial date the gift card was purchased.

Last Used

The most recent date the card was used. If the card has yet to have been used, this column will remain empty.

Value

The initial or starting value of the card when it was first purchased.

Current Balance

The remaining balance of the card that may be used for purchases.

Activating Gift Cards in Hike

As mentioned earlier, you will need to active Gift Cards in Hike in order to begin selling them to your customers.

To do this, simply visit the Gift Cards section in Hike ( Products > Gift Cards ) and tick the Activate Gift Cards box to enable the function.

Once this is enabled, Gift Cards will appear in the Enter New Sale screen, giving you the ability to sell a Gift Card.

Gift Cards will become a new, accepted payment method when completing a sale. To go alongside other payment types including Cash & Credit Card.

A customer can redeem the gift card in store, and then use the card as a form of payment.

Deactivating Gift Cards

If you decide to no implement Gift Cards in Hike, or simply just want to disable them for a period of time, Hike makes it easy to do just that as well.

Simply go to the Gift Cards section in Hike (Product > Gift Cards) and click on Deactivate gift cards feature to disable the function.

Once gift cards are disable, they will not appear in the Process Sale screen, ensuring that you or your staff will not be able to sell a product using a Gift Card, and as such a customer will not be able to redeem a gift card in store.

However, although the function is de-activated, the balances and details of any Gift Cards issued or redeemed, will still be available to access in the Gift Card screen.

At any time, you can choose to re-active Gift Cards functionality, and all your existing cards will be able to be used, as well as new ones.

Importing Gift cards in Hike

Purchasing Gift Cards

Hike recommends you purchase gift cards from any online outlet that sells them. The gift-cards should contain a barcode with an alphanumeric number, so that you can enter the value into Hike.

Additionally, you can have your gift cards represented by notes, that you give to your customer, although we highly recommend that the codes are unique and not sequential to prevent fraudulent cards.

We currently do not have expiry dates inserted into Gift Cards functionality, although this is a feature that is under development. Stay tuned for more updates.

Selling Gift Cards to a Customer in Hike

Once you have activated your Hike’s gift card functionality, it will soon be time to start selling gift cards to your customers.

To begin, select Point of Sale on the Hike menu and navigate to the Process Sale screen.

Next to the Product search bar, you will see a Gift Card button.

Select this to slide open the Gift Card Number window. Here you will enter the unique numbers or letters you wish to assign as your Gift Card Number.

This is what you and your customers will use to redeem a gift card.

Clicking on the TICK button will open another box, time the Enter Amount, where you will enter the monetary value of the card.

Once you have completed both steps, click on Add to Cart , to have your gift card in your receipt, ready to be sold.

Whilst not necessary, it is recommended that you add a customer to the sale, to easily identify the card for future purchases.

Click PAY to finalize the payment, making the transaction via Cash, Card, etc. payment types.

Note: You are also permitted to add any discounts you want to the sale, simply by clicking on Discount on the receipt. The gift card will still retain the same value, but the customer can pay any amount you decide. All Gift Cards are sold tax free.

Once you’ve completed the transaction, you can print or email a receipt of the Gift Card Sale. The invoice will not show the Gift Card number, only that a Gift Card has been purchased.

Gift Card Number

The Gift Card Number that you choose, can be up to 30 characters.

It can be a unique or sequential number, a mix of numbers or letters, or words with special characters, including spaces.

This number/letter/code would need to be entered again at the time of the checkout when it is being redeemed. If the code is incorrectly entered, you will not be able to proceed, so please ensure that you create a unique coding system that you can easily keep track of.

Make Purchases with Gift Cards in Hike

In order to conduct payment transactions with Gift Cards, you must first go to the Enter New Sale screen in Hike.

To begin, select Point of Sale from the Hike menu and navigate to the Process Sale screen.

Select the product/s that will be sold in the transaction, as per normal. Whilst not essential, we recommend adding the customer to the sale as well.

Once you are ready to proceed with the sale, select PAY to enter in the customer’s Gift Card.

This will take you to the payment method screen, where you will click on Gift Card .

From here, you will be prompted to enter the Gift Card Number.

If the number is correct, the remaining balance will display underneath. Click on the CHARGE button to proceed, with the gift card covering the full amount of the transaction.

Once completed you will have the option to print or email the receipt of the purchase for your customer.

This receipt will display the payment method as Gift Card.

Note: Any purchases made with Gift Cards will still count towards normal sales, and display in the reports accordingly. The shift report will separate by payment method to display sales by Gift Card, just as it displays sales by cash or card.

Checking a Gift Card’s Balance

Undoubtedly at some stage whilst using gift cards, either you or your customer will want to see how much balance they have left on their cards.

To check a customer’s gift card balance, you must first select Products on the Hike menu and navigate the Gift Cards screen.

Select the Gift Card you wish to select the balance of, by clicking on its Card Number. This will slide open a new window where you’ll be able to see any transactions made on the gift card, as well as the Opening Balance, Transaction Amount and Closing Balance.

How to View Gift Card Sales in the Cash Register

To view the cumulative total of your Gift Card Sales in your Cash Register, simply select Point of Sale on your Hike menu and navigate to the Cash Register screen.

In the Payment Tally section, you will see the Gift Card amount, underneath the Payment Type. This is the total value of the gift cards redeemed during the period in which your Cash Register was open.

Once you Close Register and print out the Payment Summary, your gift cards total will again be replicated on the invoice.

Cancelling a Gift Card in Hike

The Gift card not be refunded once it has been issued.

Hide last 3 digits in Gift Cards