Frequently Asked Questions

At the moment, the extension only supports digital/virtual gift cards. Printed vouchers and physical gift cards are not supported.

Yes. This is possible using Name Your Price in addition to Gift Cards.

The extension only supports prepaid, multi-purpose digital gift cards at the moment.

No. The extension only supports prepaid, multi-purpose digital gift cards.

Prepaid gift cards must be treated as a method of payment, whereas promotional gift cards work just like coupons. Here’s an example to help you understand why prepaid gift card codes should not be issued freely:

A WooCommerce store owner customized Gift Cards to be able to issue prepaid gift card codes freely. Then, she issued a $110 gift card code and sent it to a customer. The customer decided to use the gift card to purchase a product that costs $100 (+10% VAT). Because prepaid gift cards are treated as a method of payment, the line item included in the customer’s order recorded a sale of $100 + $10 VAT, and the merchant issued an invoice with the same information, listing “Gift Cards” as a method of payment. As a result, the merchant was taxed for this sale in its entirety, although no payment was ever received for the issued gift card code.

If the gift card code of this example was a promotional one, its value would have been treated as a discount. Therefore, for the same $100 + $10 VAT purchase, the line item included in the customer’s order would record a $0 sale, and the merchant would not be taxed for it.

Gift Cards allows you to import and export gift card codes using the CSV file format. The provided Importer can be used to:

• import existing gift card codes created with the Gift Cards extension; or to
• create new gift card codes in bulk.

For more information, please see our docs on importing gift cards.

In general, prepaid gift card codes should not be issued freely.

However, in some cases you may want to order a prepaid gift card on a customer’s behalf, or send a gift card code without processing an online payment. Some examples:

• You accept orders by phone and a customer wishes to purchase a gift card.
• You have a physical store location in addition to an online store, and a customer wishes to pay for an e-gift card in-store.
• You would like to send a gift card to a customer instead of issuing a refund.

To do this:

• Create a manual order.
• Manually add the gift card product to the order.
• Click the Edit button under the gift card you just added to configure its From, To, Message and Delivery Date fields.
• Set the total of your gift card to zero.
• Make other edits to the order as needed, and finally save and complete the order.

Note that the issued gift card will have a value equal to the Regular Price of the gift card product, even though you manually turned the total of that specific order item into 0.

T​o change the redeeming customer of a Gift Card code:

1. Navigate to Marketing > Gift Cards.
2. S​elect the gift card in question.
3. Locate the Redeem for Customer box.

4. Click on “Search for a customer…“.
5. E​nter 3 or more characters of the customer you want to be redeeming the gift card code.

6. S​elect the customer.
7. C​lick on Redeem.

The plugin does not provide an option to mark specific gift card products as non-redeemable. However, there is a way to do this site-wide. For assistance with this, please reach out to our team!

No. The plugin prevents customers from purchasing gift cards using their gift card balance or manually entering gift cards.

W​hat happens when a Gift Card product is configured as Sold Individually?

W​hen a Gift Card product is configured as Sold Individually, it is not possible to send it to more than 1 recipient.

I​f you attempt to add to cart a Gift card product with more that 1 recipient in the “To” field, you will see the following notice:

W​hat happens when I send a Gift Card to multiple recipients?

When the order is placed, a unique gift card code is generated for each recipient. Depending on the specified delivery date, the code will be e-mailed to the specified recipients:

• Within a few minutes, if the gift card was purchased for immediate delivery.
• On the specified date, at roughly the same time, if the gift card was purchased for delivery at a future date.

E​ach recipient will receive an email with their unique Gift Card code, which is not CC’ed to the other recipients.

No, Gift Cards does not support quick-pay buttons. Quick-pay buttons added by WooPayments in the single product page are automatically hidden from gift card pages.

When a customer purchases a gift card product with a Sale Price, the issued gift card code will have a face value equal to the Regular Price of the gift card product by default.

Please consult with your accounting team before making prepaid, multi-purpose gift cards available on sale.

When using a prepaid gift card to pay for an order, partially or fully, cart/order line items are not discounted and product/order revenue is recorded in full under Analytics > Products and Analytics > Revenue.

However WooCommerce does not natively support multiple payment methods per order. To work around this limitation, the plugin modifies the order total of every order that is paid with gift cards, partially or fully. Plugins that read or display order totals will not be able to correctly identify gift cards as a payment method, unless an integration is written to support Gift Cards.

When a prepaid, multi-purpose gift card is purchased, tax is not assessed and the cash received is treated as a liability. Later, when the gift card is used to pay for a product, the liability shifts into a sale and tax is assessed as usual.

To account for this, Gift Cards integrates with WooCommerce Analytics to ensure that:

• Purchases of gift card products are counted towards the Gross Sales, but not towards the Net Sales reported under Analytics > Revenue.
• Payments with prepaid gift cards are counted towards the reported Gross Sales, Net Sales and Taxes.

The plugin does not allow you to create gift cards using Subscription-type products. However, it is possible to offer a gift card product on subscription using the All Products for Woo Subscriptions add-on. Note that when a gift card is purchased on subscription, a new gift card code will be sent to the recipient at every billing interval.

Yes. Subscribers can pay for subscription renewals using their gift cards balance. In the event the balance cannot cover the whole cost of the renewal, the remaining cost will be covered using the payment gateway that the customer selected when signing up. For details please refer to the Compatibility and Integrations document section on Woo Subscriptions.

This means that the order paying for the gift card is still pending. See Gift Cards and Pending Orders for more information.

Yes. The plugin makes it possible to re-use the existing coupon code form input to apply gift card codes, instead of using the “Have a Gift Card?” form. This functionality is available as a free feature plugin.

Yes! Conditional Shipping and Payments allows you to use conditional logic to restrict payments with gift card codes/balance in many scenarios.

Yes, with Conditional Shipping and Payments. The extension allows you to restrict payment gateways depending on the presence of gift card products in the cart.

Why can’t I use my gift card code?

If a gift card code can’t be used, the reason is most likely one of the following:

t​he gift card was previously used as partial payment for an order which is pending payment, and the funds are being withheld.

t​he gift card code is inactive

No. Gift cards are Virtual products. Currently, Instagram only supports Physical products.

At what time are the scheduled Gift Cards delivered? Is there a way to let customers choose a custom delivery time when purchasing a gift card?

Scheduled gift card codes are delivered on the picked delivery date, approximately at the same time that the gift card product is added to the cart. There isn’t a way to customize the delivery time.

For example, if a gift card product was added to the cart on January 10th at 14:17, and was scheduled for delivery on January 25th, it will be delivered on January 25th at 14:17.

Note: By default, the delivery date/time is calculated using the timezone of the customer as reference. If a customer lives in London, UK and wants to send a scheduled gift card to Melbourne, Australia, then they will need to take the timezone difference into consideration.

How to remove the ‘S’ character from the Gift Card delivery dates

WordPress replaces “th” (for example: 4th of August) with an “S” character — however, WooCommerce and Gift Cards do not support this.

This usually shows up with custom date formats. To resolve this, please navigate to the Settings > General tab and choose a different date format.

How to resolve Gift Cards Delivery Date style issues

T​o troubleshoot style issues with the Delivery Date field, follow the steps below:

1. Open your browser’s inspector.
2. Remove our wc_gc_datepicker class from the date picker container

If the issue is resolved, then it means that it is caused by a conflict between the active theme’s aggressive CSS style rules and our own aggressive style rules.

To remove our styles completely and allow the theme’s styles to be correctly applied to the Delivery Date field, use the following snippet:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_gc_disable_datepicker_styles', '__return_true' );

If the issue isn’t resolved, it is most probably caused by the active theme. Please see our guide on conflict testing.

Gift Cards adds the following database tables:

• woocommerce_gc_activity
• woocommerce_gc_cards
• woocommerce_gc_cardsmeta

Gift card codes are not being generated

If no gift card codes are generated once you place a gift card order, check if the following tables exist in the database:

• woocommerce_gc_activity
• woocommerce_gc_cards
• woocommerce_gc_cardsmeta

If these tables do not exist, then this usually means that the database user in the wp-config.php file doesn’t have the required permissions to create new tables.

Once you make sure that you have permission to create new tables in the database, it is necessary to delete the:

• wc_gc_version
• wc_gc_db_version

keys from the options table as this will re-trigger the install script that creates those tables. To delete these options:

1. Install the following snippet:

add_action( 'init', 'sw_wc_gc_delete_options' );
function sw_wc_gc_delete_options() {
  
    delete_option( 'wc_gc_version' );
    delete_option( 'wc_gc_db_version' );
}

2. Refresh the site’s home page.
3. Remove the snippet.

Note: We are unable to provide support for customizations under our Support Policy. If you need to customize a snippet, or extend its functionality, seek assistance from a qualified WordPress/WooCommerce Developer. We highly recommend Codeable, or a Certified WooExpert.

When a customer places an order that contains a gift card product, the plugin creates a new code that appears under WooCommerce > Gift Cards. The code is created only when:

• the order is paid; or
• Its status is changed to “Completed”.

Depending on the specified delivery date, the code will be e-mailed to the specified recipient(s):

• Within a few minutes, if the gift card was purchased for immediate delivery.
• On the specified date, at roughly the same time, if the gift card was purchased for delivery at a future date.

If you are experiencing issues with undelivered e-mails, make sure that your WordPress hosting environment supports background processing through Action Scheduler, the task queuing system built into WooCommerce. WooCommerce core uses Action Scheduler for many important tasks, such as installing updates, while Gift Cards depends on Action Scheduler for processing and e-mailing Gift Card codes to recipients.

To find out if Action Scheduler works, go to Tools > Scheduled Actions, and check the Pending tasks in your system. If the oldest Pending task is more than a few days old, it might be a good idea to reach out to your host or system administrator and confirm that:

• WP Cron is enabled on your system; and that
• your system is able to “talk to itself” (perform loopback requests).

E-mails sent to gift card recipients follow the standard transactional WooCommerce e-mail format. The template added by Gift cards is called Gift Card Received and includes an image/design element that can be customized per product/variation. To set this image:

1. Edit the gift card product you have created.
2. Navigate to Product Data > General.
3. Choose a Recipient Email Image option.

There are 3 Recipient Email Image options:

• None — Choose this option if you don’t want to include any image/design in “Gift Card Received” e-mails.

• Use Product — Choose this option to include the featured product image in “Gift Card Received” e-mails.

• Upload Custom — Choose this option to specify or upload a custom image/design for “Gift Card Received” e-mails.

To offer multiple gift card designs for different occasions, you have two options:

• Create a separate gift card product for each occasion, and group all of them in a dedicated product category.
• Create a Variable gift card and add a variation attribute that customers can use to select the design of their liking.

In both cases, you can use the product- or variation-level Recipient Email Image option to specify the image/design you wish to display in recipient e-mails.

👉🏼The extension does not include any custom images/designs.

Gift Cards email templates can be edited just like the standard WooCommerce core e-mails by navigating to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails. Note that email customization options are very limited. We are also not aware of any 3rd party e-mail customizer plugin that supports Gift Cards.

How to handle failed loopback request notices in Gift Cards

In Gift Cards, we have added some performance tests that check the general well-being of your site. WordPress runs similar performance tests as well and outputs results under the Tools > Site Health tab.

If loopback requests do not work correctly in your store, then this indicates a server misconfiguration which prevents your site from making requests to itself. This issue can affect core WooCommerce/WordPress functionalities such as database and plugin updates.

Specifically, for Gift Cards if loopback requests are not working correctly in a site, then scheduled Gift Cards will not be delivered.

As much as we’d love to assist you with this, it is not something we can resolve by adding code in Gift Cards or your WordPress site. It is necessary to bring this issue to the attention of your host and ask them to modify the appropriate server files/settings to allow loopback requests in your site.

When you reach out to your host, please attach a screenshot of the Tools > Site Health tab as WordPress provides some more details about this issue there.

This information is helpful when troubleshooting.

The lifecycle of a gift card code that is scheduled for delivery in the future starts when a customer visits the single product page of the gift card and uses the available Delivery Date field to choose a delivery date. The customer can only choose future dates, starting from the next calendar day.

Scheduled gift card codes are delivered on the picked delivery date, at approximately the same time that the gift card product was added to the cart.

When an order that contains a scheduled gift card code is paid or Completed, a new Scheduled Action is created that handles the delivery of the generated gift card code. This can be seen under Tools > Scheduled Actions.

Here’s an example:

From this Scheduled Action we can extract the following information:

1. The order was paid/completed on 2021-01-08 (January 8, 2021) at ~ 11:13AM UTC.
2. The delivery of the generated code was scheduled to happen on 2021-01-09 (January 9, 2021) at ~11:12AM UTC.

Note 1: By default, the delivery date/time is calculated using the timezone of the customer as reference. If a customer lives in London, UK and wants to send a scheduled gift card to Melbourne, Australia, then it is their responsibility to take the time difference into consideration.

Note 2: If a customer adds a GC to their cart and pays/completes the order immediately/shortly after that, the time of the Action Created event will be close to the Scheduled Date. The time difference between the two (in hours) will be a multiple of approximately 24.

Yes! To apply a gift card to a manually-created (or editable) order:

1. Add some items to an order, calculate totals and save it.
2. While the order is still editable, click the Apply Gift Card button.
3. Enter a gift card code.

Note that:

• It is not possible to manually control the amount debited on the gift cards you apply. When you apply a gift card to an order, the plugin will attempt to use up as much as it can to cover the cost of the items included in the order up to that point.
• The amount debited on any applied gift cards does not change as you add or remove items. One way to change it is to remove and re-apply gift card codes as needed, remembering to Recalculate totals after each change.

Yes, it is possible to refund gift card funds that have been captured in a paid order. However, it is not possible to issue new gift cards when refunding an order.

You can use a plugin such as Loco Translate to edit text strings. This is the best way to customize WooCommerce text strings, as the edits will not be overwritten when plugins are updated.

After activating Loco Translate:

1. Go to Loco Translate > Plugins and click Gift Cards.
2. Click on New Language.
3. Choose the desired or your site’s default language in the dropdown menu.
4. Select Custom in the Choose a location option.
5. Press Start Translating.
6. Search for the string you want to edit.
7. Select it and add your modification.
8. Press Save.

For more details visit Generating a New Translation.

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