How to sell gift vouchers online and keep track of every one
For a salon, restaurant or studio, vouchers are money taken now for a visit later, often bought in a hurry before a birthday. Selling them online needs a clear voucher page, a checkout, and the unglamorous part that matters most: a register of every code, its value, its expiry and whether it's been used.
Decide the rules before the page
- Amounts or experiences. Set amounts are simplest to track; experience vouchers ("a 60-minute massage") sell better as gifts but need a rule for when your prices rise.
- Validity. Pick a period and print it on every voucher. Rules on voucher expiry differ by country and sometimes by state, so check yours before choosing.
- Partial use. Can someone spend half now and half later? Saying yes means tracking balances.
- Delivery. A PDF or email the buyer forwards, or a printed card you post. Many buyers want something to hand over, so a printable PDF is worth the effort.
- Refunds and lost codes. Decide now; you'll be asked.
Choose how the checkout works
An Anticode site takes payment through a payment link from your own provider: Stripe Payment Links, PayPal, Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Shopify or Whop. There's one payment link per account, and every buy button on every site in the account opens it. That shapes the setup:
| Approach | How the buyer picks an amount | Who issues the code |
|---|---|---|
| A gift card product at a commerce provider | Chooses a value at the provider's checkout | The provider, if it supports gift cards, or you |
| One checkout with several options | Picks from set amounts or variants your provider supports | You, from the payment notification |
| Enquiry first | Asks through the contact form | You, along with a payment link you email |
The first is least work if your business already sells through a commerce platform that handles gift cards; check that it issues and redeems codes before relying on it. The second suits a small business with three or four set amounts. The third works when vouchers are rare or bespoke.
Step by step
- Create the product at your provider with the amounts, and test a purchase.
- Build the voucher page. Ask Anticode for "a gift vouchers section with three amounts, what they can be spent on, how long they last and a buy button", or put it on the Shop page of a multi-page site. Include the validity, the partial-use rule and how delivery works.
- Paste the checkout address in Connectors as your payment link. Buy and pricing buttons open it in a new tab.
- Set up the register. A spreadsheet with code, value, buyer, recipient, date sold, expiry, date used and balance. Generate codes that can't be guessed (not VOUCHER1, VOUCHER2).
- Issue each voucher as payments arrive in your provider's dashboard: add a row, create the PDF from a template, and email it from your own inbox. Anticode doesn't issue codes or send emails to buyers.
- Redeem at the counter by finding the code in the register and filling in the date used.
What goes wrong
- The buyer needs it tonight
- Say on the page how fast vouchers are sent, for example within two hours between 9:00 and 18:00. Check your provider's notifications on busy days such as the week before Christmas.
- A code is used twice
- The register wasn't updated at the till. Make it the first thing staff do when redeeming.
- Someone presents an expired voucher
- Follow the policy you published, and be generous when you can; it's a customer who came back.
- Prices rose since an experience voucher was bought
- Honour the experience, as most businesses do, or state the rule on the voucher.
How you know it's working
Every payment in your provider has a matching row and a sent voucher. Redemptions are recorded the day they happen. The total of unredeemed vouchers in the register is a number your accountant can see, since unspent vouchers are usually treated as money you still owe in services.
What Anticode doesn't do
Anticode builds the voucher page and points its buttons at your checkout. It doesn't take payments itself, generate or validate codes, store balances, email vouchers to buyers or send reminders before expiry. For the page itself see the gift voucher page builder, and for how the checkout works, payment links and adding a buy button.
Questions people ask
Can I sell gift vouchers online in different amounts with separate buttons?
You can show several amounts, but every button opens the same account-wide checkout link, so offer the amounts as options at your provider.
Does Anticode generate voucher codes?
No. Codes come from your commerce provider, if it supports gift cards, or from your own register.
Can a voucher be redeemed online?
Not on an Anticode site. Redemption happens at your counter or at your provider's checkout, if it handles gift cards.