Setting up Online Gift Certificates

Overview

With Zaui you can set up and sell gift certificates online.  You can set-up both Activity Gift Certificates and Open Gift Certificates for sale online. This article will walk you through enabling and managing both of those gift certificate types.

Before setting up your Online Gift Certificates, you will first need to enable your Gift Certificate Notification (so that the purchaser receives the Gift Certificate via email which they can then present to the recipient). Check out this article to find out how to set that up.

This article will cover the following topics:

• Enabling Online Open Gift Certificates
• Enabling Online Activity Gift Certificates
• Setting an Expiry for Activity Gift Certificates

Enabling Online Open Gift Certificates

Open Gift Certificates are issued as a dollar amount applicable to any goods and services of the issuing company. They are not restricted to a specific product, activity, or service at that company.

1. From the navigation bar, select  Settings > Manage Internet Bookings > Manage Portals and select the portal you would like to add Gift Certificates to (usually Default).  
   
2. Within the portal, scroll down to the Gift Certificate Settings section.
   
   
   
   
3. To configure the Open Gift Certificate option, you can select Offer Custom Amounts and/or you can offer Preset amounts. For example a Denomination of 10 to a maximum of 100.
   
   
   
   
4. In the above case, this would appear online as follows:
   
   
   
   
5. Once the amounts have been selected Save the changes to the portal. This portal will now display an additional tab where your guests can purchase their gift certificates online. 
   
   

Enabling Online Activity Gift Certificates

1. Your system will have the Activity Gift Certificate already enabled for online purchases.
   
   You can disable this feature by navigating to Settings > Manage Internet Bookings > Manage Portals, select the portal you wish to disable this on (usually Default), scrolling down to the Gift Certificate Settings and unchecking the box next to Offer Experience Gift Certificates.
2. You'll notice an Experience tab on the Online Gift Certificate Page.
   
   
   
   
3. This is where your customers will be able to select a specific activity (or experience) they wish to purchase as a Gift Certificate and the number of passengers it will be valid for.
   
   
   Currently, Activity Gift Certificates are only available for Standard, Interval or Ticket-type activities. In addition, it's important to note that they do not work with Activity Pricing Options. 

Check out our Webinar on Introducing Gift Certificates for Activities. 

Activity Gift Certificate Pricing Business Rules

1. Only Tours with a Price Code can be sold as a Gift Certificate
2. If there is a price on the current date, the Gift Certificate will use that, or the next upcoming price.
3. If there are fluctuating prices throughout a single day, the gift certificate will select the peak price

Setting an Expiry for Activity Gift Certificates

In some regions, it is illegal for a Gift Certificate of a specific dollar value to have an expiration date. System expiry dates are used for accounting and bookkeeping purposes to determine what Gift Certificates remain. Any Gift Certificates that have gone unredeemed can be honoured following the expiration date. Activity Gift Certificates are an exception to this rule. As they are redeemed for a specific product or service, not a dollar amount, they are permitted to expire in regions such as Canada.

1. To configure the expiry date navigate to Settings > System Settings and scroll down to the Zaui User Interface Settings.
2. Under the Bookings/Reservations section, you'll notice the Online Gift Certificates Expiry setting which you can adjust and Save.