In Retail POS you can choose whether gift cards expire, and sometimes you may have a customer who has an expired gift card that you wish to honor.

Since the gift card is expired, Retail POS will not be able to process the sale through the normal gift card payment. Changing the expiry date of gift cards in your store will not retroactively change the expiry date for gift cards that have already been issued, it will only apply to those sold from that point onwards.

For more information on how to set an expiry date for your gift cards, check out this article.

How to process an expired gift card

Creating a new payment type will allow you to put the sale through with an expired gift card payment type as opposed to putting the sale through as cash or an existing payment type. This is because your day’s totals will not be aligned at the end of the day. You will also be able to track the times you have honored expired gift cards in your payments report.

If you want to honor an expired gift card, follow the steps below:

1. Create a new expired gift card payment type by navigating to Setup > Payment types  and clicking Add payment type.

2. Under Payment type, select Other payment method.

3. Click Begin setup. Retail POS will create the payment type and redirect you to the setup page. 

4. In the Payment information section, name the payment method  "Expired Gift Card" or "Honored Gift Card" or anything that is easily identifiable as being for this purpose (and also won't be confused with the genuine gift card payment button!). Click Save payment type.

5. When you're ready to process the payment on the sell screen make sure the amount entered into the box at the top right is the exact amount of the gift card, or less, and choose this new gift card payment type.

6. If the sale is more than the amount of the gift card the customer will be able to split the payment and pay for the outstanding balance of the sale using another payment type.

7. The actual gift card will remain as expired in your store records, so make sure to take the gift card from the customer after the sale and throw it away so that it cannot be reused.

Additional information

This method is also suitable for redeeming gift cards that are being managed on an external system.