If you run more than one store, a gift card sold at one store and a customer's store credit earned at one store can be used at any of them. There is nothing to set up beyond turning gift cards on at each store (see Turning On Gift Cards).

Gift cards

Scan, swipe or type the card at any store, exactly as you would one of your own. Taking it as payment, reloading it, cashing it out, moving a lost card's balance and voiding all work.

Behind the scenes, the card's whole balance moves to the store using it the first time it is used there, and from then on it belongs to that store. You do not have to do anything, and nothing is ever in two places. Afterwards:

  • The card's page at the store it came from shows "At" and the store it is at now, with its balance there. It can still be used at the first store; using it moves it back.
  • The Gift Cards list and the gift card liability at each store count only the cards that store holds now, so adding the stores together gives what the company owes.
  • Checking a card at a store that does not hold it, while taking payment or on your phone, shows its balance and which store has it. Searching its number on the Gift Cards page brings it to that store, the same as using it.

A gift card number can only be used once across all your stores. Selling a new card with a number already in use at another store is refused, naming that store.

Store credit

A customer's store credit shows at every store that has them. On the customer's page, the Store Credit card adds a line such as "Also $40.00 at Westside". On an invoice, the Store Credit payment method counts credit at your other stores in the amount available.

When a payment needs more credit than the customer has at this store, their credit at your other stores moves here first and is spent, so the customer never has to go back to the store where they earned it. The customer has to exist at this store; if they do not, find them under At other stores and pick them (see Customers Across Your Stores).

Accounting

Moving a card or credit between stores is not a sale or a payment, and it books nothing. If your stores share one QuickBooks company, the store that sold the card owes it and the store that took it reduces the same liability account, so the two net out.