Gift cards
Gift cards let you sell credit in advance and redeem it against a booking at checkout. You issue a card from the Gift Cards page, and staff apply its balance when recording payment on an appointment. This guide covers issuing Sold, Promo, and Imported cards, recipient emails, expiration, and redemption from Booking Details.
Before you start
Gift cards are available only when payments are enabled for your salon. When payments are disabled, the Gift Cards page redirects and shows "Gift cards are unavailable while payments are disabled." Taimli records the payment type you choose but does not process the customer's cash or card payment.
Open the Gift Cards page
Go to Gift Cards from the sidebar to view and issue cards. The list shows each card's Code, Status, Type, Sent to, Remaining, and Expires values. Filter with All, Active, Expired, or Depleted, or search by code, email, or note. Selecting a row opens a details panel with the remaining balance, original amount, usage percentage, type, expiration, payment details, delivery information, and activity history.
Issue a gift card
Open the Issue gift card panel and choose one of three issue types. The type controls which fields appear and how the card is recorded.
Type | Purpose | Payment field | Delivery fields |
|---|---|---|---|
Sold | Customer paid for this gift card. A sale is recorded. | Paid via: Cash, Card, or Other | Email, message, and internal note |
Promo | Complimentary or marketing value. No sale is recorded. | Hidden | Email, message, and internal note |
Imported | Balance migrated from a previous system. | Hidden | Hidden |
Choose the Issue type.
Enter the Amount. It is required and must be greater than zero.
Enter a Code. It is optional for Sold and Promo cards (auto-generated if blank) and required for Imported cards, where you enter the existing code. Codes are unique within your salon.
Set Expires if the card should expire. Leaving it blank means the card never expires, and a date before today is rejected.
For Sold cards, choose Paid via: Cash, Card, or Other. For Sold and Promo cards, optionally enter an Email to recipient, a Message to recipient, and an Internal note.
Issue the card.
A Sold card records the gift card, a sale ledger entry, an issued transaction, and a delivery email when an email was provided. Promo and Imported cards create an issued transaction but no sale entry.
Recipient email and delivery
When you enter an Email to recipient on a Sold or Promo card, Taimli sends the recipient a gift card email with the code, amount, optional expiration date, and your optional message. Imported cards do not keep a recipient email or message and do not receive the delivery email. From a card's details panel you can Copy code or, when a recipient email exists, Resend email.
Card statuses and expiration
A card is Active when it is not expired and has a remaining balance above zero, Expired when its expiration date is before the current date in your salon's timezone, and Depleted otherwise. A card stays redeemable on its expiration date and becomes expired only after that date.
Redeem a gift card at checkout
Apply a gift card's balance when you record payment on an appointment. Checkout is available only when the booking is not fully paid, has no invoice, and payments are enabled.
Open the appointment in the admin Calendar.
Open its Booking Details. For how to open and manage appointments, see Managing Appointments.
Choose Checkout and select Gift card as the Payment method.
Enter the gift card code. Codes are matched in normalized form, so lowercase and dashed input work.
Click Validate. The panel then shows the Gift card balance, Will be used, and Still unpaid after gift card amounts.
Click Pay with gift card. Payment records successfully and checkout closes.
The amount applied is the lower of the card's remaining balance and the booking's unpaid amount. If the card covers only part of the total, the booking stays partially unpaid and the remaining amount is handled in a later Checkout action with Cash or Card; the gift card submission does not combine a second payment method.
If validation fails, you'll see one of these messages: "Enter a gift card code," "Gift card not found," "Gift card has expired," or "Gift card has no balance left."
Gift card payments appear in the booking's activity history alongside other payments and invoices. See View a booking's activity history.
Reverse a gift-card payment
Recorded a gift-card payment by mistake? Use Revert Payments in the booking's Booking Details. It clears the booking's paid status and restores the gift card's balance.
Open the appointment in the admin Calendar and open its Booking Details.
In the Payment section, click Revert Payments.
Booking Details shows "Payment status cleared" when the reversal succeeds. Revert Payments reverses all reversible payments on the booking at once, not only the gift-card payment, so check what else was recorded before using it. Payments processed by a payment provider, such as Stripe payments, are left untouched.
The gift card's balance goes back up and a Restored entry appears in the card's Activity section in the Gift Cards details panel. The booking's activity history shows a Payment reverted entry with the time and who recorded the reversal; for how to open the log, see View a booking's activity history.
If the payment was recorded against an invoice instead of at checkout, use Reverse invoice payment in the Invoice section of Booking Details. It reverses the payments attached to that invoice, keeps the ledger history, and makes the invoice unpaid again. Booking Details shows "Invoice payment reversed." when it succeeds.