Charge Gift Certificate after Expiration and Deleting Gift Certificates linked to Fraudulent Transactions

Charging Gift Certificates after Expiration

This can happen if the company has a policy of reducing the unused balance of a gift certificate with service charges similar to banks that charge dormancy fees after a certain period that the account has not been used.

This can be done by reducing the value manually by clicking on the Recognize Revenue button at the gift certificate window when you navigate to Lists > Accounting > Gift Certificates and click on a GC that has been generated.

When you click on the Recognize Revenue button, you will be directed to a journal entry window and just edit the Debit and Credit amounts on the amount you wish to charge against the GC balance. The memo field will have the GC authentication code so you can just append the description for the charge.

Note that the Edit may not be available due to the role restrictions that you may need to discuss with your Administrator.

The Expiration Date of the GC means that the customer may not use this for purchase. So you can still charge, but in case you wish to reallow a customer to do so, you can edit the Expiration Date to a much later date.



Deleting Gift Certificates Identified to Come From Fraudulent Transactions

Note that when you have a website that allows purchase of gift certificates, these are automatically generated as long as the payment method is valid. This will be handy in case you identified that the generated GCs were purchased from a stolen credit card or other fraudulent means.

With deleting gift certificates unavailable as of the moment (it is filed as an enhancement), the other option to record this will be to refund the order relating to the purchase of the gift certificate so that the gift certificate code will no longer be valid and usable. You will see the related sales order in the gift certificate window as well for reference.

To do this:

1. View the related Sales Order.
2. Click the Authorize Return button and Save the corresponding Return Authorization including a memo entry for the cancelled gift certificate.
3. Approve the Return Authorization.
4. Click on Refund. This will create a new Credit Memo. Save the Credit Memo.
5. Return to the Sales Order > Related Records tab > click on the Invoice.
6. Edit the Invoice and go to the Related Records tab.
7. Click on the Payment file and go to More Actions > Delete. This will now open the invoice.
8. Go back to the Invoice and click Make Payment.  At the Apply tab > Credits subtab, check the box for the credit memo we just created. Note that this will now be offset with the invoice. Hit Save.

Note: When you now go to view the gift certificate, the balance will now be 0.00 and the transaction history will show that it has been refunded.