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Gift cards

Gift cards live natively in OrderUp. There's no third-party gift-card vendor to set up — sales, redemptions, and balances all flow through the POS and the management app, and they appear on the same end-of-day and accounting reports as everything else.

Selling physical gift cards​

Physical cards are pre-printed (by you or a vendor) with a unique card number — usually as a magstripe or barcode. To sell one:

  1. From the POS order screen, add Gift Card as a line item and enter the load amount the guest wants.
  2. Take payment as you would for any other order.
  3. When prompted, scan or swipe the physical card to bind that card number to the loaded balance.
  4. Hand the card to the guest.

The card is now active with the loaded balance. Cards never expire by default; if your jurisdiction requires expiration, configure it under Gift Cards → Setup.

To register a box of pre-printed cards (say, you bought 100 from a vendor and want them ready to sell), use Gift Cards → Register Pre-Printed Stock. Paste the card numbers from the vendor's manifest — one per line or comma-separated, spaces and dashes are ignored — set a starting balance if you want (leave it blank to register them as zero-balance inventory), and submit. You can register up to 500 cards per batch; larger manifests need to be split. Registration reports per-card results, so a batch can partially succeed — fix and resubmit just the cards that failed rather than the whole box.

Many vendors print sequential card numbers with no Luhn check digit. If registration rejects an otherwise-valid vendor number, turn off Require Luhn check digit under Gift Cards → Setup — it's on by default for cards OrderUp generates, but pre-printed stock often doesn't carry one. Turning it off doesn't loosen anything else: the card-number prefix, length, and uniqueness are still enforced.

Selling digital gift cards​

Digital cards work the same way, except no physical artifact:

  1. From your online ordering site or the POS, the guest selects Gift Card and enters:
    • Amount.
    • Recipient name and email.
    • Optional message.
    • Delivery date (immediate or scheduled).
  2. Payment is taken.
  3. OrderUp generates a unique card code, sends a branded email to the recipient on the chosen date, and stores the card in their account if they have one.
  4. The recipient redeems by entering the code at checkout (online) or showing the email/code at the POS.

Customize the email template — logo, colors, message — under Gift Cards → Setup → Email Template.

Redeeming at the POS​

To redeem any gift card, physical or digital:

  1. Ring up the order normally.
  2. At the payment step, choose Gift Card as a payment method.
  3. Scan the physical card, swipe it, or type/paste the digital code.
  4. The POS shows the current balance and applies it (up to the order total).
  5. If the order total exceeds the gift-card balance, take the remainder on a second payment method.
  6. If the gift-card balance exceeds the order total, the remainder stays on the card for next time.

A gift card can be split across multiple orders, and an order can be paid by multiple gift cards plus another payment method. The POS handles any combination.

Balance lookup​

Guests will ask: "How much is left on my card?" Two ways to check:

  • At the POS. From the home screen, tap Gift Cards → Balance Lookup, scan or enter the card, and the POS shows the current balance and recent transactions.
  • In the management app. Go to Gift Cards → Balance, search by card number, recipient name, or recipient email. You'll see the issuance history, every redemption, and the current balance.

You can also surface a public balance-check page on your branded site so guests can self-serve.

Reporting and accounting​

Gift cards are an unusual line item in accounting because the sale and the redemption happen at different times — and the redemption may be at a different restaurant if you operate multiple locations.

OrderUp tracks two distinct numbers on every report:

  • Gift card sales. Cash you took in for selling cards. This is a liability until redeemed — guest paid you, but they haven't received goods yet.
  • Gift card redemptions. Cash equivalent applied against an order. This is the revenue recognition event.

Find these on Reports → Sales (filtered by tender type) and on Reports → Gift Card Liability for the running outstanding balance across all cards. The Liability report is what your accountant will want at month-end and year-end — it tells you how much you owe in unredeemed gift-card value.

For multi-location operators, redemptions are tracked at the location where the card was redeemed, but the original sale is tracked at the location that sold it. The reports surface both views so you can settle inter-location balances if you need to.