Exclude physical gift cards from Discounts

[dylrich20]

I offer physical gift cards using Square's plastic gift card product. I want to run a Black Friday sale offering 20% off everything in store excluding physical gift cards. There doesn't seem to be a way to exclude specific items from the promotion.

Please help - am I missing something? This seems like a pretty basic, foundational requirement / feature for a proper POS product so I have to imagine it's possible and I just can't figure it out. 

Thank you!

[TCSlaguna]

Hey @dylrich20 

Good question!

I THINK that discounts do not apply to gift cards. 

There is a separate section in your Square Dashboard to create gift card discounts. 

Let me ask @Candlestore  @JTPets  @DinaLRosenberg  

[JTPets]

I cant confirm if discounts work on giftcards as a regular practice but they do have their own setting for discounts on purchase for promotions - I used to offer 5% discount on giftcards.

However I will check tomorrow as I am running a 20% off $250 for black friday deal

[TCSlaguna]

@JTPets  Any updates since running your deal? 

[DinaLRosenberg]

Hi there- they don't apply to gift cards- we just state the discount in our marketing- this is what we do:

20 Off*

*doesn't apply to gift cards, services, readings, or special events. Discounts cannot be combined or stacked with other offers or coupons.

[BofBArtStudio · Accepted solution]

Discounts DO apply to gift cards!

Unfortunately it's a training thing for the team to make sure that they never give a discount to gift cards.

But if a TM rings up a gift card, there's nothing stopping that TM from applying a 20% discount to the gift card.

@dylrich20 seems to be implying that there should be a way to exclude gift cards from being able to be discounted and that is something that still needs to be addressed.

@DinaLRosenberg   We also put it in our marketing that gift cards are excluded, but if our team member is ringing somebody up and they're buying products and gift cards all in the same transaction and then apply the 20% discount to the cart, then gift cards are going to be discounted.

This has been something that we've had to really carefully monitor so that it doesn't accidentally happen for discounts to be applied to gift cards. 

You can of course set up automatic discount rules for specific items to only be discounted, but if you're doing a discount store wide, you need to make sure that you include every category or every product. There's not a way to say exclude certain items. For some of us who have a very large set of items in categories, it would be very difficult to do a store wide all category all item discount automatically while excluding gift cards. 

However, there is still nothing stopping a TM from pressing discount and custom percentage (or a 20% Black Friday discount button) and offering a discount on that gift card or on the whole cart without even realizing that the gift card is also included in that.

@Katie_SQ 

[DinaLRosenberg]

Ugh really?

Well- we sorta beat that into everyones heads that they cannot sell a gift card at a discount 

typically we would set up our discounts to exclude a bunch of items but of course now the marketing changes we all can no longer do that so we are going to cross our fingers.

[JTPets]

I understand what you are saying now, and yes that is a possiblity. While i could see how this could be a problem, I myself do want the functionality to discount a gift card to exist. But I agree that there should be a option to flag item before applying a discount for things like giftcards is important too

[BofBArtStudio]

There are times when a gift card discount could be important.  Such as if you are giving it as a credit to a customer.  A $20 credit as a gift card would get 100% discount.

However, a traditional discount on a gift card could go like this...

Buy a $100 gift card and get 20% off.  So they get $100 gift card for $80.  Then they come in and use that gift card to buy $125 in items that they get a 20% discount on and they literally just got $125 worth of items for $80. 

In a world where we try to not stack discounts, by exchanging money for money (money for gift cards) at a discount and then giving the customer the opportunity to utilize that payment method on discounted items, we end up inadvertently stacking discounts.

That is why we never give discounts on gift cards other than the 100% discount that we might do as a credit for example, or as a donation.

[dylrich20]

Thank you, @BofBArtStudio! Very helpful and you're spot on.

What I was hoping to execute was a discount that auto applied to every item/category except for gift cards but that capability does not exist. While not ideal, I did figure out when doing some after hours testing that once the discount is applied, I can click on any item (gift card included) in the cart and toggle between the discount applying to that item or not. Important to note we use Square Register as well so that's the only platform I've experimented on. So while it won't be automated, if/when we sell gift cards during our Black Friday promotion, we will just click on the gift card once the cart is complete and before we charge the customer, toggle OFF the discount so we charge full price on the gift card, and then charge the customer. 

Would be great & much easier if the capability existed though for sure.

[DinaLRosenberg]

Well- that USED to exist but Square removed that functionality when coupons migrated to marketing... many retailers have been beating the drum that we need it back.