Sell gift cards

Switch gift cards on

Gift cards are activated per restaurant as part of your onboarding — ask TableSpark to switch them on for your account, and it’s done from our side the same day. Once they’re on, Gift cards appears in your left sidebar as the balance ledger, and the desk tools in Service light up alongside it. Everything in this guide flows from that one activation.

Sell from your own site

Open Build, press + Add a module, and search “gift”. Two modules answer: Gift cards — a call-to-action band with amount chips — and Gift card form — an in-page amount picker with name, email and a personal message. The inspector sets the amounts, heading and button label, like every block in the Builder.

With Payments connected (your own Stripe account, the same connection online ordering uses), the form’s button reads Pay & send gift card and takes the buyer through Stripe Checkout — a completed sale, paid to your bank, with the card emailed to the recipient. The form can also run as a request instead: the same details land in your Inbox as a gift-card enquiry and you arrange payment personally — the right shape for a restaurant that likes a phone call behind every voucher. Both are first-class ways to sell.

Issue a card at the desk

A guest at the bar wants to buy £50 for a friend — no website required. In Service, open the guest’s sheet (search their name or tap their booking) and scroll to GIFT CARDS. A manager — owner or admin role — presses Issue a gift card, enters the amount and a reason, and the card’s code and six-digit PIN appear once on screen to hand to the guest, while the same card is emailed to them automatically. Anyone with service access can see a guest’s cards; issuing, topping up and redeeming stay with managers.

Read the ledger

The Gift cards page in the sidebar is your accountant’s view. Outstanding liability totals every active balance you owe in food and drink — with a Liability CSV export whose rows carry masked suffixes only. Issued cards lists each card by its final six characters with original value, available balance, issue date, active holds, and a paid or voided status pill. View ledger on any card opens its full timeline — issue, top-up, adjustment, redemption, void — every entry dated and signed.

Redeem a balance

Two live paths, both real. Online: a signed-in guest with a balance sees “Use my gift card — £X available” at checkout, and the value applies itself. At the desk: a manager opens the guest’s GIFT CARDS panel in Service and redeems an amount with a reason — the guest is emailed their new balance on the spot.

Either way, the order’s ticket tells the room what happened: a Gift card −£X line, and Card due at the till £Y for whatever remains to collect. Closing that remaining balance out is ordinary payment — Mark paid on the table’s sheet, the same as any bill.

The gift-card emails

Three automatic guest emails ride along, listed with the rest under Settings → Emails we send your guests: Gift card issued carries the code and PIN with a plain “keep these safe — spend it at the restaurant or online”; Gift card topped up and Gift card redeemed both confirm the new balance. They send in your restaurant’s name with your reply-to address, following the same sender identity as every other guest email — guide 12 covers that identity.

Refund, adjust or void a card

Owner and admin roles carry three financial actions on every card’s row. Refund sale returns unused value to the original payment method through Stripe — it stands down once a card is fully spent, holds value, or has an unresolved refund in flight. Adjust writes a signed plus-or-minus ledger entry with a required reason — the honest correction tool. Void card removes all remaining value, permanently.

Every one of them demands a typed reason and a confirmation, and lands as a permanent ledger entry — nothing here is silently editable, which is exactly what you want from a page that tracks money you owe. A separate Original-sale refunds panel watches any refund with an unclear Stripe outcome and drives its retry against the same request, so a wobbly network moment never becomes a double refund.