Check a gift card balance in Shopify
A customer who does not know their balance will guess at checkout, and a wrong guess means a failed payment or a second card they did not need. You can check the balance in your admin in seconds, and the customer can check it themselves from the gift card page on your storefront. This tutorial checks a $75.00 card that has already been partly spent.
Written · Shopify admin, desktop steps · 4 minutes read
The worked example
| Gift card | $75.00, issued to Jonas Weber |
| Already spent | $28.50 |
| Remaining balance | $46.50 |
| Customer check | Gift card page, link in the gift card email |
| Admin check | Products > Gift cards > the card |
Download the record: gift-card-balance-check.csv (117 bytes).
A balance check sheet for the gift cards in this tutorial, with the initial value, the amount spent, and the remaining balance for each. The balance column sums to $71.50.
1Open Gift cards
From your Shopify admin, go to Products > Gift cards. Here you will see a list of all the gift cards you have issued, with the last four characters of each card's code, its initial value, its current balance, and its status.
2Find the card
Find the gift card by the customer's name or by its code. In this tutorial that is Jonas Weber's $75.00 card. A card's status is active, deactivated, or expired, and its balance shows separately as full, partially used, or empty, so check both before you quote a figure.
3Read the balance
Open the card and read its current balance. The card started at $75.00 and $28.50 has been spent, so the remaining balance is $46.50. You can also check the balance, and then send the information to your customer.
4Tell the customer the exact figure
Send the customer the balance, so they can plan the order. Only the customer can see the full gift card code, so they bring the code and you bring the figure. A customer with $46.50 on the card knows they need a second payment method for anything over $46.50, and knows they can check out with the card alone for anything under it.
5Point the customer at the storefront check
Your customer can check the gift card balance on the gift card page of your online storefront. Customers can access this page by opening the link in the gift card email they receive. If a customer asks where to check, send them that link rather than the code itself.
The arithmetic
The balance is the initial value minus what has been spent:
| Gift card | Initial value | Spent | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jonas Weber | $75.00 | $28.50 | $46.50 |
| Maya Chen | $50.00 | $25.00 | $25.00 |
| Two cards together | $125.00 | $53.50 | $71.50 |
$75.00 minus $28.50 is $46.50, and $50.00 minus $25.00 is $25.00. Together the two cards started at $125.00, have had $53.50 spent, and hold $71.50 between them. That $71.50 is a liability: it is money you have taken and a sale you still owe.
Held at the counter
A zero balance hides the card. A gift card with a balance of zero is spent. If a customer says their code is rejected at checkout, check the balance first: a spent card is the most common reason a valid-looking code fails.
The balance page needs the email link. Customers can access the gift card page by opening the link in the gift card email they receive. A customer who deleted the email cannot reach the page from your storefront navigation alone, so resend the email from the order page instead.
Do not read the balance from the order. The order shows what the customer paid, not what is left on the card. Two orders can share one card, so only the Gift cards page shows the true remaining balance.
Sources
- Redeeming and using gift cards — Shopify's help pages: the storefront gift card page, the email link, and the admin balance check.