gift card accounting
Please let me know if this is right: the product 'gift card' is an ersatz A/R and could be linked as such to A/R in quickbooks. When the gift card 'product' is redeemed, it's returned to stock (thereby taking it out of the QB A/R) so the actual sale (what the card is redeemed for) goes into the right sales category.
Thanks,
Rob
Comments
Hmmm, it sounds like you know alot more about accounting than I do!
I'm not sure if the way RGP tracks gift cards is done in proper accounting fashion, but it does seem to work :) I honestly don't know what an Ersatz A/R account is.
I just have the gift card RGP revenue account linked to a Gift Card account in QB - I don't think it is an AR account. When gift cards are sold, the balance in that account is increased (or decreased, I can never keep that straight) and when they are redeemed the opposite happens.
If you can't get RGP to communicate to an A/R account (perhaps because RGP doesn't pass all the required information), then have the transfer go to a QB "Gift Card Transfer" account and then once a month make a journal entry in QB that transfers the balance to the appropriate account in QB.
If you do a Z-Out in RGP for a date range, it shows the total of the gift cards sold/redeemed as an additional item.
Andy
Is it an easy modification to have the gift card 'bar code' use letters as well as numbers? This would be a great help in the deposit-on-account workaround. The deposit taker could use a client's last name or the deposit type (birthday party, port. wall, &c.)along with the date&time instead of us coming up with a easier-to-mess-up number code for each deposit type.
Thanks,
Rob
Hi Rob,
I spoke with Josh about this. The reason it is limited to numbers is to prevent mistakes when staff members key-in (rather than swipe) cards. When I allowed non-digits there were LOTS more mistakes when processing real gift cards.
So unfortunately I won't be able to make this change as the restriction exists for a reason.
Andy
In my tests, I've been able to use both letters and numbers- have you changed this restriction since this post went up?
I added a setting last year for it to allow alphanumeric. It defaults to unchecked, but perhaps you or someone checked it? Regardless, it is supported now if that setting is checked :)
Hi,
I've got the auditors in this week... is there a way of finding out what our gift card balances were on 01/01/2015? I've been trying to think of what combinations of reports would be able to produce this information, but not come up with anything.
Any ideas?
Thanks, Audrey
Run a z-out from the beginning of time through 01/01/2015..... that will show the total gift cards sold vs redeemed.
That did the job! Thank you.
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