The easiest revenue you are not taking
For salons, spas, massage therapists, photographers, cookery schools, driving instructors, and anyone whose service makes a good present, gift vouchers are cash now for work later, often for a client who has never visited and will come back. A meaningful share of them are never fully redeemed. And most small businesses either do not sell them online or sell them through a separate widget that has nothing to do with their diary.
If your booking system supports vouchers, selling them through it means the voucher, the payment and the booking live in one place. Here is how to set it up and what to decide.
Which systems do it
Fresha, Timely, Phorest, Mindbody, Vagaro, Acuity (via its packages and gift certificates), Square Appointments and several others sell vouchers natively. Calendly and the simpler scheduling tools do not; for those, a separate voucher tool or a Stripe payment link with a manual code is the fallback.
If vouchers matter to your business, the presence of native voucher support is a reason to choose one booking tool over another.
Decisions before you switch it on
Value or service? A value voucher ("$50 towards any treatment") is simplest and most flexible. A service voucher ("one 60-minute massage") is a better gift and protects you from price rises if you set it to the service rather than an amount. Offer both if the tool allows; value vouchers in three or four amounts, plus your two or three most gifted services.
Expiry. Check your local law first; several jurisdictions set minimum validity periods or forbid expiry entirely. Where you can choose, twelve months is the common balance. Shorter feels mean and generates complaints; no expiry creates a liability that sits on your books indefinitely.
Terms. Non-refundable, not exchangeable for cash, one voucher per booking, valid on services not products. Write them in plain words and show them at purchase.
Delivery. Email to the buyer, email to the recipient on a chosen date, or a printable PDF. Offer the scheduled email; it is the feature that makes a last-minute Christmas Eve purchase work.
Design. The voucher email or PDF is a piece of your brand arriving in a stranger's inbox. Upload your logo, choose the colours, write the message. The default template looks like a receipt.
Redemption
The point of doing it in the booking system is that redemption is automatic: the recipient books online, enters the voucher code at checkout, the value is applied, the balance if any is charged, and the voucher is marked used. No spreadsheet, no phone call, no "do you still have that voucher your mum bought".
Check that redemption works on the same booking flow your website uses. If your site embeds the booking widget, test that the widget shows the voucher field. Some tools only show it on their hosted booking page.
Partial redemption, using part of a value voucher and keeping the rest, should be supported and tested. It is the common case for value vouchers.
The accounting
A voucher sale is not revenue yet. It is money received for a service you owe. Your accountant will want voucher sales tracked separately and recognised as revenue on redemption, with unredeemed vouchers shown as a liability until they expire. Most booking tools produce a voucher report; make sure your bookkeeper knows where it is.
Card fees on the voucher purchase are yours, as with any payment. Price accordingly or accept it as the cost of the sale.
Getting ready for December
Voucher sales for most service businesses concentrate heavily into the last six weeks of the year, with a spike in the final week. Prepare in October.
- Switch it on and test it with a real purchase and a real redemption. Refund your own test.
- Put a "Gift vouchers" link in your website's main menu and a banner on the home page from mid-November. Do not bury it under Services.
- Add it to your Google Business Profile as a service and a post.
- Mention it to every client in November, at the till and in your reminder emails. "Gift vouchers available online" is one line.
- Check the scheduled-delivery option works for Christmas morning. Buy one to yourself scheduled for the next day.
- Have the terms visible and the expiry set before the first sale, not after.
- Know your voucher report so you can see what has been sold and what is outstanding in January when redemptions start.
After the rush
January and February are when vouchers are redeemed, and new clients arrive who have never been to you. Make sure the booking flow asks whether they are new, and that the confirmation email tells them where to park and what to expect. A voucher recipient who has a good first visit is a client for years, and the voucher was paid for by someone else.
Setting vouchers up is an afternoon in the booking tool and an hour on the website. It is one of the things we check when we set up or review a booking system, because it is revenue that is almost always available and almost always left on the table.