How to set up gift certificates and vouchers
Last updated: July 15, 2025
We usually recommend a gift card or gift card/voucher hybrid setup whenever possible. However, if a company prefers the gift certificate setup, you can reference the information below. Check out this demo Dashboard and onboarding doc for additional information.
Gift certificates are set up in a “voucher” style, and intended to be applied toward a specific activity (for example, Adult Surf Lessons). The setup process combines customer types, campaigns, code generators, and items to create a final product that can be purchased and redeemed by end customers. This tutorial will walk you through the complete process.
Please also check the FareHarbor Internal Changelog for updated information about optimal setups. For more information about the development and communication of optimal setups related to any features, please see the Best Practice Communications Cheatsheet.
1. Create gift certificate customer type(s)
To begin, figure out what customer type and item the gift certificate is for. For instance, our gift certificate will be for the Adult customer type on the Surf Lessons item. Make a note of the price—you will need it later.
In this case, the price for Adults in the Surf Lessons item is $200–which will also be the price of our gift certificate.
Go to Customer Types under Settings and create a new customer type. Name it descriptively. Here, our new customer type is called Adult Surf Lesson Gift Certificate. In addition, it is recommended to utilize customer type notes to reflect restrictions that would apply to someone buying the activity (for example, “Adult Surf Lesson Gift Certificate” with customer type notes “Ages 13+ Valid for one year after purchase”).
2. Create a campaign
Go to Settings > Campaigns and create a new campaign. Give your campaign the same name as your new customer type in the previous step.
- If you want FareHarbor to automatically generate a unique code for every customer, give the campaign a prefix of GC (for “Gift Certificate”). Or, if you’re setting up multiple gift certificates for the same Dashboard, you can use a more specific prefix such as GCASL (for “Gift Certificate – Adult Surf Lesson”).
- If you have a list of pre-existing codes that you want the system to use when generating codes, then you can skip adding a prefix.
Create the campaign. If needed, click Import or generate codes to import a pre-existing list of codes, or enter them manually.
3. Create code generator field
Once the campaign has been created, go to Settings > Custom Fields and create a new custom field. Select Code generator from the field type dropdown.
For the internal name, use the same name as you have for your customer type and campaign: Adult Surf Lesson Gift Certificate. Do not give the field a title or description. Create the custom field.
From the field’s settings, click Add campaigns and add the campaign you created above. Here you’ll find several different options for customizing how the gift certificate codes are generated. Learn more about these options.
Under the Visibility column, make the code generator field Visible and Required.
4. Set up the gift certificate item
Though the Surf Lessons item already exists, we need to create a Gift Certificate item so that the gift certificates can be purchased. You can download and use the below image for the gift certificate item:
Go to the Items section of the Dashboard and create an item named Gift Certificates. Be sure to enable the “Display as a retail item” setting located on Listing > Basic Info tab.
Important settings to remember for all gift certificate items:
- Automatic reminder and follow-up emails should be turned off (go to Item > select the item > Notifications > Customer Notifications, then uncheck all boxes).
Add in confirmation notes. Use the following template:
After purchasing your gift certificates, you can book an activity with your codes on our [website](website link)!
Add in custom cancellation notes. Use the following template:
Gift certificate sales are final and non-refundable.
Add in an item description. Use the following template:
Purchase a fantastic gift or gifts: each gift certificate is the exact value of one of our offerings.
If the client does have an expiration date then add note in item description and confirmation note stating the expiration policy.
Add in an item headline. Use the following template:
Give them an experience they’ll remember…
Note: If you’re building a gift item on a Dashboard that already has gift items, make sure to use headlines to distinguish them from one another and protect conversions:
- For Gift Cards: Purchase a gift card for any monetary amount, and recipients can redeem for any of our offerings!
- For Gift Certificate/Voucher: Purchase a gift certificate/voucher to be redeemed on a specific offering!
These headlines help their customers make a decision, making them more effective than the original Give them an experience they’ll remember!.
- In the item’s Listing settings, go to the Basic Info tab and check the box [FH admin only] Display as a retail item. This turns “Book” buttons into “Buy” buttons, and disables dates on the book form.
- Add starting price to the headline (especially if the Gift Certificate will have multiple Customer Types with different prices. Also please add rates to the description of all available Customer Types added to the item.
- Both online booking cutoffs should be set to -24 hours (Item > Online Booking > Bookability) so that availabilities are never closed off.
- The checkboxes in the third column (“Include in online calendars as “Call to book” when closed?”) should be left at the default, as calendars are not displayed for retail items. See screenshot below:
5. Add customer type(s) and custom field(s) to the gift certificate item
Next, go to the item’s Options & Prices and add your Adult Surf Lessons Gift Certificate customer type to the item. When adding a price to the customer type, make sure to use the same price as the customer type to which the gift certificate corresponds. In this case, that price is $200.
Once your gift certificate customer type has been priced, add your new code generator to the customer type—which will prompt a code to be generated every time the customer type is purchased by someone. This code will later be used to redeem the gift certificate by the recipient of the gift.
6. Create availabilities
After setting up the item’s customer communication settings, it’s time to add it to the calendar. Navigate to the Gift Certificate item’s calendar to create gift certificate availabilities.
Availabilities should be “All day” and have an unlimited capacity.
Best practice is to set up daily availabilities for gift certificates, so that there’s not one availability at the end of the month or year with hundreds of purchases on it.
Add the gift certificate customer type(s) that should be visible on the availability.
After all of these settings have been dialed-in, create your availabilities. This will allow customers to purchase gift certificates online and send them to a recipient via email.
7. Make it redeemable
Everything that we have done up until this point was done to yield a paid-for, automatically-generated code: the Gift Certificate. Now, for the last step, we need to make that code redeemable by adding a redemption field to the book form.
Go to Settings > Custom Fields. Create a new promo code redemption field for each Customer Type separately and give them the internal name accordingly, for example: Adult Surf Lesson Gift Certificate Redemption Field.
Once you have created the proper promo code redemption field, add your gift certificate campaign to the field so that it will accept codes generated for that campaign.
After adding the gift certificate campaign to the field, you will need to price the campaign. In this case, the price will be -$200.
Always remember to add a minus (-) sign or the campaign code will add to the price instead of subtracting from it.
Finally, add the promo code redemption field to the item to which the gift certificate applies.
Now that the field has been added to the Surf Lessons item, the recipient of the gift certificate can select an Adult Surf Lesson, enter the code from his or her gift certificate, and checkout for free.
Issuing credit in the form of a gift certificate
Steps for this process can be found here.
8. Create ‘Gift Cards’ custom calendar
- Navigate to the Bookings section of the Dashboard.
- Open the Filters menu.
- Click Items.
- Select the newly created Gift Card item and uncheck all other items.
- Open the custom calendar menu and click + New custom calendar.
- Name the calendar “Gift Cards” and click Create.
Read more about the recommended custom calendar setup for retail items.
9. Integration
The act of gifting or sending a voucher to a recipient is done by forwarding the confirmation email. Often times, the purchaser does not want the recipient to see the amount paid or price breakdown.
There is the option to have no price shown in the confirmation email/receipt if you are using the ASN network. The Dashboard will need to have the affiliate “Gift Certificate” added. The settings for the affiliate should be set up as follows:
Price Sheets
- Total price sheet: Direct
- Invoice price sheet: leave blank
Cancellation Policy
- Leave blank
Permissions
- Leave blank
Options
- Payment default: charging card
- Require a voucher number on bookings: uncheck
- Show prices in confirmation: uncheck
- Send receipt emails: check
Invoices
- [FH] Use custom invoice fee for this affiliation: uncheck
When generating code for a book button, add the Gift Certificate affiliate in the ASN company dropdown. Then add the text “online” to the ASN ref text box:
