A gift certificate is account credit a patron can apply toward a future order. Development staff most often meet this as a service-recovery tool — a no-charge credit instead of a cash refund — rather than a certificate someone bought as a gift.
Before you start
- Gift certificates are switched on per venue. If there is no Gift certificates link in the Money card on your venue page, ask Noctern support to turn it on.
- Venue Admin to issue complimentary credit, and to adjust, void, or resend a certificate. Box office staff can open the page, look certificates up, and sell them for cash or check, but cannot issue a no-charge one or change a balance.
Issuing complimentary credit
Go to AdminVenuesGift Certificates and click Issue certificate / credit.
Under Tender, choose Comp — this is the no-charge option. (The other tenders here are Cash and Check; card payment isn't available from this admin dialog, only on the public purchase page.)
Enter an Amount ($) greater than $0, and a Reason — required for comp credit, and saved on the certificate as "Comp credit: …" for the audit trail.
Optionally fill in Purchaser and Recipient (name, email, gift message). If you enter an email, Noctern emails the code and a PDF certificate to it.
Click Issue certificate. The full code is shown on screen exactly once — copy it or hand it to the recipient right away, then click Done. Afterward the admin only ever shows the last four characters.
From a ticket refund dialog, choosing Venue credit (gift certificate) and clicking Credit to venue adds the refunded amount to that patron's refund-credit certificate, creating one the first time (it appears in the list with the source Refund credit). Later refunds to credit for the same patron top up the same certificate. That refund screen doesn't display a code.
How a patron uses their credit
A patron applies a certificate code at checkout under Gift Certificate / Account Credit, presents it at the box office, or checks a balance at the public balance-lookup page (Check Gift Certificate Balance) by entering the code. No sign-in is needed.
Coming soon: there's no gift-certificate view on a patron's own profile page yet — today, checking a balance means using the public balance-lookup page with the code in hand, not logging in.
The admin ledger
Click a certificate's code in the list to open its detail page. The Ledger table lists Issued, Redeemed, Redemption released, Refund credit, Adjustment, Voided, and Expired entries, each with its date, the change, the balance afterward, and the reason or note. It doesn't name the staff member — look in the venue's Activity log for who issued, adjusted, or voided a certificate.
Three buttons sit at the top of the detail page, all for venue admins:
- Adjust — add to the balance with a positive amount or deduct with a negative one. A reason is required.
- Void — zeroes the balance and permanently disables the code. A reason is required, and it cannot be undone.
- Resend — creates a new code and emails it to the recipient; the old code stops working immediately. It's only available when the certificate has a recipient email on file.
Watch out
"Comp" credit isn't literally a $0 certificate — it's real, spendable balance at whatever amount you enter, issued without collecting payment. The system will reject an amount of $0.
- Open the demo venue's Gift Certificates page and issue a comp credit with a reason.
- Note the plaintext code shown once, then reopen the certificate and confirm the admin only shows the last four characters.
- Look up that code's balance on the public balance page.