Digital gift cards can feel confusing when it comes to reconciliation in the POS.
When a customer buys a digital gift card on your Run Free eCommerce site, that purchase is accounted for exactly the same way as it would be if they were to purchase that gift card in store physically with one important exception, the POS systems don't allow multiple tender types in online orders.
Luckily, that's not a problem at all and here's why... What your customer's really buying is stored value credit. Think of it like putting money into a prepaid account that can later be spent in your store.
Here’s what happens behind the scenes:
1. Buying a Gift Card ≠ a Traditional Sale
When someone buys a digital gift card, your store collects the cash up front (just like in-store gift card sales). But technically, this isn’t recorded as a “sale.” Why? Because a digital gift card is more like extending credit, it’s a cash equivalent. The real sale happens later when the gift card is redeemed for products.
2. Why It Works This Way with POS Systems
Most POS systems (via their APIs) only allow one tender type when submitting an online order (or any order from any 3rd party source).
That tender slot is usually reserved for cash, card, or external payment methods.
The “gift card” tender type in your POS is typically locked down for gift cards that are created in-store.
Because of this, Run Free can’t directly submit digital gift card purchases as their own tender type. Instead, we process the full order through the payment gateway, and then separately update the stored value balance in your POS.
3. What This Means for Your Reporting
In your POS reports, digital gift card purchases won’t show up as a separate line item tender. Instead, the full order amount will appear under one tender type (e.g., “External Payment”, "Online Order", or “Credit Card”), depending on how your system is set up.
But don’t worry, the stored value on the gift card is accounted for properly in the background, and the money collected matches up. Redemptions take place in store or online exactly as they would with physical cards and the POS manages the balances of those cards in exactly the same manner.
4. Rest Assured: The Accounting Checks Out
Your payment processor collects the correct amount of cash/credit from the customer at the time they purchase the digital gift card.
The digital gift card number and its associated balance is generated on your POS, exactly like a physical gift card would be.
End of day totals reconcile correctly, accounting rules are followed correctly and match in-store and online, it just looks a little funny to the untrained eye when you first see it.
If you would like to pull reports with more detail about digital gift card purchases, you can pull order-level and item-level specifics in reports in the orders section of your Run Free admin dashboard.