This guide is for course providers who want to issue, sell and manage gift cards, also called gift vouchers. A Gift Card holds a reusable money balance that a customer spends on your courses. A Discount reduces a booking price and does not hold credit; for promo codes, see Create a Discount or Promo Code.
Customers redeem gift cards during a new public course checkout. The code field is not available when paying an existing invoice or payment link. If an order already exists, do not ask the customer to create another booking; contact Cademy Support about the existing order.
Install the Gift Cards App (Cademy Gift Cards)
Use a System Admin account to install and manage Gift Cards. To sell gift cards online, connect Stripe using Connect Stripe to Take Card Payments. This purchase journey uses Stripe, not PayPal.
Open Apps in the Admin dashboard.
Select Cademy Gift Cards, then Install.
Open Gift Cards from the left menu. If the app is already installed, go straight to Gift Cards.
Check the charges for your account before selling gift cards. See What Each Cademy Plan Includes and Costs and ask Support to confirm any account-specific fees. Creating or changing a gift card balance does not itself collect payment.
Create a Gift Card or Voucher Manually
Gift cards are issued in your account currency. There is no currency selector in the gift-card form. Confirm the currency before entering the amount.
Open Gift Cards. Select Create Gift Card if the list is empty, or New Gift Card if it already contains cards.
In Create voucher, enter the Amount.
Enter a Redeem Code (optional), or leave it blank to generate a code.
Choose Expires on, or leave it blank to use the default of one year from creation.
Optionally enter the Recipient details. Entering an email address here does not send the gift card.
Select Create voucher. Open the resulting card from Gift Cards and check its code, currency, Initial amount, Current amount and expiry.
Copy the code using the copy button and send it to the intended recipient yourself. Explain where it can be used and when it expires.
Do not rely on Allowed Courses to restrict gift-card use. The field is shown in the form, but does not limit gift cards to the selected courses. Contact Support if you need a restricted offer.
Use a Gift Card for Credit Carried Over From Another System
For credit you have agreed to honour on future public course bookings, you can manually issue a gift card for the customer's remaining balance. Confirm the amount, currency and expiry against your existing records first, then follow the creation steps above and send the code yourself. A Discount does not track a reusable remaining balance. If the credit needs to settle an existing order or invoice, ask Support about that order instead.
Sell Gift Cards Online on Your Website
Customers start from the Vouchers tab on your Cademy website, the site where your courses are listed. If you want to offer gift-card purchases through your own website's embedded booking system, ask Support to confirm the setup for that website.
The customer chooses one of the preset amounts, for example £25, £50 or £100, or enters another amount. The amounts use your account currency and show its symbol.
They enter the required Recipient Name and an optional Message.
They choose Email or PDF. Email requires a Recipient Email; PDF is for the buyer to print and share.
They select Continue, enter their buyer details and continue to payment.
They complete the Stripe payment and reach Voucher Purchased. For a printable voucher, they select Print Voucher.
After successful payment, Cademy sends the buyer a receipt and, when Email was selected, sends the gift card to the recipient address. A purchase notification goes to your account's configured notification recipients, with System Admin recipients used when none are configured. PDF does not email the recipient; the buyer shares the printout. The buyer receipt also includes a printout link.
The purchased card appears under Gift Cards. Open it to check the recorded payment status, balance and expiry. Online cards receive a one-year expiry when the card record is created during checkout. Unpaid purchases are not shown in the normal Gift Cards list. If a purchased card is missing or payment or delivery is unclear, contact Support with the buyer's details and purchase reference before asking the customer to buy again.
Gift Card Shows the Same Name for Buyer and Recipient (Same Email)
Cademy keeps one contact record per email address. If the buyer enters their own email address as the Recipient Email, the buyer and the recipient are the same contact, so the gift card shows one name for both. The buyer and recipient details cannot be edited on the gift card afterwards. When the gift is for someone else, ask the buyer to enter the recipient's own email address, or to choose PDF and hand the printout over themselves.
Check a Gift Card's Balance or Edit a Gift Card
Open Gift Cards and select the card.
In Voucher details, check Initial amount, Current amount and Expires on. The code is labelled Promo Code on this screen, even for a gift card.
If an agreed correction is needed, select Edit voucher. You can change the code, expiry and Current amount. Check the intended balance before changing it; editing this number does not collect or refund money.
Select Save, then reopen the card and verify the saved values. To leave without saving, select Cancel.
An expired card can still appear in the list with a positive balance. Check the expiry as well as the amount before telling a customer it is ready to use.
To remove an eligible manually created card, open its details, select the bin icon and confirm Confirm Delete. Purchased gift cards cannot be deleted through this action. For a manual card, the current balance must equal its initial amount. That check does not prove the card has never been used: a refund or manual adjustment can restore its balance. Check the relevant orders under Orders and your own credit records before deleting. The gift-card details screen does not provide a complete usage history.
Can You Remove a Gift Card Expiration Date or Change Its Date Format?
Every gift card has an expiry date, and there is no option for a card that never expires. A card is valid for one year from creation unless you choose another date: when you create a manual card, leave Expires on blank for one year, or pick a date. To give any card longer, open it, select Edit voucher and choose a later date in Expires on; the date cannot be left empty. A refund to the card does not extend it.
Admin shows gift-card dates in the date format of your browser's language settings, for example 31/12/2027 or 12/31/2027. Cademy has no separate setting for the gift-card date format.
Apply a Gift Card at the Payment Step (Redeem It at Checkout)
The customer applies the gift card at the Payment step when booking a course. They need the code for the provider they are booking with. The card must be activated, unexpired and have a positive balance. Its currency must match the course's currency. For a page to send to a customer, see Book a Course for Yourself or Other People.
If a course date uses a different currency from the course, the gift-card check still uses the course currency. Matching the card to the date alone does not make it eligible. A code can pass this check even though the selected date uses another currency. Gift-card balances are not converted. Ask Cademy Support to check the intended booking before asking the customer to apply the card or pay. For the course and date settings, see Choose the Currency for Your Course Prices.
Start a new booking from the provider's public course page and choose the course and price option. Select a date when the course requires one.
Continue to Payment. The step number can vary.
Open Apply promo code or gift card. Enter the code in Enter code... and select Apply.
Check for Voucher applied successfully! and review the updated total.
Complete the booking, paying any remaining amount using an available payment method. If nothing remains to pay, select Continue to finish. Check the booking confirmation.
With no additional customer-paid fees, an £80 order using a £50 gift card leaves £30 to pay. A £50 order using an £80 card leaves £30 on the card for another eligible booking. Check the final displayed amount, including any fees, before payment. Applying a code is not the same as completing the booking.
The checkout accepts one manually entered gift card or promo code at a time. Eligible automatic discounts may also apply. The code field can be hidden when there is no amount to pay.
If you offer deposits or monthly instalments, both are worked out on the amount left to pay after the gift card. When nothing is left to pay, or the amounts would fall below the minimum for the currency, those options are not offered. See Take a Deposit and Collect the Balance Later and Offer Payment Plans (Monthly Instalments).
Make Gift Vouchers and Promo Codes Work at Checkout (Code Refused)
When a gift card or promo code is not accepted, the checkout shows a message that says why:
Invalid voucher code: the code was typed wrongly, does not exist, or belongs to another course provider. Copy the code carefully.
Voucher code has expired: the expiry date has passed. You can choose a later date with Edit voucher.
This Voucher has not been activated yet: the online purchase of the gift card was not paid.
This Voucher has £0 left: the balance is used up. The message shows £ whatever your currency.
This voucher can only be used for course's provided in ...: the card's currency does not match the course's currency. Gift cards use your account currency; see the currency warning above.
Gift cards and promo codes share the same box at checkout but are managed in different places: gift cards under Gift Cards, promo codes under Discounts. To edit a promo code, see Create a Discount or Promo Code. If a code still fails, contact Support before changing balances or creating another booking.
Use a Gift Card on an Order You Created or an Existing Invoice
Add Discount selects a saved Discount; it does not redeem a gift card. Reducing a course's price and separately reducing Current amount is not equivalent to recording a gift-card payment: it changes the sale price and can change the calculated tax and discounts. Contact Support before using gift-card credit for a manually created order or an existing invoice.
Do not create a duplicate booking to work around a missing code field. Give Support the existing order or invoice reference and the gift-card details. If you previously adjusted an order and card separately, explain that before cancelling or refunding; Cademy has no automatic link between those separate changes.
Tell If Someone Redeemed Their Gift Card and Where It Was Used
Open Orders and select the relevant order. An order created through gift-card checkout shows a Gift card row with the code and amount in its totals. A lower Current amount than the Initial amount does not prove redemption: staff can also change the Current amount manually with Edit voucher. To find the bookings that actually used a particular card, open Reports, select Filter, choose Gift Card Applied and select the card's code. A manually reduced course price or an order note does not create that gift-card payment record.
When a new order from the public checkout has one invoice, Cademy also records the redeemed gift card as a payment against that invoice, as long as the invoice still has at least the gift card amount due. The payment lowers the amount due on the invoice. To check it, open Orders, select the order and find Invoices & Payments. The same payment is listed when you open Orders and select the Payments tab, with Gift Card as its Provider, and an export from that tab includes it.
Customer Voucher Did Not Come Off the Balance Due
If the order has more than one invoice, for example separate invoices for different courses, or an older invoice still shows the redeemed amount as due, check the invoice before asking for another payment. A code can be applied only at a new public checkout, so it cannot be applied afterwards to an invoice, a payment link or an order you created in Admin. Contact Cademy Support with the order and invoice numbers if the amount due does not reflect the gift card.
Restore Gift Card Credit When You Cancel an Order
This concerns cancelling a course order paid with a gift card. It does not refund the customer's original purchase of the gift card. Contact Support for that separate request. For the cancellation steps in full, see Cancel a Booking or Part of an Order; for refunds, see Refund a Customer in Full or in Part.
Open Orders, select the order and review its payments. Choose Manage Order → Cancel Order when cancellation is the intended outcome.
Under What happens to each invoice, inspect the refund choice. For a gift-card-only payment, the label includes the amount and to gift card, for example Refund £80 to gift card.
For an invoice paid through more than one method, choose the refund option and review the separate allocation rows. Check the amount allocated to Gift card and each other payment method; do not assume the whole refund returns to the card.
Review the cancellation and refund summary. Confirm using the button labelled with the refund total, for example Cancel Order & Refund £80. If the gift-card destination is missing or the amounts are unclear, stop and contact Support before confirming.
After confirmation, reopen the order and the original Gift Card. Verify the recorded refund and the restored Current amount before telling the customer it is available.
Restoring a balance does not extend Expires on. Check the expiry separately, especially for an older card. If a refund fails or the displayed balances disagree, contact Support before retrying or manually increasing the balance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does manual creation email the recipient?
No. Copy the code and send it yourself. Adding recipient details does not send a purchase email.
What happens with Email delivery?
After successful payment, Cademy sends the gift card to the Recipient Email entered by the buyer. If it does not arrive, check the address and payment status before contacting Support.
What happens with PDF delivery?
The buyer selects Print Voucher after purchase, then prints or shares it. The buyer receipt also includes a printout link. PDF does not email the recipient.
What if the gift card does not cover the order?
The customer pays the remaining amount using another available payment method.
What if the gift card is worth more than the order?
Only the amount used by the completed booking is deducted. The remaining balance stays on the card.
Why is the code field missing?
Check that this is a new public course checkout with an amount to pay. For an existing invoice or payment link, see the start of this guide.
Can Add Discount apply a Gift Card?
No. It selects saved Discounts. It does not record gift-card payment.
Does cancelling an order restore gift-card credit?
Only the amount allocated to the gift-card refund is restored through that refund action. Check the outcome and expiry. Separate manual price and balance changes are not automatically linked or reversed.
Can a gift card pay for a course in another currency?
The code check refuses a gift card whose currency differs from the course's currency. It does not switch to checking a date's separate currency, and the balance is not converted. If the selected date uses a different currency from the course, ask Support to check before redemption.
Can a gift card and promo code be entered together?
No. One manually entered code is accepted at a time. Eligible automatic discounts may still apply.
Can I restrict a gift card to selected courses?
No. Allowed Courses does not limit where a gift card is used. Ask Support to confirm a suitable restricted offer.
Where do I create a promo code?
Use Create a Discount or Promo Code. Promo codes reduce prices; they do not hold reusable gift-card credit.