Traveler Gift Certificates are getting popular as it allows any person to purchase them and gift these certificates to others/travelers who can use them in their tours.
To search for existing Gift certificates in the system, you can search for them using existing search parameters in the form of Purchaser and Receiver/Traveler personal information. The search form is shown below.
Screen 1: Searching for Gift Certificate
Screen 2: Gift Certificate Search Results
To create a new Gift Certificate, click on the New Gift Certificate button on the search screen. The new form will allow us to enter the purchaser information and the traveler information. After entering all the necessary purchaser and traveler information, click on the Save button.
Screen 3: Issuing a new Gift Certificate
The user can then proceed to process the payment for this gift certificate as shown in the screen below. Once all the necessary payment information has been entered, the user can proceed to click on the Process payment button.
Screen 4: Process Payment for Newly created Gift Certificate
Once the process payment button is clicked, the authentication screen shows up for further signup with the payment agency.
Changes and Updates (changes are marked in red) Released Date: June 21, 2021
- Creating New Gift Certificate
New search button to search for Purchaser in the system (search among Travelers) and fields to enter GC expiry date and GC comments.
- Gift Certificate summary page
Added columns to the GC details page are Used Amount, Remaining Balance, GC Created Date, GC Expiry Date, GC Comment, and GC Status. GC comment field is added to add a brief note about the GC. A section to list the Tours to which the GC is applied is also added. It will be visible only if there is at least one Tour with the current GC added to it. Added option to search for purchaser when editing it, traveler id, field to enter the edit reason (for every editable field in the page). The history of GC edits can be viewed by clicking the button”View GC History”. Please note that the editing of Total amount is disabled – because it doesn’t make any sense to edit the amount once the payment has been made.
- Adding a traveler to the reservation
A new column added to the traveler details grid (the search results grid) to see if the traveler has an active, usable and unexpired GC. If yes, a hyperlink to the text (YES) will be shown to open a popup to see the GC details.
- Adding GC payment to the reservation
We can add a traveler ID search to get GC details. We will list all the available GCs of that traveler, you can have a look at all the Gcs and select the correct GC. New fields are marked in the below given screenshot. If we select Traveler Id radio to search, the field will be auto populated with primary traveler id. If the searched GC is not associated with any of the travelers in the reservation, the system will show an error message when you try to add it. If the GC has already expired, you will see an error message, and you cannot apply that GC.
- Partially applying GC
If the payment type is GC, the Reference No column(GC id) will be read only. We made this read only because this GC id is required to enable the user to partially apply the amount. If we change it, we cannot get the used balance from the records.
- Reservation payments section – GC payments and refunds
GC refunds were also added to the payment section. A hyperlink is added for GC records. And a hyperlink to the reference number is also added. See screenshot.
- Refund as a new Gift Certificate
Added a new option to “create GC” in the refund page (Accounting > Accounts Receivable > Packaged Tour Reservations > Payments,Adjustments & Refunds – under Refund by check section). Using this section, we can refund the balance of a tour to a new Gift Certificate.
- Voiding GC refunds / GCs
Added option to void (Application Administration > Adjustments > Package Tour Reservation > Payment Line Item Adjustments > Payment Details) the refunded GC (traveler credits as new GC). This operation will delete the newly created GC (refunded GC only. Normal GC payments will not be deleted) and add the balance back to the reservation from which we have created the new GC.
Voiding the normal GC payment will add the GC balance back to that GC, so that this balance can be used again.
