Selling a Portrait Gift Card online

[pduce]

Hi I run a small Photography business and want to promote some Portrait Gift cards this winter on FB and collect the money via my Square Account. A lot of my existing business is done using Bank Transfer, so Square is a relatively new tool in my business - excuse me asking something that may be obvious as I learn how to integrate this in my workflow.

I have two questions:

1) Does my workflow make sense and

2) Can I test without incurring cost (I will need to pay to complete workflow),

1)

I have set up a "collection" button in SQUARE to be called from FB, I need to make sure I have the email address of the person buying (Square supports this for the automatic receipt). However I want to send the electronic gift card and more details for the recipient in an email triggered by this sale (looks like you can), but not sure if there are tricks i need to be aware of setting this up? I am not expecting to write any HTML (I can't!;-))

2) Can I test this this works without incurring charges - I understand a Sandbox exists but this is primarily for testing HTML created that wraps around SQUARE - I want to test the standard process so that I make sure the confirmation email gets sent correctly - which is after payment. Could I use a zero value product to test the logic please?

Thanks in advance.

[k_atie · Accepted solution]

Heya @pduce! Welcome aboard the Seller Community, delighted to have you among us. 🥳

Your workflow 100% makes sense and is definitely something that can be facilitated by using Square eGift Cards.  You should be able to set up eGift Cards directly from within your Square Dashboard. To do so:

1. Go to Payments > Gift Cards in your online Square Dashboard. Under the eGift Cards tab > select Configure.
2. Configure your eGift Card order page, including gift card designs and whether you’d like to sell eGift Cards online or in shop. You can select from the set of available designs or upload your own designs and tick the boxes for the options you’d like to give your customers. The suggested file size for custom designs is 640 x 400 pixels per inch.
3. Copy the eGift Card order page URL to share with customers > tap Save.

Edit your eGift Card Settings

1. You can delete a custom design from your online Square Dashboard. To do so:
2. Go to Payments > Gift Cards in your online Square Dashboard Under the eGift Cards tab > select Configure > Manage Designs.
3. Click on the X on the left-hand corner to remove your design > Save.
4. To configure eGift Card amounts:
5. Visit the Settings section of your Gift Cards Dashboard.
6. Configure your eGift Card amounts.

Note: Preset amounts must be between £1 and £750.

As for testing this, since preset amounts need a minimum of £1, it won't be possible to set up an eGift Card with no balance. However, once you have set up eGift cards, you should be able to purchase one using your own card details and email it to yourself using your personal email, and then put through a refund. Check out this article to learn how to process refunds.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions, happy to assist.  😊

[Sam_400º · Accepted solution]

Hey @pduce - I'm gonna totally disagree with @k_atie here! 

As I understand it you don't want to produce a gift card not with a value of £X but more an experience gift of the photoshoot? 

In this position I don't think any of the gift card tools suit your needs and would suggest designing your own to either email directly or print out for your customers (and/or post). 

Again, this is just how I would go about it:

• Set up an online store with Square (free)
• Add the Portrait Session as a product - if you do this within the web creator you can add freeform text boxes for your customer to fill in the recipient details etc. 

• Enter your standard T&C's on the product page. (this will mean you don't have to highlight any blackout days etc on your FB post but that information will still be clear before purchase). 
• Share the direct link to your new product on Facebook.

This way, while it might feel like a long way round will mean you easily capture all the customer details along with the recipient ones. It also gives you a really solid platform to base any future online sales from. Added to that it's possible to add up sells within the product of your offering prints or extras - without it feeling like a hard sell. 

I hope I've explained this OK, but will say this is one of may ways you can do the same thing 👍🏻


@ me if I need to re-write any bits to get them to make sense.

[k_atie · Accepted solution]

Heya @pduce! Welcome aboard the Seller Community, delighted to have you among us. 🥳

Your workflow 100% makes sense and is definitely something that can be facilitated by using Square eGift Cards.  You should be able to set up eGift Cards directly from within your Square Dashboard. To do so:

1. Go to Payments > Gift Cards in your online Square Dashboard. Under the eGift Cards tab > select Configure.
2. Configure your eGift Card order page, including gift card designs and whether you’d like to sell eGift Cards online or in shop. You can select from the set of available designs or upload your own designs and tick the boxes for the options you’d like to give your customers. The suggested file size for custom designs is 640 x 400 pixels per inch.
3. Copy the eGift Card order page URL to share with customers > tap Save.

Edit your eGift Card Settings

1. You can delete a custom design from your online Square Dashboard. To do so:
2. Go to Payments > Gift Cards in your online Square Dashboard Under the eGift Cards tab > select Configure > Manage Designs.
3. Click on the X on the left-hand corner to remove your design > Save.
4. To configure eGift Card amounts:
5. Visit the Settings section of your Gift Cards Dashboard.
6. Configure your eGift Card amounts.

Note: Preset amounts must be between £1 and £750.

As for testing this, since preset amounts need a minimum of £1, it won't be possible to set up an eGift Card with no balance. However, once you have set up eGift cards, you should be able to purchase one using your own card details and email it to yourself using your personal email, and then put through a refund. Check out this article to learn how to process refunds.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions, happy to assist.  😊

[pduce]

`i think I posted this question on the wrong place originally, so apologies if you have seen it before.

I run a small Photography business and want to promote some Portrait Gift cards this winter on FB and collect the money via my Square Account. A lot of my existing business is done using Bank Transfer, so Square is a relatively new tool in my business - excuse me asking something that may be obvious as I learn how to integrate this in my workflow.

I have two questions:

1) Does my workflow make sense and

2) Can I test without incurring cost (I will need to pay to complete workflow),

1)

I have set up a "collection" button in SQUARE to be called from FB, I need to make sure I have the email address of the person buying (Square supports this for the automatic receipt). However I want to send the electronic gift card and more details for the recipient in an email triggered by this sale (looks like you can), but not sure if there are tricks i need to be aware of setting this up? I am not expecting to write any HTML (I can't!;-))

2) Can I test this this works without incurring charges - I understand a Sandbox exists but this is primarily for testing HTML created that wraps around SQUARE - I want to test the standard process so that I make sure the confirmation email gets sent correctly - which is after payment. Could I use a zero value product to test the logic please?

Thanks in advance.

[k_atie]

Hey @pduce, just answered your second thread, I've merged it to the first post you made to keep everything in one place. 😊

[Sam_400º · Accepted solution]

Hey @pduce - I'm gonna totally disagree with @k_atie here! 

As I understand it you don't want to produce a gift card not with a value of £X but more an experience gift of the photoshoot? 

In this position I don't think any of the gift card tools suit your needs and would suggest designing your own to either email directly or print out for your customers (and/or post). 

Again, this is just how I would go about it:

• Set up an online store with Square (free)
• Add the Portrait Session as a product - if you do this within the web creator you can add freeform text boxes for your customer to fill in the recipient details etc. 

• Enter your standard T&C's on the product page. (this will mean you don't have to highlight any blackout days etc on your FB post but that information will still be clear before purchase). 
• Share the direct link to your new product on Facebook.

This way, while it might feel like a long way round will mean you easily capture all the customer details along with the recipient ones. It also gives you a really solid platform to base any future online sales from. Added to that it's possible to add up sells within the product of your offering prints or extras - without it feeling like a hard sell. 

I hope I've explained this OK, but will say this is one of may ways you can do the same thing 👍🏻


@ me if I need to re-write any bits to get them to make sense.

[Sam_400º · Accepted solution]

Oooo - as for testing you can set up coupon codes within the online store, so can set one up at 100% so you can test out to your hearts content without having to charge and refund. 

6 years in and I still keep a 100% code live for me to test things out to make sure they work the way I expect them too. 

An annoying note on payments and Facebook - when someone clicks through anything within the FB app then FB actually changes some of the code of that site to block payments with Apple Pay (and google pay too I think). Just so you know - nothing any of us or Square themselves can do. 

[pduce]

Thanks Sam - I was unsure about the Square eGift as it seems more a mechanism to add money to card that is then used to pay for "something".  My Gift Card has a fixed value and can only buy you one that product (the Portrait). So your explanation seems to make more sense.

I need to work through that one and let you know if something doers not make sense to me (certainly a novice at this at moment;-)).  Thanks for heads up on Apple Pay. 

[k_atie]

Thanks so much for the alternative solution and for keeping me humble, @Sam_400º ! Sometimes it's what we need around here. 😅 Will definitely be keeping those solutions in mind if someone asks a similar question. 🙂

[pduce]

Hi Sam, Working through to solution (learning a lot on the way - taking too much time, haha). I have now set up a page and have an item ready to pop into basket (do not fully understand how I got here, but it works!). Now a bit stuck on three things -

1) the coupons ... will not let me use a 100%  coupon, just hangs. (Note the item is priced at £175 and is discounted to £85 BF deal, so not sure if it has an issue discounting a disc price). I set one up for 90% and that worked - but obvs has money still to pay, which I then need to refund.

2) On my home page (which I am probably not going to use yet) the telephone number drops of the last digit. I tried moving spaces out, but it still does it. 

3) Finally my business address is now not validating for SQUARE website, when I go to other pages it now does not pre- populate  - not sure if this will stop me getting funds (it used to work for online transactions over phone).

Anyhow apologies for the "dump", you don't need to answer any of these, but if you can without too much aggro would be very grateful. It is down to the muppet doing it (me!). Thanks a lot.

[pduce]

@Sam_400º Hi Sam - forgot to @ you... sorry if you have already seen this.

[Sam_400º]

 It sure about the discount code @AdamB is this something you’ve seen? 

the address and phone number in the website side wound effect you getting payments through so I’d not worry about that right now 👍

[k_atie]

Hey @pduce, just looking into your last message now. 

1) When you say the 100% coupon will not apply to your transaction and that it just hangs, could you elaborate on what you mean there? Could you provide some screenshots of what you are seeing? 

2) For the issue with the phone number not displaying fully, could you provide a link to your website so I can take a closer look? 

3) As for the address validation, make sure that the entire address has no typos in it, and try entering your postcode with and without spaces. If that still doesn't work, let me know and I'll take a closer look.

[pduce]

Hi @Skyler - thanks for responding:

1) I am trying to check email confirmation is sent and looks ok after buying the card. I don't want to pay charges for the test or lose anything in a refund, so trying a 100% discount coupon. If I set if for a 90% it works and moved to next stage to approve payment, otherwise nothing happens ... so maybe because you cannot buy something for 0 (kind against the idea of SQUARE ;-)).

2) Link to SQUARE Website. Not sure this is priority for now as will not use this page and link direct to payment for Gift Card and will link to it from my Website and Facebook. I created it as I did not know if anything pointed to it in SQUARE that would need it.

3) I enter Address info in for website and it is a red box saying cannot validate address information  ... or use it anyway. If I chose the latter it disappears. Peter Duce Photography is trading in a limited company I own with a different name and thought it might be the bank link, as the account does not reference Peter Duce Photography, but I have been taking telephone orders with no issue.

I  will put some stuff together - but ...how do I attach screenshots for you please?

Thanks a lot for the help.

[Sam_400º]

@pduce - do you want to DM me the 100% code? You should be able to set one no problem as I use one, but not sure what error is coming up. This is what my coupon page at 100% looks like 

Your voucher page looks spot on 👍🏻
My Dad use to live in North Petherton - small world! 

 

Your address on the website is geared for local delivery stuff. As long as you're happy with how it appears on your site it won't cause any compliance issues within the Square payment system. There's just a google maps style check in place so those of us that use the deliver with an area feature have a confirmed spot from where we start. Changing your address on the website won't change any details within your Square account. 

 

[pduce]

Sam, thanks a lot for your help. Managed to get its working using another computer (so must have been cookies!). Closing on getting its live, a few more little things to test. You were a great help, reply appreciate.

[pduce]

Hi Sam - hope you are well. I did not get this test to work last year and here I am having another go. 😉 

This is to apply 100% discount to test the basket before I make it live.

If you have the patience I wonder if I can ask again please?

I have created an 100% discount voucher using the items/Discounts and set up 100% discount to use a code (no place to attribute the code, but it is required in the basket ... :

Any pointers please? Thanks a lot in advance.

[pduce]

@Skyler- can I ask you a couple of little questions please. Selling my GIFT cards via Square now seems to work, but a couple of things still do not seem quite right.

On my first test I checked the box for GDPR and received my email (as customer) confirming Order (I need to the customer to see this for next steps). On my second test using a different email address (valid)I did check the GDPR box and did not receive this email?

2) After 15 mins I still have not received an email (as supplier) for either of the orders, from SQUARE to alert me somebody has bought something. Now it may be I have not left it long enough, or the fact that both orders were zero value (using Sam's idea of a 100% coupon)?

Not a deal breaker, because I can look daily to see who has bought, but as it is not a high volume activity, and it is not the best way to handle it.

Lastly a question for the wider audience - how do you cope with customers errors entering email addresses and telephone numbers when paying - where customer has paid you but mad a genuine mistake that the banking software did not pick up and you have no way of contacting them to send the product (in this case e-gift card for specific product - Equine Portrait Experience) please?

Hope that all makes sense and thanks in advance for any help.

[pduce]

Deleted this as duplicated 😉

[Emma_]

Hi @pduce, to answer your questions regarding email notifications, you should receive an email every time a customer purchases a gift card if you enabled the email notification for Transactions. You can check this in your Dashboard > Account settings > Business information> Email notification. 

Please check if the emails from Square go to your Spam folder. Your internet service provider or mobile phone network provider may have blocked emails from Square. To change your email filter settings to accept emails sent from Square, add these Square domains to your safe list:

@squareup.com

@messaging.squareup.com

@Communications.squareup.com

I hope it helps, please let me know if you have any question. 

[Sam_400º]

I’ll leave someone better positioned than me to answer about the emails….

But with regards to typos and stuff, there should be enough information from your customer for you to be able to confirm they are the one who purchased if they get in touch having not received an email or miss typed something. 

While we’d go the extra mile to help and support all our customers if they screw up their end it’s kinda on them to get in touch and help us get it set than on us to try and figure out all on our own.