Gift Cards – Accounting at Sale

When you sell a multi-purpose gift card in Vendion, its value is recorded as gift card liability. Payment arrives now; the food and drink are sold when the guest spends the card. VAT on that underlying sale is handled at redemption. Swedish VAT Act, Chapter 5 section 43.

Example: 500 SEK gift card paid by bank card

Account 1580 represents the receivable for the card payment. Reconcile the later payout against the bank account; the card payment and bank deposit are separate events. Issuance uses no revenue or VAT account in this example.

Cash and Swish

The liability side stays the same whichever payment method is used. Vendion defaults to 1910 for cash and 1581 for Swish. Three gift cards sold in one day could produce:

Check your actual accounts under Admin → Bokföring → Verifikat & export → Kontoplan. Save with Spara inställningar.

Get the right POS records

1. Use Sälj presentkort in POS and enter the amount and recipient details required by the restaurant’s settings.
2. Select the buyer’s payment method and complete the sale.
3. Check the confirmation, gift card code and receipt. An interrupted purchase is not a completed gift card sale.
4. At daily closing, check gift card sales and payment methods in the Z records.
5. Review the voucher under Bokföring → Verifikat & export → Verifikat before transferring the same records to your accounting system.

POS gift card sales are identified separately in the Z records and credited to gift card liability. Administrative issuance uses a separate flow: check its payment evidence and accounting so it is neither duplicated nor assumed to be a POS sale.

Follow liability over time

Suppose two 500 SEK cards are sold and one is used for 300 SEK of food served in the restaurant, at 12% VAT:

• Sale: debit 1580 by 1,000 SEK and credit 2421 by 1,000 SEK.
• Redemption: debit 2421 by 300 SEK; credit 3002 by 267.86 SEK and 2620 by 32.14 SEK.
• Remaining liability for the cards: 700 SEK, split into balances of 500 and 200 SEK.

Liability falls when the value is used, refunded or handled as expired. The food VAT rate in this example assumes restaurant service; use the rate applying to the actual sale.

Reconcile the month’s gift cards

Open Marknadsföring → Presentkort → Presentkort and compare balances and statuses with the accounts at the same point in time. Start with opening liability, add issued value and deduct redemption, refunded issuance and expired value written off. Refunds to a card can increase its balance again.

Also check administrative issuance and shared chain cards when used. Keep sales receipts and export records. Reconcile a bank payout as payment settlement, not as another gift card sale.