Gift cards are one of those features that look simple from the outside but carry real accounting complexity underneath. For Shopify store owners, they’re a proven tool for boosting revenue and customer loyalty. But the moment a customer buys a gift card, you’re not looking at income yet. You’ve taken on a liability. And handling that correctly in Moneybird requires more than just booking the incoming payment as revenue.
A gift card is a promise, not income
When a customer buys a €50 gift card from your Shopify store, €50 lands in your bank account. But you cannot book this as revenue yet. From an accounting perspective, you’ve received money in exchange for an obligation: you’ve promised to deliver €50 worth of products when the card is redeemed.
This means the €50 must be posted as a deferred revenue liability on your balance sheet, typically under a short-term liability account like “Gift card obligations” or “Advance payments received.” Only when the gift card is redeemed, fully or partially, do you shift that amount from the balance sheet to your profit and loss account as revenue.
In practice, this distinction is easy to overlook. When you’re processing multiple gift card sales and redemptions per day, manual bookkeeping creates an almost inevitable gap between what Shopify records and what appears in Moneybird.
VAT on gift cards: timing is everything
EU VAT rules around vouchers and gift cards have tightened in recent years. The key distinction is between single-purpose vouchers and multi-purpose vouchers, and it determines when you must account for VAT.
With a single-purpose voucher, where the VAT rate of the goods to be purchased is already known at the time of issue, VAT is due at the point of sale of the gift card itself. If your Shopify store sells exclusively 21% VAT products and the gift card can only be used for those products, you must remit VAT when the card is sold.
With a multi-purpose voucher, where the final VAT rate depends on what the customer ultimately buys, VAT is only due at the point of redemption. This applies to most stores selling a mix of product categories with different VAT rates.
Getting this wrong means remitting VAT too early or too late. Both scenarios can lead to corrections during a tax audit. For a broader look at how VAT flows from Shopify to Moneybird, see our guide on VAT handling in Shopify and Moneybird.
Partial payments: gift card plus another method
A common scenario is an order paid partly with a gift card and partly with a standard payment method. Say a customer has a €30 gift card and orders €75 worth of products. They pay €30 with the gift card and €45 with iDeal.
In Moneybird, this must be recorded as two separate payments on the same invoice: €30 from the gift card liability account and €45 from the bank account. At the same time, the €30 gift card obligation on the balance sheet is released, converting into revenue in the profit and loss account.
This split-payment scenario is exactly the kind of thing that goes wrong with manual processing. One missed entry and your balance sheet no longer matches Shopify’s records. For more on how Schakel handles split payments and payment registration, read our article on automatic payment registration from Shopify.
How Schakel automates gift card bookkeeping
Schakel reads all payment data from Shopify, including gift card usage. When an order is paid partly or fully with a gift card, Schakel handles the full accounting chain in Moneybird automatically:
- When a gift card is sold, a posting is created to the deferred revenue liability account, without recognising revenue or VAT.
- When a gift card is redeemed on an order, the invoice is created for the full order amount including VAT.
- The gift card portion of the payment is registered against a dedicated Moneybird account, releasing the balance sheet liability correctly.
- Any additional payment by iDeal, credit card, or another method is registered as a separate payment entry.
This means your balance sheet and profit and loss account in Moneybird always match what has been processed in Shopify, without any manual intervention on your part.
Returns and gift cards
Returns on orders that were paid with a gift card introduce a further complication. When a customer returns a product, you need to decide whether the refund goes back to their original payment method or as new store credit. Shopify supports both options.
From a bookkeeping perspective, this matters. Refunding to a bank account reduces your cash balance. Issuing new store credit creates a new liability on your balance sheet. In both cases, the revenue and VAT must be corrected via a credit note.
Schakel handles returns and credit notes from Shopify automatically. Whether the refund is processed as a bank transfer or as new store credit, the credit note in Moneybird always aligns with the return in Shopify. For a detailed look at how refunds are handled, read our article on credit notes and returns in Shopify.
Expired gift cards: accounting for breakage
Not every gift card gets fully redeemed. A portion of outstanding balances will expire unused, which in accounting is called breakage. This portion may eventually be recognised as revenue, but the rules are strict.
You can only recognise breakage income if you can demonstrate, based on historical data, what percentage of your gift cards typically goes unredeemed. An arbitrary entry when a card expires is not sufficient. You need a substantiated estimate that you can justify during a tax audit or annual review.
Schakel records every gift card issuance and redemption, giving you the underlying data your accountant needs to calculate and justify a breakage provision in Moneybird. Without this data trail, breakage recognition becomes guesswork.
Reconciliation: keeping Shopify and Moneybird in sync
The real challenge with gift card bookkeeping is reconciliation. At the end of each period, you need to know exactly how much outstanding gift card liability sits on your balance sheet. That means tracking every card issued, every redemption, every partial use, and every refund to store credit.
Manual reconciliation means cross-referencing your Shopify gift card report with your Moneybird balance sheet entry. Any missed transaction, any partial payment that wasn’t split correctly, and the two will no longer agree. Chasing down the discrepancy at quarter-end is exactly the kind of admin work that takes hours and produces no value.
With Schakel, reconciliation is a non-issue. Every gift card transaction in Shopify flows directly and correctly into Moneybird. Your gift card liability balance in Moneybird always reflects the outstanding balance in Shopify. When you close the quarter, the numbers already add up.
Want this handled automatically? Pick your connector.
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