One way to secure income in the present for services rendered in the future is by selling gift cards. You may want to sell gift cards for your clients to book services in the future at a discount, or as a bundle of services. This article will show you how to create a discount gift card, collect payments and distribute the offer to your clients. 

Create an Announcement

First, you will want to create an announcement, which you will send to your clients to invite the to pay for the gift card.

1. Start in your vcita dashboard and go to Marketing > Announcements.
2. Click the New Announcement button near the top left.
3. Select Create Your Own.
4. Select Pay as the invite type. 
5. The payment amount should be the discounted price you are selling the service at, so we set the amount at $80, as discussed above.

6. Click create to create the new announcement. 
7. In the announcement editor, feel free to completely customize your message. Click in any text box to start typing and add an image by clicking on the image placeholder. Click on the action button to change the color and text on the button. 
8. You are done creating your announcement. Proceed to Create a Coupon.

Create a Coupon

The second step is to create a coupon. Your clients will use the coupon to redeem their discounted service.

1. From your vcita dashboard, navigate to Settings > Coupons.
2. Click Create Coupon in the top left to get started.
3. Set up the coupon similarly to the example below:
   • Set the Type to Percentage and the amount to 100. Remember that your client has already paid the discounted price in full, so they shouldn't pay anything at booking.
   • Set a timeframe the coupon should become valid. Clients will not be able to redeem it before then.
   • Set the max redemptions per client to 1.
   • Enable the checkbox to Limit the coupon to specific services. You will select the $100 service from the dropdown. 

4. You're all set up! Time to send your announcement and collect orders.

Fulfilling Orders

1. In your Announcements section, click Send next to the announcement you just created to send it to a group of clients. You may decide to send it via email or text. 
2. When you get a payment via the gift card payment link, you will receive a Payment received message in your Inbox.
3. Respond to the conversation with the coupon code! 

Client Experience

As soon as the coupon becomes active (based on the time frame you set when you created the coupon), your client can proceed to book the service as normal.

1. Before checkout, click Have a coupon.
2. Enter the coupon code. This will take the price off the booking.