Selling gift certificates when your software doesn't sell them for you

A gift certificate is just a session you've already been paid for, waiting for someone else to show up and use it. That's the whole of it — not a product, not a feature category, just a promise with a number attached. Which means the certificate itself was never the hard part. Keeping track of the promise is.

What a gift certificate actually has to do

Strip away the greeting-card design, and a gift-certificate feature in any practice-management system does exactly four things: take a payment now, write down what's owed, let someone other than the buyer redeem it later, and not lose track of the balance if it gets used across more than one visit. That's the whole job. A system that handles all four, even clumsily, has solved the problem. One that handles none of them hasn't — and most buyers never find out which kind they have until the first certificate shows up at the front desk.

Some systems sell them for you. Most don't, yet.

MassageBook sells gift certificates directly through the practice's own page: clients buy one, and it gets emailed to the recipient "without your having to lift a finger." Once it's sold, "you'll always know the status of each and every gift certificate you sell," per MassageBook's feature page (massagebook.com, checked 2026-10-09). Vagaro's pricing page lists gift certificates alongside memberships and packages as already included, though selling them online takes Vagaro's Online Shopping Cart, which its help center lists at "$10 USD/month."

Other practices are living with a narrower version of the same feature. One ClinicSense user noted on Capterra that the mobile app "doesn't allow you to sell gift certificates or packages from it" — fine at a desk, not fine between clients. A Noterro user put it more plainly on Capterra: clients "cant buy gift certificates" themselves at all, which means every sale starts with a phone call.

When this post first went up, Stillbook didn't have gift certificates either. It does now, included in the flat $39 — how they answer the four questions below is at the end. The manual system below still holds up, whatever you're running.

A manual system that actually holds up

If you're selling gift certificates by hand this season, the system is simpler than it sounds, and it holds up as well as a built-in feature as long as you keep it in one place:

• Number each certificate, even just #1, #2, #3 on a card or PDF. Without a number, two certificates for the same amount look identical — and that's exactly when one gets redeemed twice by accident.
• Take the payment the way you already take a deposit. Whatever you use for appointment deposits works here too; a gift certificate is just a payment with no appointment attached yet.
• Log six things the moment you sell one: certificate number, amount, buyer, recipient if you know it, date issued, and an expiration if you're setting one. A spreadsheet is enough. The goal isn't elegance — it's being able to answer "is this one still good?" in ten seconds, six months from now, from someone else's inbox.
• Redeem it like a deposit, not a discount. When the recipient books, take the appointment the normal way, then mark it paid-in-full from your ledger instead of charging again. If the service costs more than the certificate, collect the difference; if it costs less, decide ahead of time whether the remainder carries forward or expires with the visit — and say which on the certificate itself, so nobody's surprised later.
• Set your expiration policy before you sell the first one, not after someone shows up with an old one. Gift certificate expiration rules vary by state — worth a quick check before you set one, since "no refunds, ever" can run into a law you didn't know existed.

What to ask if a vendor says they've "got this"

Before taking a software gift-certificate feature at its word, four questions are worth asking. Can a client actually buy one online, or does it still route through you? Can it be partially redeemed against a service that costs more or less than the certificate's value? What happens to the record if you ever export your data — does the balance travel with it, or stay locked in their system? And is it included, or a separate line on the invoice? None of these are trick questions. They're just the ones a feature page tends not to answer.

Here's how Stillbook answers those four today. Can a client buy one online? Yes: from your booking page, by card, and it's emailed to the recipient on the day the buyer picks. You can also sell one in person — by card from your phone, or for cash — and either way Stillbook numbers the certificate, keeps the balance, and prints or emails it. Partial redemption? Yes: the recipient can use it at the appointment, or enter the code when they book online, the same account-free way every other client books, and whatever's left stays on the code. Export? Your gift certificates and their history come out with the rest of your data. Included? Yes, in the $39, with no add-on. Certificates never expire unless you choose an expiration, there are no fees, and the ones you've already sold by hand can go in with their remaining balances, so they redeem like the rest.

If you're on software that doesn't do this yet, the ledger above is yours to keep. It's not glamorous, but it's the kind of thing a solo practice can run from a spreadsheet for a whole holiday season without anything breaking.