Gift cards are a fantastic tool for boosting sales and customer loyalty in your Shopify store. However, if you’ve been searching for gift card sales within your regular sales reports and coming up empty, you’re not alone. It’s a common point of confusion for many Shopify store owners.
The key thing to understand is that in Shopify, gift cards are treated as liabilities, not sales, at the time of purchase. This means that when a customer buys a gift card, or when you issue one, the value isn’t immediately recognized as revenue. Instead, it’s recorded as a liability – an obligation to provide goods or services in the future when the gift card is redeemed. Because of this accounting principle, gift card sales are deliberately excluded from standard sales reports in Shopify, and they won’t be reflected in your overall sales figures on your Shopify Home dashboard.
So, where do you find information about your shopify gift card sales? The answer lies in your Finance Summary report. This report provides a comprehensive overview of your store’s financial activity, including how gift cards impact your liabilities.
To access your Shopify Finance Summary report and view your gift card sales, follow these simple steps:
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Log in to your Shopify Admin. This is the starting point for accessing all your store’s data.
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Navigate to the “Analytics” section. You’ll find this in the left-hand sidebar of your Shopify admin.
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Click on “Reports”. This will take you to the main Reports dashboard where you can access various reports about your store’s performance. Scroll down the Reports page until you find the “Finances” section.
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Select “Finances Summary”. This report provides a detailed breakdown of your store’s finances.
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Adjust the date range. By default, the report shows data for the current period. To view gift card sales for a specific timeframe, click the date button on the top right and select your desired date range.
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Locate the “Liabilities” section. In the Finance Summary report, look for the “Liabilities” section on the left-hand side. Here, you will find “Gift card sales” listed.
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View your gift card sales. The “Gift card sales” line item will display the total value of gift cards sold within the selected date range. Clicking on “Gift card sales” will open a detailed report specifically for gift card sales transactions during that period.
By following these steps, you can easily access your Shopify gift card sales data within the Finance Summary report. Remember, gift cards are recorded as liabilities until they are redeemed, which is why they are found in this specific financial report rather than standard sales reports.
For a deeper dive into how gift cards are recorded in your Shopify finance reports, including scenarios for when a gift card is issued, sold, and used, you can refer to the official Shopify Help Center documentation on gift card sales reports.
If you need further assistance or want to explore other aspects of your Shopify store, the Shopify Help Center and the Shopify Community Blog are excellent resources.
