Gift cards at the LS Central POS: selling, redeeming, and checking balances

Store operations · 8 min read

Gift cards look simple until a cashier is staring at a queue, a customer is asking what is left on a card from Christmas, and nobody is sure whether a partial redemption is even allowed. In LS Central, gift cards are a native retail feature — they have their own setup and their own module in LS Retail's own training syllabus, alongside tender management — not a bolt-on. The card itself is a code, the code is generated at the POS, and the card is spent as a payment method at checkout. This guide turns LS Retail's documented behaviour into the three routines a cashier actually needs: selling, redeeming, and checking a balance.

The short version: how the card works

• The card is a code. The gift card code is generated from the POS when the card is sold. Whoever holds the code holds the value.
• The card is a payment method. At checkout, the gift card is applied as a mode of payment against the order — in the wider LS Central setup, gift card is a defined tender type (the documented Commerce tender mapping uses GiftCard as its own tender, e.g. 10=10).
• Redemption can be partial. You can redeem the total gift card amount, or use a partial amount, depending on the order total.
• Everything leaves a trail. After an order is placed, the gift card amount and code appear in the order history — which is what makes end-of-day checking possible.

Selling a gift card at the POS

1. Start the sale at the POS and add the gift card with the amount the customer wants to give. The gift card code is generated on the POS as part of the sale — there is no separate activation system to log into.
2. Take payment for the card like any other sale. Until the sale is completed, the card is not worth anything; a generated-but-unpaid code is not a gift.
3. Hand the customer the code (on the physical card or receipt, however your store issues them) and make sure they understand the code is the value — losing it is like losing cash.
4. Confirm the record. The sale is a normal order: afterwards, the gift card amount and code are visible in the order history if you need to prove what was sold, when, and for how much.

What success looks like: the customer leaves with a code, the payment is in the drawer like any other tender, and the order history shows the gift card amount and code for the sale.

Redeeming a gift card

1. Ring the sale normally. Gift cards are applied at checkout, against the finished order — not line by line.
2. Apply the gift card code and the amount. Redeem the full balance, or enter a partial amount if the customer wants to split payment or keep some value on the card.
3. Check the order summary. After applying, the gift card appears in the order summary and is added to the total discount shown there. The gift card number and amount stay visible at checkout, and you can update, delete, or add a gift card before the order is placed — so if the wrong card was applied, fix it at this step, not after.
4. Tender the rest. If a partial redemption (or the card's whole balance) doesn't cover the order, the remainder is paid with another payment method as usual.

What success looks like: the order summary shows the gift card number and the amount applied, the remaining balance due matches what the customer then pays, and the completed order's history records the gift card amount and code used.

Checking a balance

There is no magic balance hotline — the balance lives with the card's record in the system, and there are three grounded ways to get at it:

1. At checkout. When a gift card is applied, the gift card number and amount are visible at checkout before the order is placed. For a customer asking "what's left on this?", applying the card shows the amount the system holds for it — and the card can be deleted from the checkout again if no purchase follows, which the checkout flow allows.
2. The POS gift card lookup. LS Central's POS menus include a gift card lookup (the LOOKUP-GIFT menu appears in LS Retail's own release documentation). If your POS layout carries it, that is the cashier-facing route to look a card up without building a sale around it.
3. Order history. For "did my card get used?" questions, the order history shows the gift card amount and code on orders where a card was applied — enough to confirm a redemption happened, and for how much.

What success looks like: the customer gets a number that comes from the system — the same number the checkout would honour — not a guess based on what they remember spending.

Documented behaviour, verified against LS Retail's own help

Gift card folklore accumulates fast at a till. Here is what LS Retail's documentation actually says (checked 2026-10-17), including the limits:

The rules that catch people out

• The currency rule. The one hard limit in the documentation: no multi-currency support. A card is worth its amount in the currency it was created in. For border stores, sell the customer a card in the currency they will spend it in, and say so at the till.
• The card shows as a discount in the summary. When applied, the gift card is added to the total discount in the order summary. Don't "correct" that by also discounting the items — the card is payment, presented in the summary against the total.
• Wrong card applied? Fix it before the order is placed: update or delete the gift card at checkout. After the order is placed, the amount and code are history — literally, in the order history — and untangling it is a refund conversation, not a keystroke.
• Channel expectations. Cross-channel behaviour (like the Shopify sync above) exists where LS Retail documents it. Don't promise a customer that a card will work in a channel your setup hasn't been documented or configured for — check first.

End of day: what to verify

1. Cards sold. Each gift card sale should be findable in the order history with its amount and code. A card handed to a customer with no matching order is a problem to find today, not at month-end.
2. Cards redeemed. Orders paid partly or fully by gift card should show the gift card amount and code in their history. Spot-check one against the customer's receipt if anything looked odd at the till.
3. The tender picture. Gift card is its own tender type in the system, so redemptions should read as gift card tender in your end-of-day figures — not as cash, and not as an unexplained discount. (If your statement routine is new to you, see our end-of-day routine.)

One boundary worth stating plainly: how your business must account for unredeemed card balances, and any expiry or fee rules, are accounting and legal questions that depend on your jurisdiction — LS Central records the activity, but the rules for your books come from your accountant, not from the POS. This guide covers the till work only.

FAQ

Can a gift card be used more than once? Yes, in effect — partial redemption is documented, so a card with value left on it can be applied again on a later order.

Can two gift cards pay for one order? The checkout flow lets you add a gift card alongside one already applied — the number and amount of each stay visible at checkout.

A customer paid in a different currency than the card. What happens? Nothing automatic — gift cards don't convert. The card must be used in the currency it was created in.

Is a gift card the same as a voucher in LS Central? No. LS Retail treats gift cards and vouchers as related but separate features (its training syllabus lists them together as "Gift card and voucher"). This guide covers gift cards; voucher setup and rules are their own topic.