Loading Fees

Each time a card is loaded with a value of more than $10.00, $0.40 CAD will be charged to your account. Cards loaded with a value of $10.00 or less will be charged $0.20 CAD. Loading fees will be billed semi-annually, on December 31st and June 30th, with an online report available to track usage and charges. There are no fees charged when a card is redeemed, only when it is loaded or refilled.

Fully Redeemed Cards

When a card is fully redeemed, you can take it back from the customer. Cards may be recycled (issued again to another customer), and we encourage you to do so to bring costs down. Customers will not be able to see any previous history on recycled cards, but you can if need be. In our experience, gift cards get 2-3 cycles of use before they become too tattered and worn to be issued again.

Expiring Cards

Depending on provincial/state laws, gift cards may not be allowed to expire. In fact, most provinces in Canada no longer allow gift cards to have an expiration. If your area allows expiry dates, and you decide to implement them, make certain your policy is displayed on the physical cards. Cards can be designed with an “expiry date” space to hand write the date upon issuing.

Security

The physical plastic gift cards contain no information about the card's balance or history. Rather, Bookmanager uses the unique barcoded number printed on the card to obtain the information stored on your server and mirrored on our servers. For this reason, we recommend that the physical gift card itself be present at the time of redemption, to reduce the chance of a stolen or counterfeit number being used. It is very difficult and unlikely that your physical gift card be reproduced exactly, with a working barcode, and a number that is activated and carries a balance.

That said, card numbers can be entered manually if the card or the scanner is damaged, or upon exceptional occasions where the physical card itself cannot be presented.

A 3-digit PIN is included and printed beside the barcode as additional security. This PIN allows for additional vetting when the card is not physically present, or for online redemption. By default, this PIN is not obscured behind a scratch-off panel. If you keep your unloaded gift cards behind the front desk and out of customer reach until they are issued, a scratch-off panel is not necessary. Otherwise, scratch-off panels can be requested for an additional $0.10 CAD/USD fee per card.

Delivery Time

If you order 500-2500 gift cards, it takes 2 weeks or less from the time we receive your approval on artwork until you get your cards. Quantities of 5000 or more have approximately a 3-5 week ETA after the final approval of artwork and payment is received by us. Depending on the time of year, rush production or shipping can sometimes be requested at an extra cost. Rush production/shipping is not typically available between October and December.

¹ Design Pricing

Designing your card is a base $250 charge, and that includes 2-3 hours of work, which results in 4-7 front mock-ups/variations, and 1-2 back variations. Each additional half hour of new work is billed at $50. Minor revisions or iterations on the initial mock ups will not cost extra, and once a final design has been confirmed, the press-ready files are also included in that $250 charge. The time spent designing varies on the amount of work and revisions needed to create your design.

Each design is created from scratch for each individual store, allowing your card to be as unique as you like. If you have your own graphic artist and provide print-ready material, there is still a minimum $50 artwork setup fee. Please refer to the Design Resources section at the bottom of this page for templates and guidelines for designers. We highly recommend providing an unflattened PDF file, an Adobe Illustrator file (with fonts/text outlined), or an Affinity Designer file (with fonts/text outlined) for best print quality. If designing in Affinity Photo / Photoshop, we prefer a PDF export, with text outlined. We will also accept JPG, PNG or TIFF files too, but vector based files (such as PDF, SVG, EPS, AFDESIGNER, and AI) will print at 2400+dpi. If your vector-based design contains 4 or less colours, and you are ordering 2500 or more cards, we can employ lithographic spot Pantone offset printing.

Printing Your Own Cards With Our Numbers

We have no issue with stores purchasing their gift cards from a third party for use with the Bookmanager software. We do require that you contact us to obtain a file containing the authorized, randomized barcode numbers (they must adhere to Bookmanager's validation formula otherwise they will be rejected). There is no charge to generate this file.

We can also sometimes integrate your pre-existing gift cards for use with Bookmanager, depending on their numbering sequence. These cards will adhere to the loading fee structure outlined above.

Shipping & Other Options

The prices per card outlined above include shipping. Cards are shipped direct from our manufacturer in Ontario, using Purolator for Canadian orders and UPS for American orders. Most orders arrive within 3-5 business days of being shipped. Orders destined for US addresses have duties prepaid/built-in to costs. Shipment tracking is available only by request.

If you would like to have multiple gift card designs for a single order, the minimum quantity per design is 500. For example, you can order 1000 cards total, but have 500 printed with one design, and 500 with another.

² By default, our pricing outlined is for full colour fronts and black-only (not grayscale) on the back. The backs of cards can be printed in full colour if requested. This adds anywhere from 1.5-2 times the cost to the total, depending on the card quantity being ordered and the amount of colour being used. We'll provide you with a custom quote once we have your design.

By default, the gift card medium itself is pearl white PVC plastic, in the standard credit card size and thickness. Alternative mediums can be requested (some at additional costs), such as matallic gold, silver, or other coloured plastic; or thick cardstock paper for a non-plastic option. Metallic foiling or UV spot ink can also be implemented, but usually are only cost effective on jobs of 2500 cards or more.

Coming from another system?

If you are able to provide us with a spreadsheet of your current gift card numbers and their respective balances, along with a photo of the back of a card clearly showing the barcode and printed number sequence, we are often able to import those into Bookmanager for integrated use within the software and webstore. This conversion will incur a fee for the time it takes us to convert and import those balances. Loading fees will not apply to your existing cards converted and imported. Loading fees will only apply to newly loaded cards; new ones from us or your existing cards being loaded for the first time in Bookmanager.

Not all gift cards from other systems can be converted. Your existing cards must have at least 8 unique, non-sequential numbers/letters, and must be written on the card itself. If the gift card number is only accessible by scanning a barcode or swiping a magnetic strip, and no number is written out on the card for your staff to manually reference, we will not be able to import those for use in the system. We are occasionally able to retain the ability to scan a non-Bookmanager gift card's barcode for redemption, but most often, hand-typing gift card numbers into Bookmanager is the means for lookup, redemption, and issuing.