Selling and redeeming spa gift vouchers

How a spa or gym should sell gift vouchers, redeem them by code, and deal with expired balances, with the country differences on validity and VAT.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Fitness businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Every December, and again around Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, the spa's front desk sells gift vouchers by the handful. The money arrives now; the massages, facials and day passes happen months later, if at all. Some vouchers are redeemed the following week. Some sit in a drawer at home until they expire.

It is tempting to treat voucher sales as a good month's income. That is how spas end up with books that overstate profit in December and understate it in March, and with no clear answer when a customer arrives with a voucher the system cannot find. A little discipline at the till avoids both.

A voucher is money you still owe

When someone buys a voucher, the spa has not yet earned anything. It has taken money in exchange for a promise: a treatment, a class or goods of that value, whenever the holder chooses to use it within the validity period. Until the voucher is redeemed, that money is a liability, an amount the business owes in services.

Only when the holder comes in and uses the voucher does the spa deliver what was paid for. That is the moment the income is earned.

Keeping vouchers as a liability has two practical benefits. Your monthly figures reflect the work actually done, and at any time you can see how much in unredeemed vouchers is outstanding, which is effectively a queue of future bookings already paid for.

Selling a voucher at the till

Achekam's till, which comes with the Point of Sale add-on, sells gift vouchers with a code. The voucher is held as a liability until it is redeemed by that code, and it is sold without VAT.

In the books, voucher sales go to their own liability account (2350 in the default chart), apart from sales revenue. Nothing about the sale inflates the month's income.

For the customer, the code is the voucher. Write it clearly on the card or envelope, and tell the buyer that the code is what the holder will need. A voucher without its code is a support call waiting to happen.

Redeeming by code

When the holder comes in, the voucher is redeemed at the till by its code, and the liability it was holding goes towards the treatment. Only then does the spa record the income.

A short routine for the front desk:

1. Ask for the voucher code before the treatment, not at the end.
2. Check the voucher is valid and has value left.
3. Ring up the treatment and redeem the voucher against it by its code.
4. If the treatment costs more than the voucher, take the difference by another method.

Here is a worked example in words. In December, a customer buys a voucher for a full spa morning as a gift. The till records the sale against the voucher liability, and the month's treatment income does not move. In February, the friend who received it books the morning, hands over the code, and has an extra treatment added on the day. At the till, the voucher covers the spa morning and the friend pays the difference by card. February's figures now show the treatment income, and the liability for that voucher is gone.

Store credit from refunds

Vouchers have a second use. When a customer returns something bought at the spa, a supervisor or manager can refund the sale, and the refund can be given as store credit, issued as a voucher. That keeps the money in the business and gives the customer a code they can use like any gift voucher.

Treat store-credit vouchers the same way as bought ones: they are a liability until used.

Expired vouchers with money left

Some vouchers expire with money still on them. Achekam lists those vouchers, so they do not sit forgotten in the liability account for years.

Taking an expired balance to income is a decision with consequences, so the till restricts who can make it. Only a supervisor or manager can take an expired voucher's balance to income, and they must not be the person who issued that voucher. That separation is a simple fraud control: the cashier who sold a voucher cannot quietly write it off later.

Before anyone does it, check two things. Has the voucher really expired under the terms printed on it? And has the customer contacted the spa about it? A customer who calls the day after expiry asking to book deserves a considered answer, not an automatic refusal.

How validity differs by country

Voucher rules are not the same everywhere, and Achekam reflects that.

For Kenyan and Nigerian spas, that means the VAT treatment of a voucher sale should be confirmed with your accountant before you rely on the default. For South African spas, print a validity period on each voucher that matches how long it lasts, so customers are not told something different at the till. The rule behind the South African row is section 63 of the Consumer Protection Act: gift vouchers, prepaid cards and credits do not expire until their full value is redeemed or three years after issue, whichever comes first.

Getting the voucher drawer in order

Start by counting what you have: every unredeemed voucher, its code, its value and its expiry. Then make the till the only place vouchers are sold, so every one carries a code and sits in the liability account. Vouchers fit naturally alongside other front-desk payments, such as members paying by QR code, and alongside monthly fees collected without debit orders.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.