Overview

A gift subscription allows a donor to purchase a subscription on behalf of a recipient. When a gift subscription is created, Pelcro generates a unique redemption code that is sent to the recipient by email, allowing them to activate their subscription.

Two linked subscriptions are created in the system — one under the donor's account (the purchaser) and one under the recipient's account (the redeemer) — each with their own invoices and accounting implications.

Gift subscriptions are one-time by default. Recipient subscriptions expire at the end of the gifted period and do not automatically renew. Donors can manually renew a gift, which extends the recipient's subscription by appending a new phase.

Donor

A donor can create a gift subscription for the recipient from your website or request this from your support team. A donor can also renew a gift for a recipient he previously purchased a subscription for.

Website

The donor can log in to your website and create an account, after which he should select a product and plan and select the gift subscription option at the bottom of the page. This will trigger the flow for the donor to enter the recipient's name and email so that the recipient can receive an email with instructions on how to redeem their gift.

Platform

You can also create a gift subscription for your customers directly on the platform. Create or select the donor of the subscription and begin the process of creating a new subscription. In the new subscription form, there will be a form to enter the recipient's information. If entered, this subscription will be created as a gift subscription and an email will be sent to the recipient with instructions on how to redeem the gift. You can even schedule subscriptions ahead of time, which are controlled from the "Gift Start Date" field — the gift notification email will be sent on that date rather than immediately. The start date must be within 1 year from today. You can also customize a message for the recipient to see in the notification email using the "Gift Message" field.

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Gift messages

Entering emojis and special characters is not allowed in the gift message. The maximum length is 200 characters.

Gift orders without an email

For mail gift orders without an email address, go to the donor account and add the address of the recipient. After that has been successfully added, create a new subscription, and select the newly created address that belongs to the recipient. The gift order will hence be delivered to the recipient.

Note:

1. A subscription will be created for the donor which will be marked as cancel at period end
2. An invoice will be generated and the donor will be required to pay the invoice
3. If the invoice is not paid by the donor, an error will be returned during the redemption process

Gift Renewal

A donor can manually renew a gift for a recipient they previously purchased a subscription for. Renewing a gift creates a new donor subscription and extends the recipient's subscription by appending a new phase — it does not create a separate recipient subscription. The donor's previous subscription is retained in the recipient's gift history.

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Auto-renewing gifts

Automatic renewal of gift subscriptions is not currently supported. All gift subscriptions are one-time by default and must be renewed manually by the donor or by your support team.

Recipient

Once a donor creates a gift subscription, the recipient will receive an email with a link to redeem the gift. The link will contain a unique 10-character redemption code to redeem the gift. This redemption code is also available from the platform under the gift subscription created under the donor's account.

The shipping address is required from the recipient upon redemption when either 1) the account taxes are enabled, or 2) the account taxes are disabled but the product requires an address. Otherwise, the address will not be required upon redemption.

Once the recipient creates an account and redeems their gift, a new subscription will be created under the recipient's account. Gift subscriptions are always set to expire at the period end and will not be configured to automatically renew.

A recipient can renew a gift subscription — this will add a new subscription phase to their existing subscription, resulting in an extension rather than a brand-new subscription.

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Concurrent redemption attempts

Each gift code can only be redeemed once. If multiple redemption attempts are made simultaneously for the same code, only the first will succeed and the rest will be rejected.

To view the details for a gift subscription, go to the donor account and click on "View Subscription," where you will be able to see the gift subscription and all the details attached to it.

Gift Notification Email

The gift notification email is sent to the recipient based on the Gift Start Date set by the donor. Emails are dispatched up to 3 times per day. If a scheduled notification is missed due to a system issue, it will be retried for up to 2 days after the original send date, after which it will no longer be attempted.

The notification email will not be resent if the recipient has already redeemed the gift.

Accounting implications

Gift subscriptions are taken into account in the accounting reports. Below is the accounting implication of both the donor and recipient subscriptions separately.

Donor

The following logic applies to new and renewed subscriptions. The only difference is if the recipient's subscription did not end yet, a subscription phase will be added to the existing subscription.

1. Subscription: A subscription will be created under the donor's account and it will be canceled immediately.

2. Invoice: An invoice will be created, however, it will be ignored from the recognized revenue in the accounting report as it wasn't redeemed yet.

3. Payment: If the invoice is paid, the payment will impact the payments received accounting row (online or offline).

Recipient

A recipient can renew a gift subscription under their account; the renewal process will add a new phase to their existing subscription.

1. Subscription: Once the subscription is redeemed by the recipient, a coupon will automatically be applied to the redeemed subscription. The coupon used is automatically created upon creating a Pelcro account and is set as a one-time coupon.

2. Invoice: The invoice will be created with a 100% discount due to the coupon that was associated with the subscription. Once this invoice is created, the revenue of the gift will start getting recognized.

3. Payment: No payment will be required on the invoice for the recipient's subscription since a 100% discount was applied to it.

Accounting Behavior

Gift subscriptions in Pelcro involve two parties — the donor (purchaser) and the recipient (redeemer). As a result, two separate subscriptions and invoices are created in the accounting system.

In summary, the donor's and recipient's invoices balance each other out — one records the purchase value (positive), the other recognizes it over time (negative), but under different customer names and invoice IDs.

Unredeemed Gifts

If a gift subscription is never redeemed, the amount remains in the Subscription Revenue row but does not generate recognized revenue. It continues to appear in the Deferred Revenue column indefinitely until redemption or cancellation.