Coupons

Vouchers reward regulars, win new guests and let you sell seats at your events in advance. The form guides you through five numbered steps and hides whatever does not belong to the type you picked.

1. Pick the type

The first block decides everything else. There are exactly three types:

• Discount code — a code that takes something off the bill: a percentage, a fixed amount or a perk (“a glass of sparkling wine on arrival”). A discount code is not sold; you hand it out.
• Value voucher — an amount to give away. You can put it on sale online, either at a fixed price or with a range the buyer chooses from. It is preselected when you create a voucher.
• Voucher for an event — a place at one of your events.

2. Basics

Code, name and the limits on redemption live here. The button next to the code field generates a random one; number to create produces several codes at once (personalisation is dropped then — it would be the same for all of them). For a discount code you also pick the kind (discount or perk) and the value.

The maximum number of redemptions is set to 1 for a value voucher and is required there: without a cap it is not accepted at an event (see below). A discount code may stay unlimited.

3. Sale

This block appears for value vouchers and for event vouchers. Enter a sale price or an amount range, pick the VAT rate and switch on Sell online. The voucher then shows up on your public voucher page, in the voucher widget and on your venue page.

Orders that have already been paid are untouched by a price change: the amount is frozen on the document.

4. Redemption rules & validity

Limit the voucher to certain weekdays or to selected events — the field Redeemable at these events says where the code may be redeemed and is not the same as the event in block 3 that you are selling it for. Add the validity period and the switches for combinability and active state. Leave valid until empty and your default from the booking rules applies; the resulting date is shown below the field.

5. Buyer & personalisation

Assign the voucher to a customer from your records and add the recipient and a personal message. Both appear on the voucher and in the voucher email.

Send & redeem

This section describes the discount code you created yourself. If the voucher is a sale template, the same button gives away a copy of its own — see Giving a voucher as a gift.

Coupons that have not been sent yet you email directly: pick a guest via search or enter an address, optionally use a template and add a personal message. After sending, a checkmark marks the coupon as sent. Guests then redeem the code online during the booking process.

Every one of these emails carries your venue logo at the top as soon as one is stored under Settings → Profile, with the note "via VidiReserve" underneath. Without a stored logo the VidiReserve logo is shown instead. You change the wording of the voucher emails under Settings → Email Templates.

Giving a voucher as a gift

If a voucher is a sale template — it has a sale price, a price range, or is on sale online — the envelope button does something different than for a discount code: it creates a new voucher with its own code and sends that to the address you enter. Your template stays unchanged and remains on sale; you can give away as many gifts from the same template as you like.

In the dialog you enter the recipient's address and name, a personal message and — if your template has a price range — the value of the voucher. If you have more than one print template, you also choose how the sheet should look.

Every gift then appears under Orders with the origin Gifted internally, where you find the code, the redemption status and the print button. Because no money changed hands, such an order has no payment, no invoice and no right of withdrawal, and the amount does not count towards the revenue total below the list. To take a gift back, cancel the order: this invalidates the voucher. The permission Vouchers: edit is enough for that — no money changed hands. A voucher that has already been redeemed can no longer be taken back.

If the email did not arrive, use Resend voucher on the order's detail page to send it to the same address again (at most three times per hour). A different address cannot be entered there on purpose: the button would otherwise become a redirect for other people's gifts. If the voucher should go somewhere else, take it back and give a new one.

The email to the recipient contains the code, a link to the printable sheet and — if your server supports it — the voucher as a PDF attachment. It deliberately contains no link to the buyer's order page: that page holds the invoice and the withdrawal, and neither is the recipient's business.

Proof when redeeming

A purchased voucher can only be redeemed together with the email address it was sent to. The code alone is not enough: it is eight characters long, and anyone guessing it would otherwise be holding money. Both the voucher's delivery address and the purchaser's address count as proof. With a gift, only the delivery address does: the "purchaser" there is your own business, and that address is in every email footer.

The booking page, the widget and the event page all show a second, optional field below the voucher field. It only appears once something is typed into the voucher field and disappears again when the code is cleared — anything already typed is kept. So anyone who is not redeeming a purchased voucher never sees it and has nothing to leave empty.

The backoffice needs no such field: proof was already given when the booking was made — otherwise the voucher would never have reached the booking. The "Redeem voucher" button therefore only checks what applies today: that the voucher is active and not used up. The partner app may send the delivery address along; if it does not, the email address on the booking counts.

If the address does not match, the answer is always the same, whether the code has expired, has already been redeemed or was simply guessed wrong. That is deliberate: the message must not reveal anything about somebody else's voucher. After ten wrong entries for the same voucher it is locked for fifteen minutes; correct entries never count towards that, however often they come.

Overview

The list shows each coupon's code, value, redemption counter (redeemed / maximum) and expiry date. Using the filters at the top you narrow down by type or send status.

Vouchers for events

The event page and the booking widget both have a field for a voucher code. What happens depends on the type of voucher:

• Event voucher (bought for this specific event): it covers one seat. The booking is €0.00 and the guest's receipt is the invoice from the purchase.
• Value voucher (bought or created by you): it pays part of the price. The price of the booking stays as it is and the guest only transfers the difference. The invoice shows the full amount, with "Paid by voucher" and "Amount due" underneath.
• Discount code (fixed or percentage): it reduces the price. Both the booking and the invoice carry the reduced amount, and the line item names the code.
• In-kind voucher ("a glass of sparkling wine"): cannot be applied to events — the guest redeems it during a visit.

If a value voucher covers the whole price, the booking counts as paid straight away and the guest receives the invoice just as after a real payment.

If the guest (or you) cancels before the event date, the voucher becomes valid again automatically. After the date it stays redeemed; any goodwill is your call. The details about the booking form are in the chapter Events & tickets.

Image

Every voucher can carry an image. It appears on the purchase page, in the voucher widget on your website, on your venue page and at the top of the e-mail the recipient receives. You will find the field at the bottom of the voucher form, under Image.

Two ways lead to the same result: upload a file, or pick one you have uploaded before via From the media library. Allowed are JPEG, PNG and WebP up to 5 MB. We crop the image to a centred square — so put what matters in the middle. Uploaded images are added to your media library and can be reused from there.

Remove image is the checkbox below the field — the next save drops the voucher’s own image. For an event voucher the event’s image takes over again. An inherited image cannot be removed here; it belongs to the event and is maintained there. The file itself stays in your media library as long as it is listed there or another voucher uses it.

When creating vouchers in bulk, the whole batch shares one image — it is one and the same action. Sold vouchers keep the image their template had at the time of purchase.

Orders & export

Sold vouchers do not appear in the coupon list — they live under Voucher orders in the menu. The coupon list shows your templates, that is what you offer for sale; the order list shows each individual sale with buyer, amount, state, voucher code and invoice.

The bar at the top narrows the list by period — quick presets or your own from/to fields — plus state and type. The search box finds an order by buyer name, email address or voucher code. The default period is the current year. Below the list you see the total of the paid orders in the current filter; it stays correct even when the list is capped at 500 rows.

Clicking the buyer's name opens the order in full: billing address, recipient and delivery address, the personal message, the voucher with its redemption status, every payment attempt, all documents (invoice and cancellation documents, pending as well as refunded), and the state of the right of withdrawal. The three actions “Mark as paid”, “Issue invoice” and “Cancel” are available there just as in the list.

Orders as CSV downloads exactly the selection on screen: 17 columns from the order number to the redemption status, ready for your accountant. The export requires the “Invoices & payments” permission at edit level and is capped at 10,000 rows — split the period for more. The buyer's access link is deliberately not in the file: it opens the order without a login.

Withdrawal and repayment. Your buyers have a 14-day right of withdrawal in distance selling — as long as the voucher has not been redeemed. The buyer declares the withdrawal from the link in their order confirmation; the voucher then becomes invalid, a cancellation document is issued, and an online payment is refunded automatically.

If it is not refunded — the provider declines, the connection drops, or it was a bank transfer — the order visibly stays on “Cancelled” and the repayment is up to you. The buyer sees a line on their order page saying you will repay the amount within 14 days; you see the reason in the order's payment block. From there a link takes you to the payments overview — that is where the “Refund” button lives, to try again or to record a repayment you made from your provider account. Only then is the order marked “Refunded” and the cancellation document settled.

For a bank transfer or a cash payment there is no payment row at all — in that case you record the repayment directly on the order: the “Record repayment” button sits there among the actions as soon as something is pending. The order is then marked “Refunded” too, the cancellation document counts as settled, and the line on the buyer's page disappears.

Sending by post

Not every voucher should arrive as an email. Under Settings → Vouchers, in the Vouchers section, you switch on sending by post and set four things: the postage (gross), the handling time in working days, the label that appears on the invoice, and whether VAT applies to the postage.

About the tax. Postage is an ancillary service and is normally shown at the standard rate of your billing profile. With a multi-purpose voucher the voucher itself is not a taxable supply, whereas the postage is — please ask your tax adviser whether to show VAT there. The switch leaves the choice to you; under the small business scheme the rate always stays 0%.

Then you decide per template how it may arrive: by email only (the default), by email, optionally by post as well, or by post only. The field sits in the voucher form right next to “sell online”.

On the purchase page your customer picks the delivery method and gives a delivery address — their billing address is preselected. The total at the bottom shows voucher plus postage; the invoice gets two line items, each with its own tax rate.

Where the envelope goes. Your customer decides: to me (we then use their billing address), directly to the person receiving it or to a different address — an office, say. For the latter two they type the address themselves. We use it only to post this one voucher; it stays on the order and is neither exported nor repeated in full in any email.

If the voucher goes to the person receiving it, you see that in the order list on the “to recipient” badge and on the order page. There and above the print sheet you get the note “Gift — send without receipt and without prices.” The receipt goes to the buyer by email as before and does not belong in the envelope. After you mark the order as dispatched, your buyer receives an email naming the name and the town — the full address is deliberately left out.

Dedication. The personal message from the purchase form is the dedication: it appears in the voucher email and is printed on the sheet. When post is possible, the field label says so. The card has room for about 400 characters; anything beyond that is shortened when printing.

What you have to do. In the order list, filter for To dispatch. Every order there is paid, the voucher has been issued and is waiting for an envelope. You open the order, print the sheet (the Print button on the voucher), put it in the envelope — and press Mark as dispatched in the Dispatch block below. You pick the carrier from a short list (DHL, Deutsche Post, UPS, DPD, Hermes, GLS or “Other carrier”) and type the tracking number — both are optional; for a plain letter just leave them blank. Your buyer then automatically gets the email “Your voucher is on its way”.

If that email does not go out — a typo in the address, a mail server that refuses — the page says so plainly: the dispatch stays recorded, the notification is missing. The Dispatch block then offers Resend dispatch email (at most three times per hour). If that does not help either, pick up the phone yourself — the envelope is on its way after all.

What the recipient gets. With by post only the voucher email goes to the buyer, without a PDF and without a print link — otherwise the recipient would hold the gift twice. With email and post everything stays as usual, with one added line saying paper is on its way.

Withdrawal. For goods sent by post the 14-day withdrawal period starts when the parcel reaches you, not at purchase. As long as you have not dispatched anything, it does not run at all. If a buyer withdraws, we refund the whole amount including the postage — that is what the law requires. The voucher sheet does not have to come back: the voucher is void with the withdrawal anyway.

Print templates

A voucher should not only arrive as an email — it should also print out well enough to be handed over as a present. What that printout looks like is set under Settings → Voucher print templates. The Add the defaults button gives you three ready-made templates in one go: DL landscape (99 × 210 mm, the classic voucher size), portrait (A5) (148 × 210 mm) and portrait (A4) (210 × 297 mm). The primary colour of your emails (Settings → Appearance) is picked up as the accent colour.

Per template you choose the paper size, portrait or landscape, three colours (background, text, accent) and three pieces of wording (headline, sub-line, footer) — each in German and in English. Which language gets printed is decided by the order, not by the language you are currently viewing. Colours are six-digit hex values (for example #0D6EFD); anything else quietly falls back to the default.

Logo height. Your logo (from "Profile & Contact") sits in the top right corner of the sheet. How big it is you set per template in the Logo height (mm) field — from 6 to 40 mm, the default is 11 mm. The width scales proportionally, up to half the sheet width at most. On the larger paper sizes the logo grows in the same ratio as the text. On DL landscape (only 99 mm tall) at most 20 mm is printed — a larger value is capped there so the fine print still fits on the sheet; the other paper sizes of the same template keep using it.

Issuer, date of issue and voucher type. Below the footer every template automatically prints a small block with your company, address, phone, email and website. Company name and address are the same as on your invoices (Settings → Invoicing); if nothing is entered there, the details from "Profile & Contact" apply. It is followed by the line "Issued on …" with the day the voucher was created: the statutory three-year limitation period starts at the end of that year. Sold vouchers additionally state the voucher type — single-purpose voucher (§ 3 (14) German VAT Act) or multi-purpose voucher (§ 3 (15) German VAT Act), exactly as on the invoice for the order. For small businesses and for vouchers without an order this line is left out.

Preview image. You can store an image per template — a photo of the printed card, for example. It appears on the purchase page as a card so your guest sees what they get. You either upload it or pick it from your media library; the checkbox below removes it again. Without your own image we show an automatic thumbnail of your template: it is created when you save and refreshed on every change. If even that is unavailable, your guest sees a plain card in your template colours — the choice works in every case.

With more than one active template your guest picks from cards with images on the purchase page instead of from a drop-down. Your default is preselected.

The wording may contain placeholders that are replaced with the real values when printing: {code}, {value}, {valid_until}, {recipient}, {greeting}, {restaurant}, {company} (your company, or the name of your business if there is no company name), {address} (address on one line) and {issued} (date of issue). The new defaults put "Redeemable at {company}. No cash payout; remaining credit stays valid." into the footer — existing templates keep their wording until you change it. If a line ends up empty after the replacement — say "for {recipient}" with no recipient — it is left out entirely. The preview next to the form shows the sheet as you type. One note on {greeting}: your buyer's dedication is printed on the sheet as its own block anyway — putting the placeholder into a line as well prints it twice.

There are three places to print from: the detail page of a voucher you have sent, the action block of an order, and — once paid — the buyer's own order page. All three open the same sheet with a print button. If you have more than one active template, a picker sits next to the button.

Deleting a template loses no orders: they are simply printed with the default afterwards. A template you no longer want to offer but would like to keep is better set to inactive. At most 20 templates can stay active — more than that would turn the picker on the purchase page into a catalogue.

The guest gets a say at purchase: if you have more than one active template, the purchase page shows a picker with a preview button, and the "Invoice a customer" dialog has the same picker. The chosen template is recorded on the order — even if you later make a different one the default, a voucher already sold keeps its own. Once paid, the buyer finds a Print the voucher button in the voucher email and on their order page, and can print the sheet themselves — without signing in, through the same protected link as their order.