Why gift card sales don't show in your Shopify sales
Shopify does not count a gift card as a sale when you sell it, because an unspent card is money you still owe; it counts the full item value as a sale when the card is spent. You still get the money when the card is bought, so in a month when you sell many gift cards your payments run ahead of your sales, and in the months they are spent your sales run ahead of your payments.
What happens at each step
When a customer buys a gift card. The purchase is not in any sales report, and not in the total sales number on Home. The money is recorded: the amount paid shows in the Payments finance report under the customer's payment method, and the card itself shows in the Net sales from gift cards finance report.
When a customer spends the gift card. The order shows up in sales at full value. Shopify's example: a customer buys a $50 gift card and later uses it on a $50 item, and the $50 of sales is recorded when the item is purchased. The part paid by gift card shows in the Payments finance report as a gift card entry.
When you give a card away. A gift card issued from your admin needs no payment from anyone, and it is not in the Net sales from gift cards report. When it is spent, our reasoning from the redemption rule: the item still counts as a sale, with no matching money coming in.
Where gift card numbers live
- Net sales from gift cards: the face value of cards sold, minus any discount given at the time of sale.
- Outstanding gift card balance: what you still owe on cards sold or issued; for your liability on one date, use the ending gift card balance for that date.
- Gift card fields in reports: issued, sold, redeemed, adjusted and deactivated (Shopify's field name: disabled) values, plus starting and ending balances.
- Payments without gift cards: a field called Net payments excluding gift cards leaves out amounts redeemed from gift cards.
Sources: Shopify Help Center: Finance reports · Shopify Help Center: Gift cards overview · Shopify Help Center: Analytics data points (fields) reference · Shopify developer docs: ShopifyQL gift card data
Why your gift card totals disagree with each other
Shopify says gift card reports and exports count different information: the gift card CSV export lists balances and is sorted by the date each card was created, while reports show activity in the range you pick. Shopify names two more cases: on imported orders, an amount paid by gift card is not automatically taken off the card balance, and a gift card used alongside a card payment that failed can be reported twice on the payments side. Why an export and a dashboard disagree more generally is on export versus dashboard.
Can Shopify count gift cards when they are sold?
Shopify explains how to include gift cards sold in a report by adding a gift card gross sales metric. Our reasoning on the catch: in a report that also counts redemptions as sales, the same dollars then appear twice, once when the card is sold and once when it is spent. Whether your books record revenue when a card is sold or when it is spent depends on your accounting method, which your accountant decides, not a report setting.
A worked example (HYPOTHETICAL)
| Line | Dec | Jan |
|---|---|---|
| Product sales from new money | $30,000.00 | $18,000.00 |
| Gift cards sold | $5,000.00 | $0.00 |
| Items bought with gift cards | $0.00 | $2,000.00 |
| Shopify net sales | $30,000.00 | $20,000.00 |
| Money collected | $35,000.00 | $18,000.00 |
| Gift card balance still owed | $5,000.00 | $3,000.00 |
Invented numbers, not a real store; tax and shipping left out. December collected $5,000 more than its sales. January's sales were $2,000 more than it collected. Across the two months, collections ($53,000) equal sales ($50,000) plus the $3,000 still owed on cards. That is the check worth making each month; why the money that lands in your bank differs from sales for other reasons is on payout versus sales.
What ProfitRoot does with this
ProfitRoot ties Net Sales to Shopify to the cent. An order that sells only gift cards is left out of Net Sales and listed as an expected exclusion (deferred revenue), with its dollars and the reason shown, rather than quietly netted away; an order paid with a gift card stays in. If another tool's Net Sales differs from Shopify's, ProfitRoot shows where and by how much. Free to install; Pro $49 a month; Firm $149 a month; every feature free during the founding period.
Common questions
Why aren't gift card sales in my Shopify sales reports?
Shopify treats a sold gift card as a liability, not a sale, so it is left out of sales reports and the Home total sales number. It appears in the Net sales from gift cards finance report. The money paid for it appears in the Payments finance report.
When does a gift card count as a sale in Shopify?
When it is spent. Shopify records the full value of the item bought as a sale at that point. For example, a $50 item bought with a $50 gift card adds $50 of sales on the day of that purchase, not on the day the card was sold.
Do I get the money when a gift card is sold?
Yes. Shopify includes the amount paid for a gift card in the Payments finance report under the customer's payment method. The money comes in at purchase, even though the sale is recorded later.
Can I make Shopify count gift cards when they are sold?
You can add a gift card gross sales metric to a report. In a report that also counts redemptions as sales, though, the same dollars then appear twice. When to recognise gift card revenue is a decision for your accountant.
Why do my gift card report and gift card export show different totals?
Shopify says they count different information. The export lists card balances and is organised by the date each card was created, while the reports show activity in the date range you pick.
What this does not tell you
This page explains how Shopify reports gift cards. It does not say when your business should recognise gift card revenue or how to treat unused balances; those are accounting and legal questions that depend on where you operate (for the ledger side, see QuickBooks and Shopify after a sync).
The lines marked as our reasoning are not Shopify statements. The worked example is hypothetical.
Install ProfitRoot and see these steps on your own orders.
Install free from the Shopify App StoreOrders synced from a connected Shopify store are transmitted to and stored on our servers so they can be recomputed on later visits.
Sources last checked 2026-10-30.