Importing Gift Cards from a Previous Ticketing System
If you are moving to ThunderTix with outstanding gift cards, we can import them for you. Your patrons keep their remaining balances, and in most cases the exact codes they already hold, so cards can be redeemed at checkout from day one. Gift card imports are part of the complimentary data migration included with onboarding.
What the import does
Creates one gift card in ThunderTix for every row in your file, carrying the balance your previous system shows.
Keeps the original gift card code from your previous system when you provide it. Patrons redeem the same code printed on the card they already hold. Leave the code blank and ThunderTix issues a new code instead.
Records each original sale as a fully paid order, backdated to the original purchase date, so your gift card sales reports reflect when cards were actually sold.
Matches recipients and buyers to your patrons by email, and creates a new patron when there is no match.
Never emails your patrons. No one receives a message when the import runs. Once the import is complete, you can send any card to its recipient individually from the gift card record.
Before you begin
Your venue needs an active gift card design. The import uses your most recent active design for every card it creates. Go to Products and Gift Cards > Gift Certificates to set one up if you have not already.
Import gift cards before any ticket or membership order history that redeems gift cards. Those imports verify each redeemed code against a card that already exists in ThunderTix.
Keep the header row exactly as it appears in the template: the same column titles, in the same order, with nothing added, removed, or renamed. Columns that do not apply to you must remain in place as empty placeholder columns. A file with missing, misspelled, or reordered headings is rejected before anything is imported.
One row is one gift card. A single purchase of three cards is three rows that share the same Order ID. A file may contain up to 10,000 rows.
Column reference
Order ID, Recipient Email, and Price are required on every row. Every other column may be left blank.
Order ID (required): The order or transaction ID from your previous system. Repeat the same Order ID on every row that belongs to the same purchase.
Purchased At: The date the card was originally sold. Date only or date with time is fine (07/15/2026 or 07/15/2026 2:14 PM), in your venue’s local time zone. It cannot be in the future. Leave blank to use the import date and time.
Sales Channel: Enter box office for a sale taken by staff, or online. Leave blank for online sales. Write it in lower case, exactly as shown.
Buyer Email: Who bought the card. The buyer is matched to an existing patron by this email, or a patron is created.
Buyer First Name and Buyer Last Name: Used to match a box office buyer with no email, and to create a new patron.
Buyer Phone: Optional. Used when creating a new patron.
Payment Amount: What the whole order was paid. It must equal the total Price of the cards sharing the Order ID. Leave blank or 0 when there is no payment to record.
Recipient Email (required): Who holds the card. The recipient is matched to an existing patron by this email, or created as one.
Recipient First Name and Recipient Last Name: Required unless the Recipient Email already belongs to a patron with a name on file.
Recipient Phone: Optional. Used when creating a new patron.
Price (required): The value the card was originally sold for. It becomes the card’s starting value and must be greater than $0.99. A currency symbol and thousands separators are fine (i.e. $1,250.00).
Balance: The amount still redeemable today, for a card that has already been partly spent. Leave blank when the full Price is still available. It cannot be negative or more than the Price.
Original Code: The gift card code from your previous system, so patrons can redeem the card they already hold. Leave blank to issue a new ThunderTix code. A code already in use in ThunderTix, or repeated in the file, is rejected.
Balances and partly spent cards
Only the remaining balance carries over. If a $100 card has $35 left, enter 100.00 as the Price and 35.00 as the Balance. The redemptions the card already had stay in your previous system, and ThunderTix starts tracking activity from the import forward.
Payment
Every order in the file must be complete and fully paid. Do not include balance-due orders or reservations. The Payment Amount must equal the total Price of the cards that share its Order ID. If the two do not match, the file is rejected and the error names the order, since a missing row would import a half order. Imported orders are recorded as paid by voucher, since the money was already collected in your previous system.
How the import runs
The whole file is checked before a single card is created. Every problem is listed with the line it is on, so you can fix all of them in one pass and resubmit. Nothing is imported until the file is clean. There are no partial imports and no guessing which rows made it.
Once the import completes, the cards appear in your gift card reports under their original purchase dates, and every card is redeemable at checkout immediately.
Submitting your file
Save your file as a CSV (comma separated values) and submit it in a support request. Our team runs the import and confirms the results with you, including the number of cards created and their total value.
Manually processing Gift Cards from a Previous Ticketing System
If for any reason you need to manually enter gift card information from a past system, follow the steps below:
Create a gift certificate within ThunderTix if you don't already have one created (Revenue Builders Tab on your left hand side menu >> Edit).
Add any pertinent information into the gift certificate.
Since you will have existing gift certificate codes that will no longer be usable, we suggest you customize the email receipt to say something similar to the following: THIS IS YOUR NEW GIFT CERTIFICATE CODE. THE OLD CODE IS NO LONGER VALID.
You'll then want to process orders for each of the gift certificates that need to be imported over. To do so, head to Revenue Builders >> Gift Certificates >> "Sell" and fill out the fields, as appropriate.
When you get to the checkout page, you'll want to use the "Comp Order" option, as seen here:
This process will generate a new code for the patron. For each gift certificate processed, the patron will automatically receive an email with the new gift certificate information, including the new code. We will track all balances, so you'll be able to see how much is left on each gift certificate. The old code will no longer be used.
Once you have imported your gift certificates, please open a support request and include the list of gift certificates, including the names and order numbers. This will enable our team to provide the appropriate credit to your account. Please note the following:
We need the comprehensive spreadsheet of all gift cards and values up front
The credit is not provided until after all have been imported
There is only one credit given upon completion
8. When you have finished processing the existing gift certificates, you can adjust the email to be standard for all new gift certificates purchased (remove the text mentioned above in #3).
One more thing to note: the cost of gift certificates entered into ThunderTix is 2% each.
Should you have any questions on the overall functionality of gift certificates, please take a look at this discussion: How gift certificates work.
