The Easy Card System

How it works…

Our new GiftTran™ version 6.0 software utilizes Microsoft’s .Net platform which makes it very flexible and easy to integrate into your existing point-of-sale system if you’d like. Or, it runs just fine unintegrated on your computer(s) because of our GiftTran™ Gateway utility technology. The little GiftTran™ Gateway button can be placed anywhere on your current point-of-sale screen. So, for example, when someone comes in to buy a gift card or have points added to their loyalty card, you would just ring up the sale and collect payment as you normally would in your point-of-sale system. Then just touch or click on the little button and our software inconspicuously comes up on a small portion of the screen so that you can still see the transaction amounts in your point-of-sale software. Cool stuff! (It’s kind of like that “picture in picture” function on your TV screen). You then put in the dollar/points amount, swipe the card, print a receipt if you like and the system then minimizes back down to the size of the little button… and you never left your point-of-sale software! This unique capability makes for a very fast transaction.

The software works using your existing card reader, or a bar code scanner. It’s intuitively easy to operate and was designed for speed and user friendliness. You'll get an operator's manual. But frankly, we doubt your users will ever need it! The software allows for both touch screen and keyboard input. “Minimum PC requirements”

Software packages and features…

To better serve your needs, GiftTran™ is sold in two different packages… “Basic” and “Enhanced”. Below is a detailed description of the features (in red) included in each package.

GiftTran™ "Basic" Software Package:

Gift Cards – Our flagship software application, rich in features, allows you to quickly and easily add/subtract money to and from a card, while tracking over 20 fields of data such as the original amount the card was issued for, the present value, the employee(s) who have swiped the card, the store no. locations of the card initialization and last transaction, number of times the card has been used, time/day stamp and value of all transactions, expiration date option, etc. You can void or replace a card and “black list” lost or stolen cards to prevent their use. If your point-of-sale system has not yet been integrated to the GiftTran™ system, you can print out a daily report by employee from your receipt printer to reconcile in seconds! Our database is ODBC compliant and will grow as your needs grow. Our powerful report generator allows you to build your own reports or print out any of our standard ones. Without having to pay a gift card company, you’ll have all the reports at your fingertips to know everything about your gift card business. And of course you can quickly query the database to look up a card holder by NAME or serial no. Since you own the system, there are no card transaction fees, processing fees or service fees of any kind. At the usual $.10 - $.35 transaction fee rates, YOU END UP SAVING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ANNUALLY!

Patron Refund/Comp Cards – Whenever you have to give a patron a refund, wouldn’t it be nice if you could put the amount of the refund on a card instead of just giving them cash back or crediting their credit card… and losing those dollars? Or maybe give them a card with some value on it as a way of saying to your customer that he/she is valuable and that you want them to come back. This feature allows you to do just that. You can put the value of a refund onto a card instead of giving it in cash or it can be used to put value onto a card as a “perk” or in-store promotion. These transactions are tracked separately (as opposed to just giving a customer a gift card with a value). Having it defined separately allows for improved store visibility.

Employee Comp cards – Ever wondered how much money you were losing because you didn’t have a good way of tracking the free or discounted meals (or merchandise) you give to your employees? Well, here’s your solution. This feature allows you to set up automatically recharging employee comp cards. If you have more than one store location where a particular employee is allowed comps, an employee's comps can be defined at a "Home Base" and published to our GiftTran™ Enterprise Server software to be distributed to other defined locations. A card serial number and an employee name is linked together. You can define the percentage of the overall bill that he/she is allowed to be comp’d or you can set the maximum dollar amount of the comp card and allow it to be recharged every "X" no. of days. So if you give your key employees $150 in free meals every pay period, they cannot redeem the card beyond that amount and the card can be recharged for the next pay period when they pick up their paycheck. You can even define the store locations available to an employee. GiftTran™ Enterprise will also reconcile the data back at the "Home Base" location. You can print out a report so you’ll know from now on what you’re giving away for free!

GiftTran™ "Enhanced" Software Package:

(All the features of “Basic”, plus):

Reloadable Cash Cards – New with version 6.0!!! We’ve had a lot of requests from our customers to add a feature to allow them to reload a patron’s card with more money… especially those loyal, repeat customers. Well, we listened. You can now add more money to your customer’s Cash Card just by clicking a button. So, they can continue using that card at your store(s) for as long as you would like… or until you’re tired of seeing them! If you’re a coffee shop, fast food restaurant or have a drive-thru, it’s a much faster way to complete a transaction without having to mess around with cash or credit cards… plus the card can double as a loyalty card and automatically accrue points or Cash-Back dollars too. Using our Patron Demographics feature, you can accumulate a large database of customer contact information and do special promotions to these customers all throughout the year!

Cash-Back/Rewards Cards - New with version 6.0!!! We’ve also had a lot of requests to add a feature that allows merchants to put reward dollars back onto the card to more effectively promote patron loyalty and increase a merchant’s bottom line. GiftTran™ now does all the work for you. Let’s say for every dollar a patron spends at Joe’s Jiffy Lube, Joe wants to give them 5% back. The system will automatically do the calculation and accumulate those Jiffy Lube “dollars” on the card to be eventually redeemed for Joe’s various redemption items at his predetermined dollar levels. Everything is tracked. And since you own your own data, you can run a report telling you who is close to their respective redemption level and you can send or e-mail those patrons a note telling them this and what they’re about to earn. It’s a great way to increase traffic into your stores!

Customer Loyalty Points – Since GiftTran™ eliminates the typical transaction swipe fees, you can be free to implement our popular loyalty program and not have to worry about how often you’re swiping your customers’ cards! In addition to our Cash Back feature, you can simultaneously add/subtract points from a patron’s card as well as money. Or you can have cards with just points only. It’s your choice. We have created a number of predefined rules engines to make it easy for you to add/subtract points to and from the card. Or you can set up your own points system using whatever multipliers and rules you like. For example, let’s say you want to encourage patrons to come in on a particularly slow day of the week or purchase certain items. You can reward them by giving them double the customer loyalty points. You determine what the point redemption levels and redemption items are. We do the rest for you. To add even greater flexibility, there’s even a way to enter points to a card independently. It’s much easier and a lot more affordable to keep customers than it is to find new ones. Use this powerful tool to your advantage!

Promotional Cards – Our hottest feature for finding new customers!!! How would you like a much more cost effective way to find new customers… maybe even double or triple your customer base over time? Here it is. Our new Promotional Card feature allows you to set up either an in-store promotion or a direct mail campaign quickly and easily in just a few minutes! Studies have shown that direct mail campaigns are significantly more effective when the mailer contains something more substantial, of higher perceived value and is visually more pleasing to the eye… like that of a well designed gift card. These findings proved to be correct when we beta tested this software with some of our restaurant locations. Mailers were sent out with cards in them telling the recipients to come by any participating location to find out what’s on their card… it could be worth anywhere from $5.00 to $50.00! (You can make up your own rules). The store managers were astounded by the direct response rate they received from the promotion. At one location, almost 25% of the cards were brought into the store to be read and redeemed!

Using the Promotional Card setup screen, sequences of card serial numbers can be defined as “promotional”. The setup screen allows you to determine how many cards you want for a particular promotional card batch and then lets you define the percentages for occurrences of those dollar values in that batch of serial numbers. You can name the promotion (e.g. “Summer Savings” Promotion) and have multiple promotions going on simultaneously. After setting up the rules, the promotion can be published to GiftTran™ Enterprise to be shared with other pre-chosen locations. A highlight of this “lottery card/ mystery card” promotion is that the cards can be sent out totally blank in mailings or give-away’s and until the card is swiped or scanned into the system, no one knows the actual promotional value assigned to the card. By design, you don't have to swipe each card to put the actual promotional value on it before you send it out! So if you’re creating 10 promotional cards or one million, it still takes only a few moments to set the promotion up and activate it in the system. All the promotional value is internal to GiftTran™ and the customer must come to a participating location to find out the promotional value. Since everything is tracked, you can print out a report showing you how many cards were redeemed and where. You can experiment with different kinds of promotions and use those that prove most effective!

Patron Demographics – Would you like to accumulate a growing database of customers that you could profitably market to? Heck, who wouldn’t? Well, remember with GiftTran™ you own your own data! Whenever you issue a card, GiftTran™ allows you a chance to enter customer data (name, address, e-mail, anniversary, birthday, etc.) into the system to associate with the card. Some of this data, like the card holder’s name, may even be used to help investigate a lost or stolen card. This customer data may be entered in at the time the card is issued or the customer can fill out a postcard and it can be entered later. Imagine the possibilities… You could send an e-mail or snail mail promotion to all of your customers on their birthday, anniversary or maybe just periodically throughout the year. It costs a whole lot less to keep a customer than it does to find a new one!

GiftTran™ “Enterprise” Software:

(For multi-site stores only)

Our GiftTran™ Enterprise software is the conduit that allows data to be shared and compiled between all of your locations while still maintaining our inexpensive, NO MONTHLY FEES OR TRANSACTION FEES technology model. Each of your store locations has our Enterprise software installed as part of its local GiftTran™ system. With a high-speed internet connection, your individual locations can communicate with the Enterprise central database. And you can easily maintain this central database yourself from any location. Enterprise collects data and also shares data with all of your store locations. It allows you to do corporate-wide reconciliations and share blacklisted lost/stolen card data, employee comp data, promotional card data, etc. with each of your locations. Centralized management reports can also be printed out at your headquarters, giving you a bird’s eye view of what’s going on with all of your locations in total. The result: All the advantages of the traditionally expensive central database solution which gift card companies provide, but at a fraction of the cost… and the best part is, you get to own and control your own data!

Enterprise Connector – This software for multi-site store owners enables a store location to continue processing card transactions even when their internet connection is down. So even if you’re not on a T1 line or other business-class internet connection, you don’t have to worry. When your internet connection goes down… and it will, you can keep on truckin’. Your card transactions will be held in a buffer so that when your connection does come back up, those buffered transactions will then finally reach your Enterprise central database computer. This way you and your customers won’t be at the mercy of the internet!

Reconciliation Feature – What if one of your patrons bought a gift card at one of your locations but spent it at another? Or what if some of your locations are owned by independent franchisees? No problemo. We take the headache out of figuring out what locations owe what to what locations! Without centrally located data, it is extremely difficult to do any kind of reconciliation. All manual accounting solutions are extremely inefficient and time consuming. With our GiftTran™ Enterprise central server software, all reconciliations (Gift Cards, Cash Cards, Promotional Cards, etc.) are processed every hour, day week or month. Each location or group of locations can receive a report that shows what they are to receive and/or send to each of the other locations. Also, the reconciled data is sent back to each location to update values as they pertain to each location's outstanding card values. Let Enterprise do the work. Your accounting department is already busy enough!

Centralized Reports Feature – Your headquarters will be able to monitor what’s going on corporate-wide by being able to print out reports that reflect the combined total of all of your locations. These reports are formatted similarly to the ones that you can print out at the local store level. As you know, knowledge is the key to making good management decisions. You’ll have all the information at your fingertips to know what’s going on from a corporate-wide standpoint with all of our different card applications and promotions.

Security:

Unlike paper gift certificate systems, the security measures built into our system is very tight. GiftTran™ has multiple levels of security designed into it so that you can restrict certain employees by allowing them, for example, to only be able to redeem cards. Higher security levels allow additional privileges like being able to issue and add value to cards and manager level security to allow for the changing of users and system settings, printing reports, etc. With our on-screen information and our customizable reports, you'll know which employee issued/redeemed what card, for how much, at which store location and on what date and time. In addition, we have other measures built into the system like our remote security enabler to protect you from employee or installer theft, measures to protect you from counterfeiters… and more. You can relax… GiftTran™ is on duty.