Selling gift vouchers all year round at a UK venue

Two kinds of voucher

• An amount — £50 to spend on anything. Easy to buy, easy to give, and the recipient chooses.
• An experience — a rage room for two, an hour of axe throwing for four. A better present, because it is a thing to do rather than a sum of money, and it brings in exactly the booking you want.

Offer both. Price an experience voucher from what the visit really costs, so a voucher for a mix of adults and children is worth what that mix would pay.

Every month has an occasion

Christmas is the obvious one. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, graduations, leaving dos and birthdays all year round are the rest. Put the voucher on your booking page and your own website all year, not just in December, and give buyers a design that suits the occasion — a birthday voucher should not look like a Christmas one.

Make it easy to give

Most vouchers are bought late. Let the buyer have it sent straight to the person it is for, on the day they choose, or print it at home in a minute. For people who still want something to hand over, sell gift cards at your counter: blank cards with a printed code, worth nothing until they are sold at the till.

Say plainly how long it lasts

Decide how long a voucher lasts and say so clearly where it is sold and on the voucher itself. Be generous and be consistent: a voucher that expired a week before somebody tried to use it is the quickest way to turn a present into a complaint. Remind people before a voucher runs out, and they will usually come.

How VAT applies to a voucher depends on what it can be spent on, so ask your accountant. HMRC's information sheet on face-value vouchers explains the rules.

Keep the money still to be spent in view

Every voucher sold and not yet used is a visit you owe somebody. Know how much that adds up to, which vouchers are part-spent, and which are about to expire. It matters for your accounts, and it tells you how many visits are already paid for and still to come.