7. Gift Card Showing as "Invalid" in Giftnote

Diagnose and fix invalid gift cards caused by inventory tracking, product misconfiguration, or customers bypassing the gift card widget, starting from the Gift Cards → Products page.

Written By Giftnote Team

Last updated About 1 hour ago

If your gift cards are showing as "Invalid" or with a Health warning in the Giftnote app despite customers purchasing them, you're not alone. This is almost always caused by one of three things — and all of them are fixable.

A gift card in Giftnote, showing its status, balance and notifications.

Check the gift card Products page first

Open the Giftnote app and go to Settings → Gift Cards → Products. It lists every gift card product linked to Giftnote with its vendor and status. Inactive products will not process new gift cards correctly. A banner counts products with configuration issues, and Open in Shopify takes you straight to the product to fix it. Select Refresh after you save a fix.

On the Gift Cards list, the HEALTH column shows OK or a count of warnings for each card.

Most common causes

  1. Inventory tracking is enabled on the gift card product — this is the #1 cause. Shopify invalidates gift card codes when inventory is tracked.
  2. The gift card product is misconfigured — the product isn't configured as a gift card product in Giftnote, or it was created from an existing product instead of from scratch.
  3. The customer didn't interact with the Giftnote widget — they added the gift card to their cart directly from the product page without filling in recipient details, so no Giftnote gift card was triggered.

Inventory tracking is enabled on the gift card product

This is the most common cause. When inventory tracking is turned on for a gift card product, Shopify's gift card API creates codes that become invalid immediately.

  1. Go to your Shopify admin and click Products.
  2. Open your Giftnote gift card product.
  3. Scroll to the Inventory section and confirm Track quantity is unchecked.
  4. Check every variant individually. Click into each gift card denomination (for example $25, $50, $100) and confirm Track quantity is unchecked on each one. Variant settings do not inherit from the parent product.
  5. Click Save.

After fixing: New gift card purchases will generate valid codes going forward. However, codes that were already issued while inventory tracking was enabled may remain invalid. Chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app, with your store URL and the affected order numbers — we can re-issue those gift card codes from the backend.

The gift card product is misconfigured

Giftnote uses the gift card products configured under Settings → Gift Cards → Products. If the product isn't configured there — or if it was created by duplicating an existing product — gift cards will fail silently.

  1. Open your gift card product in Shopify admin.
  2. Confirm it's the product Giftnote is configured to use. It should be listed on Settings → Gift Cards → Products in the Giftnote app. You don't need to set a particular Vendor value.
  3. Check This is a physical product is unchecked in the Shipping section.
  4. Check the Theme template (bottom-right of the product page) is set to gift-card.
  5. Click Save, then select Refresh on Settings → Gift Cards → Products and confirm the product shows Active.

If the product was duplicated or converted from another product: The cleanest fix is to create a brand new gift card product from scratch following the gift card setup guide, then archive the old one. Duplicated products can carry hidden settings that cause intermittent failures.

If the product shows "Shopify gift card — not supported": it was created with Shopify's own gift card product type. Shopify's native gift card products can't be turned into Giftnote gift cards — create a new regular product instead.

The customer didn't use the Giftnote widget

When a customer adds the gift card product to their cart directly — without filling in recipient details through the Giftnote widget — no Giftnote gift card is triggered. The order goes through Shopify as a normal purchase, and Giftnote has no recipient to deliver to.

This typically happens when:

  • The gift card product page doesn't have the Giftnote gift card widget placed on it
  • The customer bypasses the widget by adding to cart through a collection page or quick-add button

To prevent this going forward:

  1. Confirm the Giftnote gift card widget is on your gift card product page. In the Giftnote app, Settings → Overview → Storefront widgets shows whether the Gift Card Message app block is added to your published theme. To place it, go to Online Store → Themes → Customize, navigate to your gift card product template, and add the block.
  2. Use the gift card block, not the gift message block. The Gift Card Message block is different from the Gift Order Message block. Make sure the gift card one is placed on the gift card product page.
  3. Consider removing the standard Add to Cart button from the gift card product page template. This forces customers to go through the Giftnote widget flow, ensuring a recipient is always captured. Your theme developer can help with this. On a paid plan (Core or Professional), you can also ask us to handle it: chat with us or email support@giftnote.com, and we'll send a Shopify collaborator request.

For orders already affected for this reason: These orders went to the purchaser as a standard Shopify transaction. The customer received their own order confirmation with the gift card code. No action is needed unless the customer contacts you asking to send the card to someone else — in that case, chat with us and we can manually re-issue the code to the intended recipient.

Still not working?

  • Check whether you have more than one gift card product active. Settings → Gift Cards → Products lists them all, or search Products in Shopify admin. Only one Giftnote gift card product should be published at a time. Archive any duplicates.
  • Verify the Giftnote app embed is toggled on. Settings → Overview → Storefront widgets shows the Giftnote Control Panel app embed as Active or not. You can also check Online Store → Themes → Customize → App embeds. If it was toggled off (for example, after publishing a new theme), gift card processing stops. The Storefront widgets card only reflects your published theme.
  • Check your Shopify billing spend cap. Go to Settings → Billing → View all subscriptions → Giftnote → View spending limit in Shopify admin. If your app spending has hit the cap, Giftnote stops processing entirely. Increase the limit and any queued gift cards will resume. Your current limit also shows on Settings → Subscription in the Giftnote app.
  • Chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app — include your store URL, the affected order numbers, and a screenshot of your gift card product's Inventory settings and of Settings → Gift Cards → Products so we can help faster.