9. Increase Your Shopify Billing Spend Cap

Raise your Shopify app billing cap so Giftnote keeps processing gift orders during peak season instead of silently stopping.

Written By Giftnote Team

Last updated About 1 hour ago

After this guide, your Giftnote usage won't be interrupted by hitting the Shopify billing limit — so every gift order keeps processing, even during your busiest sales periods.

The Settings menu. Your plan and spend limit are under Subscription.

Before you start

  • You need Owner or Staff access to your Shopify admin with billing permissions.
  • This change applies to your Shopify billing settings, not to the Giftnote app itself. There's nothing to change inside Giftnote.

Why this matters

Giftnote's usage charges in Shopify have a spend cap. You can see your current limit as Spend limit in Settings → Subscription in the Giftnote app. Once your Giftnote usage fees reach that cap, Shopify stops Giftnote from processing gift orders entirely — no gift messages, no gift card deliveries, no recipient notifications. Your customers still see the gift message widget and still fill in their messages, but nothing gets delivered on the other end.

This typically hits high-volume stores during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, or the holiday gifting season — exactly when you can least afford it.

Giftnote emails your Primary Contact (Settings → Profile & Contacts) about billing issues such as the cap approaching. Make sure that contact is someone who can act on it.

Steps

  1. Open your Shopify admin. Go to [your-store].myshopify.com/admin and log in.
  2. Click Settings in the bottom-left corner.
  3. Click Billing. This opens your store's billing and subscription management page. If you don't see Billing in the Settings menu, your staff account doesn't have billing permissions. Ask the store owner to either update your permissions or complete these steps themselves.
  4. Click View all subscriptions. This shows every app subscription connected to your store.
  5. Find Giftnote in the list and click on it. If Giftnote doesn't appear in the list, the app may have been uninstalled or your subscription may not be active. Reinstall Giftnote from the Shopify App Store, choose a plan in the app, or chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app, or email support@giftnote.com.
  6. Click View spending limit (or Approve usage charges, depending on your Shopify version). This opens the spend cap control for Giftnote specifically.
  7. Enter a higher amount in the spending limit field. Replace the current value with a number that comfortably covers your expected peak usage. See the section below for how to estimate the right amount.
  8. Click Save. Shopify confirms the new spending limit immediately.

How to estimate the right spend cap

Core and Professional each include 20 credits. After that, Giftnote charges $1.00 per gift message and $1.00 per gift card. Multi Gift orders (Professional only) are billed as well, so a large corporate order adds to your usage too. Legacy and custom-plan rates are grandfathered. Your rates are listed on Settings → Subscription in the Giftnote app. To set the right cap:

  1. Find your highest-usage month. In the Giftnote app, set the date range on Home or Analytics to your busiest month in the past year and read the Spend figure.
  2. Multiply that number by 2–3× to account for peak season spikes.
  3. Enter that amount as your new cap.

Example: If your busiest month was 800 gift orders, set your cap to at least $2,000–$2,500 to cover a peak season surge comfortably.

It's better to set the cap higher than you think you'll need. There's no penalty for having a high cap. You're only charged for actual usage.

When to check your spend cap

Set a reminder to review your cap at least 8 weeks before each of these periods:

  • Black Friday / Cyber Monday (late November)
  • Christmas / Holiday season (December)
  • Valentine's Day (February)
  • Mother's Day (second Sunday in May in the US)
  • Any major sale, product launch or corporate gifting push where order volume will spike

You're done when...

Your Shopify billing page shows the updated spending limit next to the Giftnote subscription. The new cap takes effect immediately — there's no delay or approval process.

If your cap was already hit before you increased it, chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app so we can check any gift messages that didn't send.