Balance check

The Balance check page lets you look up any gift card's balance directly from the Cardigan admin, without needing to use a customer-facing form.

It's intended for your support team: when a customer calls about a card, this is the fastest way to see what your provider actually says about it.

Checking a card

Enter the card number and PIN, choose which profile to check against, and run the lookup.

The result shows the card's balance and, where your provider returns one, its expiry date. If the lookup fails, the reason reported by your provider is shown instead - an unrecognised number, an incorrect PIN, or a card that's inactive or expired.

Choosing a profile

The lookup defaults to your default profile, which is what your customers are using, so in most cases you can leave it alone.

Being able to choose matters in two situations:

• You're setting up or testing. Check a card against a staging profile without touching your live configuration.
• Your store uses multiple profiles. A card issued against one provider account won't be found by another, so if a customer's card isn't turning up, checking against the right profile is the first thing to try.

Balance checks from a profile

The same lookup is available from each profile's detail page, which is the more direct route when you're specifically testing whether a profile is configured correctly.

What this doesn't do

A balance check is read-only. It queries your provider and reports what came back - it doesn't place a hold, redeem anything, or alter the card in any way.

If you need to find the Cardigan record behind a card rather than just its balance, use the card records instead.