Sauna gift cards: how to run a holiday program

By the Elara team. Laws, prices and product behavior last checked October 19, 2026.

Sell gift cards as dollar values that match your menu, never let paid value expire, and price any bonus offer as the discount it is. Then plan January before you sell December: many recipients are new bathers, and new bathers with weekday jobs want the same weekend sessions your regulars want. Until a card is used, its balance is money you owe, not money you earned.

What to sell: values that map to sessions

Name each card for what it buys at today's prices, and sell it as a dollar value. In this example, and throughout this guide, prices are hypothetical USD; replace them with your own menu.

Prefer a dollar value to a voucher for "one session". A session voucher promises a service, so when you raise prices in January you still owe the session at the old price. Its legal treatment is also less predictable. US federal rules generally do not cover a voucher for a specific service with no dollar amount, but they do cover one issued in a dollar amount, such as a spa treatment "up to $50" (Regulation E, comment 20(a)-3). In Quebec and Nova Scotia, even a specific-service card generally cannot expire (Quebec lets the seller charge a later price increase only if the card shows the original price and the date from which a surcharge may apply). Saskatchewan's rules cover cards "with a monetary value" and have no exception for a specific service, so whether they reach a session voucher with no dollar amount is unsettled. A dollar value reads the same everywhere: a $35 card buys $35 of whatever is on your menu when it is redeemed.

Name the card by what it covers today ("$70: sauna for two at current prices") rather than promising a fixed service. If your prices rise, the recipient tops up the difference at checkout.

In Elara, gift cards hold a dollar value, not sessions. The buyer picks a preset amount or types one in, and you set the presets in the website embed code, for example amount-options="35,70,160,180". A card pays for a booking, a credit pack, a pass or a membership. For a recurring membership it covers the first term only, and the member adds a payment method for renewals at the normal price. To give a month of sauna without starting a subscription, sell a $179 card toward a 30-day fixed-term plan, which grants unlimited access for 30 days and then stops. If the plan adds sales tax, online checkout will not take a gift card for it, so the recipient redeems the card at your front desk instead.

Price the bonus before you advertise it

A bonus such as "buy $100, get $20" is a discount you pay out in January. Bonus offers like it are a staple of spa and salon holiday guides. Priced for a hypothetical 200 cards:

In Elara, the website sells cards at face value only. The bonus card in the first row and the discounted card in the second are both issued by staff.

The bonus brings in $3,000 more cash than the straight discount, and it costs more per dollar redeemed if every bonus card is used. If a quarter of the bonus value is never used, you owe $23,000 of value for $20,000, a 13.0% discount. The bonus usually goes to the buyer, not the recipient. When the buyer is already a regular, part of it pays for visits they would have made anyway.

A cheaper bonus fits a sauna's cost structure: a $35 bonus card with each $100 card, valid only on weekday sessions. A bather who takes an otherwise empty weekday place costs you towels and laundry, about $4 a visit in the membership pricing example, not $35. Elara cannot restrict a card to weekdays, so the condition lives in your printed terms and staff enforce it at booking.

Before choosing, decide three things:

1. When the bonus is valid. A bonus card that works from the day it is issued lands on the same January Saturdays as the recipient cards. "Use from February 1" moves that load to a quieter month. Elara can give a card an end date but not a start date, so the start date lives in your printed offer terms and staff enforce it.
2. Whether it can expire. Federally, a card given through a loyalty, award or promotional program is generally outside the gift card expiry and fee rules if its front says it is promotional and shows the expiry date, and any fees are stated on or with it, with a toll-free number for fee information if there are fees (12 CFR 1005.20(a)(4) and (b)(3)). State exemptions are narrower: California, Minnesota, Texas and New York exempt promotional cards only when they are given without payment (New York: "issued for no consideration"; California also requires the expiry date in capital letters on the front), so a bonus given with a $100 purchase may not count as free. Illinois words its exemption differently, covering cards not paid for "in direct exchange or solely for" the card. The safe default is to treat bonus value like paid value, with no expiry, unless your lawyer says otherwise.
3. How you will issue it. Elara has no automatic "buy X, get Y" offer. Staff issue a bonus card from Memberships, Gift Cards, with its own amount, optional expiry date and optional custom code, one card at a time. At 200 cards that is real front desk work. Limiting the bonus to $150 cards and above cuts the count.

Expiry, fees and unclaimed balances: what the law allows

A card with no expiry date and no fees after the sale meets the expiry and fee rules in every row below. It does not settle two things that still differ by row: cashing out small balances on request, and unclaimed property. This is not legal, tax or accounting advice. Each row links the statute we read on October 19, 2026; check yours with a lawyer or accountant before you print terms on a card.

The US federal floor applies everywhere in the US. A gift card's funds cannot expire sooner than five years after it was sold or last loaded, and inactivity or service fees are allowed only after 12 months with no use, at most once a month, and only if disclosed on the card (12 CFR 1005.20; 15 U.S.C. 1693l-1). States can go further, and many do. In Canada, the provinces set the rules for store gift cards, and the territories have none of their own (Financial Consumer Agency of Canada).

United States: expiry and fees

Rules for cards sold for value by a single business, read on the official statute sites. Each state links to its gift card law.

Small balances: on request, pay cash for a remaining balance under $15 in California; under $5 in New York and Washington, and in Oregon after the card's first use; $5 or less in Colorado; under $2.50 in Texas, in person. In Massachusetts, the holder can take cash once 90% of a non-reloadable card is used, or at $5 or less on a reloadable one. Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan and Utah set no small-balance rule.

United States: unclaimed property

Each cell links to the state's unclaimed property law.

Oregon and Massachusetts are not listed: we found no gift card provision in Oregon's unclaimed property statute, and Massachusetts's says only that a card past a properly disclosed expiry date is not reportable. Ask the state treasurer's unclaimed property office.

Canada

Each province links to its gift card rules.

Ontario's rules are in O. Reg. 17/05, s. 25.1 to 25.5; the Consumer Protection Act, 2023 is not yet in force. British Columbia's sit in BPCPA Part 4.1, s. 56.1 to 56.5 and its regulation, Quebec's in CPA s. 187.1 to 187.5 and its regulation, which together require refunding a balance of $5 or less on request, Manitoba's in CPA s. 170 to 173 and M.R. 98/2007, and Saskatchewan's in Part VI (s. 47 to 53) of The Consumer Protection and Business Practices Act and Part IV of its regulations. New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island also have gift card rules, not covered here.

Unclaimed property is mainly a US issue for a single-location studio. Texas and Illinois exempt cards that never expire and charge no fees (Illinois also requires that the card cannot be cashed out), and California exempts cards with no expiry date. Texas lets a card expire, so there an expiry date can create a reporting duty you would otherwise not have; California, like Washington and Florida, generally does not let a sold card expire at all. Others make you report and remit unredeemed balances after five years even when the card never expires: New York always, and Colorado once your gift card sales exceed $200,000 a year. If you operate in a state not listed, its unclaimed property office publishes the holder rules.

In Elara, a card sold online has no expiry date, and there is no studio-wide expiry setting. Staff can set an expiry date when they issue a card, such as a promotional card. When a card expires, its status changes and its remaining balance stays on the record; an expired card cannot be reactivated, so if you decide to honor it, issue a new card for the balance. Elara never deducts a fee from a card's balance.

Plan the selling calendar around delivery

Gift card sales build through December. A consultant's planning guide for spas puts the strongest day at December 23 and says to be ready by US Thanksgiving (Spa Advisors). A workable calendar:

• Mid-November. Put the purchase page live and email your list with the values and any bonus terms.
• Black Friday to mid-December. Repeat the offer in your emails, on your booking page and at the front desk.
• December 18 to 24. Push the last-minute gift: the buyer can copy the code from the confirmation screen and hand it over on December 25.
• Early January. Email buyers a reminder to pass the code on, and tell recipients which sessions have room.

Elara sells digital cards only: the code arrives by email or on the confirmation screen. For buyers who want something to wrap, print the code on a branded card at the desk.

Corporate and bulk orders need a plan too. Staff issue cards one at a time and record the payment outside Elara, so quote and invoice bulk orders separately and budget the desk time.

Plan January before you sell December

Gift card cash arrives in December. The visits arrive later, and many come from people new to your studio. Plan for them to want the same weekend sessions your regulars want.

Turn outstanding value into visits. Take the 200 cards from the bonus example: $20,000 of recipient value plus $4,000 of bonus cards valid from February, or $24,000 owed. At a $35 session price, that is about 686 sessions. For this example only, assume 30% of the value is used in January and February: about 206 visits over 8.4 weeks, or about 24 a week, heavier in February once the bonus cards open. If half of those holders want Saturday morning, that is about 12 places a week.

Now compare it with the places you actually have. In the membership pricing example, an eight-place sauna runs four Saturday-morning sessions and keeps 32 places a month for drop-ins, gift card holders and operating slack: at most 8 per Saturday for non-members. Gift card holders would need about 12 of those 8 places every Saturday, before any regular drop-in customer books. The weekday sessions are what has room.

The 30% is an assumption, not a benchmark. We found no public redemption curve for sauna studios. Use your own: run the Gift Card Report, with all locations selected, for last December to get the balance outstanding on December 31, then for January and February to get the value redeemed, and divide the second by the first. Apply that rate to your whole December 31 balance, not only this season's holiday cards. If this is your first season, run the numbers at 30% and at 50% and plan sessions for the higher one. At 50%, the same program needs about 20 Saturday places a week.

Ways to fit the demand to the room, in rough order of cost:

• Tell recipients where the room is. The delivery email and your booking page can say which sessions usually have space. A first-time recipient has no habit yet, so this is the cheapest moment to steer them to a weekday.
• Add sessions where demand concentrates. An extra Saturday-afternoon or Sunday-evening session in January costs one more heat and one more staff shift; it is cheaper than turning away a first-time bather.
• Do not sell more than you can serve. If last season's January was already full, cap the holiday offer rather than discount it.

First visits also need onboarding. In Elara, the person booking signs your waiver before they can book, which keeps the paperwork out of the changing room. Guests added to that booking are not blocked at checkout; Elara emails new guests a link to sign, so check the second bather's waiver at the door. Everyone still needs your house rules: how long a round lasts, when to plunge, what to bring. Put them in the booking confirmation.

Count unredeemed value as money you owe

A gift card sale is cash with an obligation attached. The obligation shrinks as the card is used and ends one of three ways: redeemed, refunded, or never used.

An expiry date does not end the obligation by itself. Where the law lets a card expire, the balance follows the never-used path; in Elara an expired card keeps its balance on the record.

Follow one hypothetical $100 card through two visits. The recipient uses $35 on a first session, then spends $80: a $70 session for two plus a $10 robe and towel add-on, paying the remaining $65 from the gift card and $15 by credit card.

The two purchases total $115, funded by the original $100 and the later $15. Adding the $100 sale to both redemptions and calling $215 "cash received" overstates receipts by $100.

What the standards say, in brief:

• Revenue at redemption, not sale. Under US GAAP, a prepayment is a contract liability and becomes revenue when you deliver the service (ASC 606-10-55-46). IFRS 15 says the same in paragraphs B44 to B47 (IFRS Foundation). Canadian private businesses on ASPE have no specific gift card rule; accountants may look to IFRS 15.
• Breakage. If you can reliably expect some value never to be used, you recognize that share as revenue in proportion to the cards that are used. Otherwise you wait until use becomes remote (ASC 606-10-55-48). Deloitte's example works through the arithmetic.
• Unclaimed property comes first. Value you must remit to a state is never breakage revenue; it stays a liability until you pay it over (ASC 606-10-55-49).
• Bonus cards. For accounting, a bonus card is part of what the buyer paid $100 for. Under ASC 606 its value is usually allocated from the $100, weighted by how likely it is to be used, rather than booked as a separate $20 liability (Deloitte, example 11-6, an analogous case).
• Income tax. A US business on the accrual method can elect to defer gift card income at most to the following tax year, but only if it tracks when cards are sold and redeemed (26 U.S.C. 451(c); 26 CFR 1.451-8, one of whose examples is a hair salon that cannot defer because it does not track sale dates). Many small studios use the cash method and report the cash when received.
• Sales tax. In many states, tax applies when the card is redeemed for a taxable service, not when it is sold (Washington Department of Revenue, for example). In Canada, selling a gift certificate is not a supply for GST/HST; the tax applies on redemption (Excise Tax Act s. 181.2).

What Elara reports, and what it does not

Elara does not keep your books, and the liability on your balance sheet is a figure you and your accountant set. Elara gives you the inputs:

• The gift card list shows every card's code, recipient, initial value, current balance, status and expiry, filterable by status, so staff can answer "how much is left on this card?" at the desk.
• The Gift Card Report shows the value issued and redeemed in a date range, the balance customers can still spend on the range's last day across every card sold or issued by then, and, beside it, the unused value on cards that had expired by that date, with a status breakdown and a summary CSV. Its outstanding balance is a starting point, not your liability. It includes cards staff issued without payment, Elara has no separate type for a bonus or comp card, and expired value your state may still treat as owed sits beside it, not in it. Give promotional cards a recognizable custom code, such as BONUS-2026-001, and keep your own list so you can subtract them; do not subtract cards you issued for an in-person sale.
• Revenue counts gift card value when a card pays for a booking, a plan or a front desk sale, not when the card is sold; money taken for gift card sales shows as its own figure. A redeemed bonus or comp card counts in full, though nobody paid for it, and expired value never counts. Value staff take off a card by hand from its details never counts as revenue, so record what it paid for yourself.

Elara does not calculate breakage or remit unclaimed property. Give your accountant the card list, the Gift Card Report and your payment records, and agree how bonus cards are booked before the first one is used.

Test the purchase-to-booking flow before you announce it

Run one real purchase, one redemption and one refund at least a week before your first holiday email. In Elara the flow is:

1. Purchase. Add the gift card purchase widget to a page on your website. The buyer chooses an amount, enters their name and email and, optionally, the recipient's name and email and a message, then pays through your connected Stripe or Square account. Discount codes do not apply to gift card purchases.
2. Delivery. If the buyer entered a recipient email, Elara sends the code to the recipient as soon as payment completes, unless you have delayed or turned off the Gift card delivery email. A buyer cannot pick a delivery date. Buyers who want the card to arrive on December 25 should leave the recipient email blank and copy the code from the confirmation screen; the buyer's receipt does not repeat it.
3. Booking. The recipient applies the code at checkout. It can cover the whole booking or combine with another payment, and checkout shows the balance left afterward. One code per checkout. There is no self-serve balance check; staff can look up any card by code.
4. At the front desk. Point of sale accepts a gift card as payment, alone or split with cash or an external card. It does not sell gift cards. For an in-person sale, put the buyer through the online purchase on a tablet, or issue a card from Memberships and record the payment in your own books.
5. Refunds. A gift card purchase can be refunded only before any of it is used. Refunding a booking that a gift card paid for returns the gift-funded share to the card, even if the card was fully used; if the card has since been voided or has expired, or its own purchase was refunded, staff get an alert to resolve it.

If you are switching software before the season, outstanding cards come with you from Kenko: the import brings code, original value, balance, status, expiry and the purchaser, when they match an imported customer. Elara's Mindbody import does not bring gift cards, so reissue those balances by hand.

Start before the holiday rush

A holiday program is three decisions you can make this month: the values you sell, the bonus you can afford and the January sessions you will add. The fourth, how you account for the balance, is a conversation with your accountant before the first card sells.

Elara is priced per location, with every feature included. Ask for a quote early enough to test a purchase, a redemption and a refund before your first holiday email. When recipients start asking about memberships in February, use the membership pricing guide.