Selling gift cards, returns, tax invoices, compound tax: what Brainerce does not support

Most help articles tell you how to do something. This one tells you what you cannot do, so you find out now rather than halfway through building your store.

Everything below is a genuine gap, not a setting you haven't found yet. If one of these blocks you, email [email protected], because knowing who needs what is how it gets prioritised.

Customers cannot buy a gift card on your website

Gift cards themselves are supported. Brainerce issues a code, tracks a balance, records every movement, shows you what you owe, and lets a customer redeem one at checkout. See Gift cards.

What is missing is the sale. There is no gift-card product type, no "sell a gift card" setting, and no storefront page where a shopper picks an amount, pays, and gets a code by email. Listing a product called "Gift Card" mints nothing: you would still have to open the dashboard and issue a card by hand for every order.

You issue every gift card yourself, on Marketing → Gift cards, by typing an amount and a reason. That makes them a fit for goodwill after a bad delivery, a voucher you sold over the counter, staff credit or a prize. It is not yet a way to sell gift cards online.

Gift cards are not switched on for stores yet

Built, not yet released. There is no Gift cards entry in your sidebar today, so you cannot reach the screen from your dashboard, whatever the gift-card articles describe. It appears in the Marketing group, beside Coupons and Discount rules, when the rollout reaches your store.

Two things to know for when it does. Gift cards start switched off for every store and you turn them on yourself, because stored value carries accounting duties that are yours. And your website needs a place to type a code: Brainerce accepting a gift card at checkout and your storefront showing the box are two different things, and the box has to be built. See a feature you turned on is not showing on your website.

Customers cannot subscribe themselves: there is no subscription signup page

This is the real gap in recurring billing, and it is on the shopper's side. There is no subscribe button on your storefront, no plan-picker page and no self-serve subscription checkout a customer can complete on their own. The storefront surface for it is not built yet.

The billing itself does work. You start every schedule from the dashboard, under Sell → Standing orders, and only for a customer who already saved a card at a previous checkout, so a first-time visitor cannot put themselves on a subscription. That makes standing orders a fit for an arrangement you agree with a customer directly (a retainer, a repeat delivery, a pledged monthly donation) rather than for a self-serve subscription business. See Standing orders.

There is no subscription product type

Correct, and it is not changing. Product types are Simple and Variable only, and the product editor carries no billing frequency, no renewal setting and no recurring option of any kind.

That is a fact about the product form, not about the platform. Brainerce does rebill a customer on a schedule: the billing fields live on a separate standing order plan that points at a product, and every successful charge creates a real paid order for it. So do not model a subscription as a product; build it as a plan. See Standing orders.

Donations: no dashboard screen, and no tax receipts

Donations do work, so this is a half-entry rather than a missing feature. Your storefront can take one-off gifts on a donation page that does not go through the cart, with a free "other amount", tributes, an anonymous option and a "cover the processing fee" checkbox.

What is missing is everything around it:

• You cannot reach the Donations page from the sidebar at all yet. Donations are a module and it starts off, so the first step is switching it on under Settings → Modules. Even then the sidebar link stays hidden while donations are in limited rollout, so ask us to open it for your store. A second switch on the page itself is what actually opens donations to the public.
• Brainerce issues no tax receipt and reports nothing to any tax authority. It records the amount, the donor, the date and the payment reference, and issuing the receipt stays with whatever your organisation already uses.
• A donor cannot set up a monthly gift themselves. Repeating donations exist as standing orders, which you start from the dashboard for a donor who already saved a card.
• No funds, campaigns or "₪45,000 of ₪60,000" goal meters, and no donor wall.

And unlike most optional features, donations do not hide themselves on your storefront while they are closed: a live donation page will collect a donor's details and then fail. See Donations.

Loyalty points, tiers and paid memberships

Built, not yet released. Loyalty is not switched on for stores yet, so there is no Loyalty entry in your sidebar today and you cannot set one up, whatever the loyalty articles describe. A paid loyalty membership is also a different thing from a subscription: it charges a recurring fee for a points multiplier, not for a product you ship. To bill a customer on a schedule today, use Standing orders.

A returns or RMA workflow

Not supported as a separate workflow. There is no return request for a customer to raise, no RMA number, and no returns queue for you to work through.

What to do instead: handle it as a refund. Open the order, choose By Items, pick what is coming back, and leave Restock inventory on so the stock goes back to sellable in the same action. That covers the money and the inventory; the conversation with the customer happens in Inquiries or your own inbox.

Tax invoices (חשבונית מס)

Not issued by Brainerce. No invoice document is created for an order, nothing is numbered, and the customer receives only the order-confirmation email.

What to do instead: connect a payment provider that issues one. Morning (Green Invoice) and Takbull both produce an automatic VAT invoice under your account with them, and both are in the app store today. Cardcom, Grow and Stripe do not. With those you invoice separately, outside the platform. See Connect payment methods.

Do not plan around MAX or PayPal. Both apps are built but not released: they do not appear in your app store and cannot be installed, so MAX is not an option for automatic invoicing and PayPal is not an option for taking payment. If you have seen either named in a screenshot or an older article, that is why you cannot find them.

Compound tax (a tax calculated on top of another tax)

Not supported. No rate is ever calculated on an amount that already includes another tax, and there is no setting that turns that on.

Two taxes on the same sale is a different thing, and that IS supported. Canada's GST 5% plus a province's PST or QST are two rates charged side by side on the pre-tax amount, and Brainerce handles them: mark both rates Charge together with other rates and give both the same Tax Class, or use the one-click Canada preset. The customer sees a line for each. What Brainerce will not do is charge the second tax on the GST-inclusive total.

What Brainerce will not do either is combine two rates that sit in different tax classes. Rates only combine with rates on the same Tax Class, and the dropdown's Standard (all products) option is not the same as a class you created and named "Standard". Split them across the two and only one tax is charged, even though both rates show the Stacked badge. See Only one of my two taxes is charged.

Compounding matters in very few places. Quebec, the classic case, stopped compounding QST on GST in 2013; Israel, the US, the EU and the UK never need it. If you genuinely owe a compounded tax, the only workaround is a single manually calculated combined rate that you own the arithmetic for. See Set up taxes.

Multiple warehouses, purchase orders and suppliers

Built, not yet released. These exist and are documented in Warehouses, suppliers and purchase orders, but they are not switched on for stores yet. Today, stock is one number per product or variant.

Reordering attribute options or modifier groups

Not supported. Both appear in the order they were created or attached. The grip icon next to an attribute option is decorative. To change the order, remove them and re-add in the order you want.

One thing that is not on this list: features your website does not show

Everything above is a gap in Brainerce itself. There is a second, much more common reason a feature seems to be missing, and it is not a gap: Brainerce has it, and your website has not been built to display it.

Multi-currency prices, contact forms, newsletter signup, order bumps, bundle offers, saved cards, "Only 3 left" badges and the customer address book all work today and appear on your shop only once someone builds them in. If you are about to conclude Brainerce cannot do something, check that first. See a feature you turned on is not showing on your website.

What's next?

• Introduction to products covers what you can sell, and how to model it.
• Refund an order is the mechanism behind returns.
• A feature you turned on is not showing on your website covers features Brainerce genuinely has, that your website has not been built to display.