tl;dr
Gift cards get sold and redeemed at different times, and Shopify records the revenue at redemption while German tax law requires you to recognize it at redemption too — but our default Shopify integration books it at the moment of purchase instead. That creates a mismatch you need to resolve with one setting, chosen based on which view you care about:
Goal | What to do |
Marketing view — see all revenue generated, including gift card sales, for a true top-line picture | Leave gift cards flowing in normally, and set Transaction Costs to 100% for the gift card product |
Financial/tax-accurate view — match what your tax advisor and auditors expect | Exclude the gift card item via Datasource Customizations, and leave transaction costs alone |
Why this happens
When a customer buys a gift card in your Shopify store, we record that as revenue on the day of purchase — it shows up in Gross Revenue with no tax applied, because German VAT rules treat (multi-purpose) gift vouchers as untaxed at the point of sale; tax only becomes due once the voucher is redeemed against actual goods.
Shopify, by contrast, only recognizes that revenue on the day the gift card is redeemed. And because redemption isn't a discount code — it's a payment method — it won't show up as a Discount Code Value reduction either.
The result: our default view books the revenue earlier than Shopify (and earlier than your tax treatment), and if you don't correct for it, that revenue effectively gets counted twice — once when the gift card is sold, and again when the product it's used on is sold.
Option 1: Marketing view (recommended for most stores)
If you want to see the full revenue your store generates — including gift card sales as they happen — leave gift cards flowing into your reports as normal orders, and:
Go to Store Configurator → Data Sources → your Shopify datasource
Find the Gift Card product in your cost configuration
Set its Transaction Costs to 100%
This neutralizes the gift card's contribution at the CM2 level (Transaction Costs sit between CM1 and CM2), so it doesn't distort your margins, while Gross Revenue and GMV still reflect the full sale. This is the right lens if you're judging marketing performance and want visibility into everything your channels are driving.
Option 2: Financial / tax-accurate view
If you need your numbers to match what your tax advisor or auditors expect — i.e., revenue recognized only at redemption — exclude gift cards from revenue entirely at the point of sale, and let the redemption show up naturally as revenue on the products it's used against:
Go to Store Configurator → Data Sources → your Shopify datasource → Customizations
Add a new Exclude Items customization
Filter for your gift card product/SKU
Do not set Transaction Costs for the gift card product — leave that alone, since the item no longer flows into revenue at all
With this setup, buying a gift card generates no revenue in Klar. When it's later redeemed against a real order, that order's line items are recognized as revenue at that point — which is exactly when tax becomes due.
Which one should I use?
You can only run one of these at a time per datasource — they're mutually exclusive settings on the same gift card product. Pick based on who's looking at the report:
Marketing/growth teams typically want Option 1 — full revenue visibility, no gaps in trend lines.
Finance teams and anything going to auditors typically want Option 2 — revenue timing that matches your tax filings.
If both teams need their own view, consider whether a duplicated datasource or store view makes sense so each side gets the setting it needs.