Outstanding gift card liability and breakage

Issued gift cards are a real liability on your balance sheet — you took the buyer's money but haven't yet delivered the goods/services. The Liability tab summarizes the rolled-up exposure and the Wally tool surfaces it on demand.

Where it lives in Accounting:
• GL account 2250 — Gift Card Liability (current liability)
• Issuance: Cash 1010 Dr / 2250 Cr
• Redemption: 2250 Dr / 4800 Sales Revenue Cr
• Cancellation (refund): 2250 Dr / Cash 1010 Cr
• Cancellation (void / no refund): 2250 Dr / 4810 Gift Card Breakage Cr
• Expiration: same as cancel-no-refund (revenue recognized as breakage)

What "outstanding" means:
The total of all active gift cards' current balances, less any refunded portions. This number should match GL 2250's balance at any point in time. If they diverge, run "Verify audit chain" — there's a posting bug somewhere.

When to recognize breakage:
Most jurisdictions require gift cards to be honored for years (often 5+, sometimes indefinitely). Breakage policy is a state-by-state legal question. The platform default is to never auto-expire balances — you proactively cancel cards your accountant has determined are stale.

Asking Wally:
"How much is on issued gift cards?" → giftCard_outstandingLiability
"Which gift cards are over a year old with no redemption activity?" → triggers the same tool with a stale-card filter so you can cull them.

Reconciliation tip:
At month-end, run the Verify audit chain action. The chain validates that every Stripe charge for a gift card maps to an issuance JE, every redemption maps to a revenue JE, and the running 2250 balance matches the sum of every active card balance. Any mismatch lights up red on the close checklist.