Gift Card Reconciliation

Executive Summary

Since a recent change in law prohibited gift cards from expiring or charging monthly fees, these cards can now be acquired in large quantities and stockpiled for personal use over a long-term. These cards are issued for a wide variety of products and services including restaurants, retail stores, airlines, Ebay purchases, and general credit purchases such as American Express. Keeping track of these cards is often difficult, time consuming and complicated especially where cards are only partially used with remaining balance less than the stated face value. The owner must also be careful that cards are not compromised by improper transactions.

Fortunately, many card issuers now allow for online verification of the card balances however checking these balances on a periodic basis for a large number of cards and comparing the balance to one’s record is very difficult.

The program I wrote will give the user a format to record card information and history including the current expected value of each card. It will then on demand look up the amount the vendor shows for the cards, compare these values to the expected value and highlight any discrepancies. Differences could then be investigated and reconciled.

Writeup: http://files.gove.net/shares/files/10w/bzwigard/Gift_Card_Writeup_Brad.docx

Worksheet: http://files.gove.net/shares/files/10w/bzwigard/Gift_Card_Workbook_Brad.xlsm