VoucherGrid vs Square, line by line.
Square is a fine point-of-sale. Its gift-card module is a different product entirely - a US retail add-on that doesn't know what a BAS is. Here's how the two stack up on the things Australian service businesses actually need.
| Feature | VoucherGrid | Square | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACCC three-year minimum expiry, enforced | Expiry checks built into the workflow. | No enforcement - short or no expiries pass through. | Issuing a voucher with under three years' expiry breaches Australian Consumer Law. |
| AASB 15 deferred-revenue treatment | Sales recorded as a liability; revenue recognised on redemption. | Reports gift-card sales as revenue at point of sale. | Recognising the sale as income early can leave your accountant unwinding it every period. |
| GST timing for face value vs non-face value vouchers | Each voucher classified at creation; GST applied at sale or redemption per ATO rules. | No distinction made. | Wrong GST timing means a wrong BAS whenever unredeemed balances are material. |
| Breakage recognition | Period-end breakage report - expired unredeemed value moved to income with the GST adjustment. | Not reported. | Breakage is income under AASB 15. Without a report, it never gets booked. |
| Online buying experience for off-premise gifters | Branded storefront, buyer-chosen design (up to three on Professional), scheduled delivery, mobile-ready digital voucher. | Basic online purchase page bolted onto the POS workflow. | Most gift voucher buyers will never visit your business - they need a polished gifting flow, not a POS form. |
| Partial-redemption tracking | Per-voucher running balance, redemption history, audit trail. | Basic - balance shown, history limited. | Service businesses often redeem against the same voucher across multiple visits. |
| Accounting connections | Xero and QuickBooks, with correct journals. | Xero only; the journals still need manual correction. | An integration that posts the wrong figures isn't an integration - it's data entry plus reconciliation. |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly subscription - no VoucherGrid commission on voucher sales. | Percentage of every gift-card sale, on top of payment fees. | Square's commission compounds with volume; VoucherGrid's costs stay predictable. |
| Physical gift-card stock | Digital only - email delivery and wallet passes later in 2026. | Physical card stock supported. | If counter-sold plastic cards are core to your retail floor, Square still wins on that one axis. |
ACCC expiry - enforced, not assumed.
The ACCC requires every gift voucher sold in Australia to carry a minimum three-year expiry from the date of sale. The rule is unambiguous - and the penalties for issuing non-compliant vouchers sit on the business, not the platform.
Square has no mechanism to enforce this. A staff member can issue a twelve-month voucher at the till and the system will accept it. There's no warning, no audit flag, no compliance dashboard. The obligation lands on whoever was at the counter that day.
VoucherGrid hard-blocks the issue. The minimum expiry is set by jurisdiction at the workspace level; vouchers shorter than the minimum can't be created at all. Every voucher carries its expiry and its compliance basis in the audit trail, ready for the inspector who never comes - until the day they do.
What that looks like day-to-day.
- The "expires on" field defaults to today + 3 years and refuses dates earlier than the minimum.
- Bulk imports validate every row before any voucher is created. One bad expiry rejects only that row, with a precise reason.
- The voucher PDF and storefront listing both show the expiry clearly - no fine-print surprises for the buyer.
AASB 15 - vouchers are a liability, not income.
Under AASB 15, a gift voucher sale is not revenue. It's a contract liability - the business owes a future supply equal to the unused balance. Revenue is recognised when the voucher is redeemed, or when it expires unredeemed (breakage).
Square reports gift-card sales as revenue at the moment of sale. Mechanically convenient; under Australian accounting standards, wrong. Your accountant has to unwind those entries every reporting period - moving the liability back, then re-recognising revenue as redemptions land. Either it's done manually (slow, error-prone) or it isn't done at all (worse).
VoucherGrid books each sale to a deferred-revenue account, tracks the unredeemed balance per voucher, and posts redemption journals to Xero or QuickBooks as they happen. The general ledger reflects the standard without anyone hand-carrying figures.
GST timing - face value vs. non-face value.
The ATO splits gift vouchers into two categories with different GST treatment. A face value voucher (a "$100 voucher") usually attracts GST at redemption, when the underlying supply is known. A non-face value voucher (a "60-minute massage" voucher) can attract GST at sale, because the supply is determined upfront.
Square doesn't make the distinction. Every gift card behaves identically - which means whichever way you've configured it, half your voucher inventory has the wrong GST timing. With material unredeemed balances, that flows straight into a wrong BAS.
VoucherGrid asks the question once, at product setup: is this a face value voucher or a non-face value voucher? The answer classifies every voucher of that type and applies the correct treatment for the life of the product. The BAS lines up because the data was right at creation, not patched at quarter-end.
Breakage - recognised, reconciled, GST-adjusted.
When a voucher expires unredeemed, AASB 15 says the remaining balance moves from liability to income - with a corresponding GST adjustment for face value vouchers where the GST was deferred to a redemption that never came.
Square doesn't report breakage. The expired vouchers sit in the ledger as a stale liability indefinitely, or get written off in a single annual lump that nobody can explain to an auditor.
VoucherGrid produces a breakage report each period: every voucher that expired in the window, its unredeemed value, and the GST adjustment to post. The journal pushes to your accounting platform so the close is clean.
When Square is the right tool.
None of this means Square is the wrong choice for everyone. If your gift cards are physical plastic, sold over the counter, redeemed same-day at the same till - and your business doesn't carry material unredeemed balances at year-end - Square covers the basics and integrates cleanly with the rest of its POS. The further you sit from that retail-counter pattern, the more the gaps cost.
The buyer who'll never visit your business.
Square's online gift-card page is an afterthought to the till. It works, in the sense that a buyer can complete a purchase. It doesn't try to be a gifting experience.
VoucherGrid's storefront is built for the buyer who lives three states away - the daughter in Brisbane sending a spa voucher to her mum in Ballarat, the corporate ops manager mailing wellness gifts to forty staff, the friend buying a birthday present at 11pm. On Professional plans, the buyer chooses one of up to three designs per product, writes a personal message, schedules delivery, and the recipient receives a properly-designed PDF in their inbox.
That's the majority of online voucher revenue, for most service businesses. A code in a transactional email isn't the same product.