Gifts vs referrals
Gifts let one person pay for another’s subscription; referrals reward existing customers with credit when someone they refer signs up. Both are growth levers that run on the same billing engine.Dashboard detail: Gifts & referrals.
Prerequisites
- A running Recurso instance with dashboard access — quickstart.
- Plans to gift, and a connected payment gateway — the gift buyer is charged.
- Existing customers to carry referral codes.
Step 1: Configure the referral reward
Decide the reward (e.g. account credit for the referrer, a discount for the referee) and enable referrals. Each customer gets a referral code to share.Step 2: Enable gifting
Turn on gift purchases so a buyer can pay for a plan on behalf of a recipient. The recipient redeems the gift to start their subscription; the buyer is charged, the recipient isn’t.Canceling an unredeemed gift
A purchased gift can be canceled any time before the recipient redeems it (POST /v1/gifts/{id}/cancel, or the Cancel action on the Gifts page). The
buyer is made whole automatically: if the purchase invoice was paid, the full
amount is issued back as an account credit; if it was still unpaid, the
invoice is voided. Redeemed gifts can’t be canceled — the recipient’s
subscription is never clawed back.
Step 3: Watch redemptions and rewards
Track referral sign-ups and the credit granted, and gift purchases and redemptions, from the dashboard — the reward posts as account credit that drains against the referrer’s future invoices.Verify your setup
1
A referral code exists
Each customer has a shareable referral code.
2
A referred signup grants the reward
A new customer using a code triggers the configured reward (credit/discount).
3
A gift redeems
A gifted plan starts the recipient’s subscription; the buyer was charged.
Next steps
- Gifts & referrals (dashboard)
- Set up credit notes (how the reward credit works)