Gift voucher rules for Australian hair salons: the ACL, the GST and the tracking

A gift voucher is the easiest sale an Australian hair salon makes all year. Someone walks in, pays full price, takes a nicely printed card and leaves without using a minute of chair time. In the run into Christmas, when half the country is hunting for a present that is not another candle, an A$100 cut-and-blow-wave voucher sells itself.

It is also the most misunderstood product at reception. A voucher is not revenue the day you sell it, it is a promise. It is covered by national consumer law with real penalties attached, it has GST timing rules of its own, and it quietly follows you around if you ever switch software or sell the salon. Most of the advice online is written for big retailers with gift card platforms; very little of it talks about a three-chair salon in Geelong selling forty vouchers before Christmas.

This guide covers what the Australian Consumer Law actually requires, what is merely your call, how the GST works, and how to keep a voucher log that holds up. One point to settle upfront, because this blog belongs to a booking software company: ViteUneCoupe is free online booking software for hair salons, and it does not sell or track gift vouchers. The booking link printed on your voucher brings the recipient into your chair; the voucher register stays yours. We would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise.

The national rule: three years minimum since 1 November 2019

Australia used to be a patchwork. NSW brought in its own three-year minimum from 31 March 2018 under the Fair Trading Act 1987 (NSW), South Australia followed, and everywhere else the printed expiry applied, however short. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Gift Cards) Act 2018 ended that by writing gift card rules into the Australian Consumer Law itself, in force since 1 November 2019 (sections 99A to 99C of the ACL, Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, checked in October 2026). The same rules now apply in every state and territory.

The ACCC's business guidance (accc.gov.au, checked in October 2026) spells out what that means for a salon:

• Three years is the floor, not the recommendation. A voucher must be redeemable for at least three years from the day it is sold. You can offer five years or no expiry at all; you cannot offer less.
• The expiry must be shown prominently. Print the expiry date itself, or the issue date plus the validity period so the holder can work it out. A voucher with no expiry must say so on the voucher: "no expiry" or words to that effect.
• A shorter printed expiry does not stick. If you sell a voucher from an old pre-printed stack that says "valid 12 months", the client still gets the statutory three years. Selling it is a breach anyway, so overprint, sticker or reprint the old stock rather than relying on that safety net.
• Form does not matter. Printed card, PDF emailed to the buyer, a code sold through your website: if it was sold and is redeemable for your services, the rules apply.
• There are real penalties. Supplying a gift card with less than three years, failing to display the expiry, or charging banned post-supply fees each carry a civil penalty of up to A$30,000 for a body corporate and A$6,000 for an individual, and the ACCC can issue infringement notices.

The rules are not retrospective: a voucher you sold in early 2019 keeps the expiry it was sold with. By 2026, though, essentially every voucher in circulation was sold under the national regime, so the practical rule is simple: every voucher that leaves your salon carries three years or more, with the expiry readable at the size you actually print.

What the three-year rule does not cover

The ACL carves out exemptions, and state consumer agencies list them the same way (Consumer Affairs Victoria: consumer.vic.gov.au; WA Consumer Protection: consumerprotection.wa.gov.au; NSW Government: nsw.gov.au, all checked in October 2026). The ones a salon might actually meet:

• Genuine discount vouchers. A voucher sold below the value of what it buys, say A$80 of services sold for A$60 in a promotion, is outside the three-year rule. The discount must be real, not cosmetic.
• Promotional giveaways. A "free blow-dry this week" card handed out at a local market, or a reward generated by a loyalty programme, is not a sold gift card and can carry a short validity.
• Donated vouchers. Vouchers given to the school fete or a charity raffle are typically exempt because they were not sold to a consumer.

Everything a salon sells at face value, which is the normal case, sits squarely inside the rules. If you run a discounted voucher promotion, print its specific terms on it clearly; a short expiry on what looks like an ordinary voucher is exactly the kind of thing that ends up in a one-star review with a photo attached.

Banned fees, and the fine print that is still yours to write

Since November 2019 you cannot charge post-supply fees that eat the voucher's value: activation fees, account-keeping fees, balance-enquiry fees, inactivity fees. Fees that are part of the original sale are fine, such as a card payment surcharge collected within the rules or a charge for replacing a lost card. For a salon printing its own vouchers, the practical translation is: the client redeems the full face value, full stop.

A surprising amount of the rest is not regulated and worth deciding before December rather than at the basin:

• Honouring expired vouchers. Once a lawfully set expiry has passed, you are not obliged to accept the voucher. Many salons honour them anyway, in full or in part, because the money was paid and the goodwill is cheap. Decide your line once and brief the team, so the answer does not depend on who is on reception that day.
• Lost vouchers. NSW's consumer guidance is blunt: treat a voucher like cash, a lost one is usually gone. But nothing stops you being generous, and if your vouchers are numbered and made out to a named recipient, generosity costs nothing: check the log, cancel the lost number, reissue it.
• Change from a voucher. If an A$100 voucher pays for an A$85 appointment, you do not have to hand over A$15 in cash. The standard practice, which NSW guidance confirms a business can insist on, is to leave the balance on the voucher or issue a credit. Print your rule on the voucher.
• Transferability. A voucher is a gift by definition; let whoever holds it use it unless you have a strong reason not to.

Whatever you decide, put it on the voucher itself: expiry, balance rule, replacement rule, and your booking details. Your terms must be accurate and not misleading, and the expiry must respect the three-year floor; within that, they are yours to set.

One more thing the voucher does not change: the client in the chair keeps every ACL consumer guarantee. A colour done against a voucher must be done with due care and skill exactly like a paid one, and if it goes wrong, the remedy is the same.

The service voucher trap: what happens when your prices rise

Here is the question every salon owner eventually asks: a voucher sold in 2026 for "a full head of foils with Chloe" comes back in three years, after two price rises. Who wears the difference?

The ACL does not answer it in so many words. What it does say is that you must not mislead, and a voucher that promises a named service with no conditions is most safely read as a promise to deliver that service, whatever it costs on the day it comes back. Asking the holder to top up the difference on a voucher that never mentioned the possibility is an argument at reception at best and a misleading-conduct complaint at worst.

The clean protection against your own future price list is to sell dollar amounts, not services:

• An A$100 voucher is always worth A$100. If the cut and blow-wave is A$95 today and A$115 in three years, the client tops up the gap and nobody argues.
• A "cut and colour" voucher is worth whatever that costs on redemption day. Sold at A$180, redeemed after two price reviews at A$210, the A$30 is yours to absorb, multiplied by every service voucher still in circulation. A three-year voucher will usually outlive at least one price rise; our guide to hair salon prices in Australia covers how and when to move the list.
• Round numbers sell. A$50, A$100, A$150, A$200 cover everything from a dry cut to a half head of foils. Suggest the amount that matches a real service ("a cut and finish here is A$95, most people give A$100") so the gift feels concrete without locking in a price.

If you insist on selling service vouchers, say for a signature package, print the condition explicitly: "redeemable for one [service]; if the listed price has increased at redemption, the difference is payable" is a term a client can see before buying. Disclosed upfront, it is your call; sprung at redemption, it is not.

Your advertised prices are GST-inclusive by law, so an A$100 voucher is simply A$100 off a GST-inclusive bill. No client-facing arithmetic needed, which brings us to the part that happens behind the scenes.

GST on vouchers: the timing is friendlier than you expect

The A$100 that lands in the till when you sell a voucher feels like income. For your books it is not, yet: you have taken money for a service you have not delivered, so until redemption that A$100 is a liability, money the salon owes in haircuts. A salon that sells A$5,000 of vouchers in December (a deliberately made-up figure) and spends it all by January has effectively borrowed from its own autumn.

GST follows the same logic. The ATO's rules on vouchers (ato.gov.au, GST and vouchers, checked in October 2026) distinguish two cases:

• A face value voucher, a stated dollar amount redeemable against a reasonable choice of your services, is not a taxable supply when sold. GST is accounted for when the voucher is redeemed, in the activity statement for that period. A December voucher season does not inflate your December BAS.
• A voucher for a specific service, with no stated dollar value, is treated as a normal sale: GST is accounted for when you sell the voucher. One more reason dollar-amount vouchers are the simpler product.

Two follow-on points, both genuinely conversations for your accountant or BAS agent. First, unredeemed vouchers: some vouchers never come back ("breakage", in retail speak), and when you eventually write an unredeemed face value voucher back to income, a GST increasing adjustment applies on the written-back amount. Do not spend breakage in advance; under the three-year floor a voucher can resurface years later. Second, the wider context: GST registration is compulsory once your turnover reaches A$75,000 in a 12-month period, and a strong voucher season counts toward it. Pick a treatment with your accountant once, write it down, and apply it to every voucher, rather than improvising in the BAS at 11 pm.

Paper or digital: a numbered log beats both arguments

Plenty of salon platforms sold in Australia include gift voucher sales and tracking, and if vouchers are a big slice of your revenue, that is a fair reason to shortlist them; check each vendor's own site for what is included at which price. Honesty requires repeating it here: ViteUneCoupe does not manage gift vouchers. There is no voucher sale, balance or redemption feature, on any plan. What it does is the other half of the job, free and with 0% commission: print your booking page link or QR code on every voucher, and the recipient picks her own slot at 9 pm on a Sunday and lands in your calendar and client database as a brand-new client. The register next to it stays a spreadsheet, and for a salon selling tens of vouchers a year, that is genuinely enough.

Whichever way you go, the register needs the same columns. Every voucher gets a sequential number, and the log records:

The paper vouchers themselves should be hard to improvise: numbered at print time, signed when sold, no blank stack sitting unsecured by the till. A voucher anyone could have filled in with a biro is a voucher you cannot verify three years later.

Vouchers outlive software contracts, and sometimes owners

A three-year promise outlasts most subscriptions, which creates three situations worth thinking through before they happen:

• Switching booking or salon software. If your current platform tracks your vouchers, export the full register before you cancel: numbers, balances, expiry dates. Outstanding vouchers do not expire because your subscription did, and reconstructing a balance from memory in front of a client is not a position you want to be in. Our guide to switching salon booking software in Australia covers the whole exit checklist; the voucher export belongs on it, right next to the client database.
• Selling or buying the salon. Outstanding vouchers are a liability of the business. WA Consumer Protection's guidance is that a buyer who takes the business as a going concern honours existing vouchers, and in practice the purchase price reflects the outstanding balance either way. A clean numbered register makes that a five-minute line item in the negotiation; a shoebox of unnumbered cards makes it a discount on the price. The same logic applies in reverse if you are buying a hair salon in Australia: ask for the voucher register before you sign.
• Closing for good. If the business fails, voucher holders are generally unsecured creditors, and they rarely see their money again. If you are winding down in an orderly way, stop selling vouchers early and honour the outstanding ones while you still can.

The Christmas playbook: December cash for the quiet months

December is the one month Australians actively look for gifts, and it is also the month before the whole country heads for the beach. That combination is the entire strategic value of vouchers for a salon: cash taken in the Christmas rush, redeemed in late January, February and March, when the chairs need the help. The full December plan, diary, roster and public holidays included, is in our guide to Christmas bookings for Australian hair salons; the voucher part of it looks like this:

• Visible from mid November. Vouchers at the till and in the window, a decent card and envelope rather than a till receipt, a line in your pre-Christmas email, and a one-sentence suggestion at checkout: "stuck on a present? a voucher from us takes ten seconds."
• Mother's Day is the second wave. May is the other month people buy salon vouchers without being asked. Everything you print and decide for Christmas gets reused.
• Every redemption is a warm introduction. A voucher is usually bought by a regular for someone who has never sat in your chair. Treat the redemption visit as an audition, and rebook her at the till before she leaves; the habit and the scripts are in our guide to client retention and rebooking.
• A voucher no-show still costs the slot. A client booking with a voucher has already paid, so she feels no financial pull toward showing up, yet her empty chair costs you exactly what any no-show costs, often on a long treat-end appointment. Voucher bookings deserve the same confirmation and reminder as any booking. On ViteUneCoupe's Standard plan (from 29 € excl. tax per month, no lock-in; the subscription is billed in euros, so the AUD amount on your statement moves with the exchange rate and your bank may add a foreign transaction fee), confirmation, reminder and thank-you emails go out automatically. By email only, to be clear: ViteUneCoupe does not send SMS. The wider playbook is in our guide to reducing no-shows in an Australian hair salon, and if you take deposits for long appointments, decide how a deposit interacts with a voucher in your cancellation policy before it comes up at reception. A deposit and a voucher are different animals: a deposit secures a booking and can be forfeited under a fair, disclosed policy; a voucher is prepaid value the client owns for three years.

Sell vouchers with enthusiasm, print the terms and the three-year expiry, keep the numbered register, and settle the GST treatment with your accountant once. Done that way, every voucher is December cash, a February client and a tidy line in a spreadsheet, instead of a promise you lost track of.

Frequently asked questions

What is the minimum expiry for a gift voucher sold by an Australian hair salon?

Three years from the date of sale, under the Australian Consumer Law, for vouchers sold since 1 November 2019. You can offer longer, or no expiry, but not shorter, and the expiry (or the words "no expiry") must be shown prominently on the voucher. Supplying a voucher with a shorter period carries a penalty of up to A$30,000 for a company.

Do I have to honour a gift voucher after it expires?

No. Once a lawfully set expiry has passed, you are not obliged to accept the voucher. Many salons honour expired vouchers anyway, in full or in part, because the money was paid and the goodwill is cheap. Decide your policy once and make sure the whole team gives the same answer.

Should my salon sell dollar-amount vouchers or service vouchers?

Dollar amounts, in almost every case. An A$100 voucher is worth A$100 whenever it comes back; a "cut and colour" voucher is a promise to deliver that service at whatever it costs up to three years later, so every price rise eats your margin on vouchers already in circulation. Dollar vouchers are also simpler for GST.

When does my salon account for GST on a gift voucher?

For a dollar-amount voucher redeemable against your services generally (a face value voucher), GST is accounted for when the voucher is redeemed, not when it is sold. A voucher for a specific named service is treated as a sale at the time you sell it. Unredeemed vouchers written back to income trigger a GST adjustment, so agree the treatment with your accountant once and apply it consistently.

Do I have to give cash change from a gift voucher?

No. If an A$100 voucher pays for an A$85 service, you can leave the A$15 as a balance on the voucher or issue a credit rather than handing over cash, as long as your terms say so. Print the balance rule on the voucher itself.

Does ViteUneCoupe sell or track gift vouchers?

No. ViteUneCoupe is free online booking software for hair salons, with unlimited bookings, 0% commission, a personalised booking page and a client database; it has no voucher sale or tracking feature on any plan. Keep your voucher register in a numbered spreadsheet alongside it, print your booking link on every voucher, and let the booking page turn voucher recipients into regulars.