Gift voucher law for Irish hair salons: the five-year rule, balances and VAT

A gift voucher is the easiest sale an Irish 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 pair of socks, a €100 cut-and-colour voucher sells itself.

It is also the most regulated piece of paper at your reception desk. Since the Consumer Protection (Gift Vouchers) Act 2019 came into force on 2 December 2019, Irish law decides how long your vouchers last, what your terms may and may not say, and what happens to the leftover balance when a €100 voucher pays for an €85 appointment. Most of what ranks for "gift voucher law Ireland" is written for consumers wondering about their rights, or for big retailers with gift card platforms. Very little of it talks to a three-chair salon in Athlone selling forty vouchers before Christmas.

This guide covers what the Act actually requires of you as the seller, what is still your call, how VAT applies, and how to keep a voucher register that holds up five years later. 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 five-year rule: your voucher lasts five years whether you print it or not

The Consumer Protection (Gift Vouchers) Act 2019 inserted a dedicated gift voucher part into the Consumer Protection Act 2007, applying to every voucher contract entered into from 2 December 2019 (Consumer Protection (Gift Vouchers) Act 2019, section 2, checked in October 2026). A gift voucher is defined broadly: any voucher, coupon or instrument, paper or electronic, intended to be used as a substitute for money in paying for goods or services. A salon voucher is squarely covered, whether it is a printed card, a PDF emailed to the buyer or a code sold through your website.

What the Act requires:

• Five years minimum, or no expiry at all. The voucher must carry an expiry date at least five years from the date of sale, or none. You can be more generous; you cannot be less.
• A shorter printed expiry does not stick. If your voucher says "valid 12 months", the law deems it valid for five years, and the deemed term overrides what you printed. Selling it with the shorter term is an offence in itself, so overprint or reprint old stock rather than relying on that safety net.
• The expiry must be put in writing. On the voucher itself or on a durable medium supplied with it (paper or email): either the expiry date, or the purchase date plus the redemption period, or the words that there is no expiry. Failing to do so is a separate offence.
• There are real penalties. Offences under the Act carry the Consumer Protection Act 2007 penalties: on a first summary conviction, a fine of up to €3,000, and on conviction on indictment up to €60,000 (Consumer Protection Act 2007, section 79, checked in October 2026). The CCPC enforces, and its business guidance on gift vouchers is the plain-English version of the rules.

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

What the Act does not cover

The Act lists its own exclusions, and two of them matter to a salon:

• Genuine discounted deals with a short life. A voucher redeemable only for specified services at a discounted price, valid on a specified date or for a period of three months or less, is outside the Act. This is the Groupon-style carve-out: a "€120 colour package for €79, valid eight weeks" promotion can legally carry its short expiry, because the discount is real and the terms say so. The moment the same voucher is sold at face value, or runs longer than three months, the five-year rule applies.
• Loyalty and promotional rewards. A free blow-dry card earned through a loyalty scheme, or a promotional voucher tied to the purchase of specified services, is not a sold gift voucher. Neither is a credit note issued as a refund for returned goods.

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

Banned terms, the €1 balance rule, and the fine print still yours to write

The Act does not stop at expiry. Several terms are banned or rewritten by law, and the CCPC's consumer guidance tells your clients exactly what they are entitled to, so your terms should match it before a client quotes it at reception:

• You cannot require the voucher to be spent in one transaction. A term forcing the full value to be redeemed in a single visit is an offence.
• A balance of €1 or more survives. When a client redeems part of a voucher and €1 or more remains, that balance stays theirs. If your terms prevent the balance being redeemed in a later transaction, the law deems a term requiring you to reimburse it, in cash, by electronic transfer or by a new voucher, and a replacement voucher must carry at least the original expiry and the full remaining value. The simplest compliant policy for a salon: the balance simply stays on the voucher until it is used, noted in your register.
• You cannot cap the number of vouchers used in one transaction. Two €50 vouchers toward one balayage is the client's right.
• Named vouchers stay flexible. If your vouchers name the recipient, the named person can redeem despite small differences from their ID, and the name can be changed without a fee.
• Replacement vouchers keep the original expiry. If you replace a lost or stolen voucher, the replacement cannot expire earlier than the one it replaces.
• Vouchers are transferable. A person given or sold the voucher gets the full rights of the original buyer.

What remains genuinely yours to decide: whether to honour a voucher after its lawful expiry has passed (you are not obliged to, but many salons do, because the money was paid and the goodwill is cheap), whether to replace lost vouchers at all (nothing forces you to offer replacement; if you do, the expiry rule above applies, and a numbered register makes generosity cost nothing), and what the voucher looks and feels like. Decide each line once, print it on the voucher, and brief the team, so the answer does not depend on who is on reception that day.

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

Money vouchers or service vouchers: five years is a long time for a price list

Here is the question every salon owner eventually asks: a voucher sold this Christmas for "a full head of foils with Aoife" comes back in four years, after three price rises. Who absorbs the difference?

The Act does not answer it directly, but misleading commercial practices law does the heavy lifting: 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 complaint to the CCPC at worst. And under Irish law the voucher lives at least five years, which almost guarantees it outlives your current price list; our guide to hair salon prices in Ireland shows how much Irish prices have moved.

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

• A €100 voucher is always worth €100. If the cut and blow-dry is €55 today and €68 in four 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 €140, redeemed after three price reviews at €170, the €30 is yours to absorb, multiplied by every service voucher still in circulation.
• Round numbers sell. €50, €75, €100, €150 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 €55, most people give €60") 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 the buyer can see before paying. Disclosed upfront, it is your call; sprung at redemption, it is not.

VAT and the till: a voucher is a promise, not revenue

The €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 €100 is a liability, money the salon owes in haircuts. A salon that sells €4,000 of vouchers in December (a deliberately made-up figure) and spends it all before February has effectively borrowed from its own spring. Keep the outstanding voucher balance visible in your accounts, because under the five-year rule a voucher can resurface years later, and never count on unredeemed vouchers in advance.

VAT has its own voucher rules, in force for vouchers issued since 1 January 2019 (Revenue, VAT and vouchers, checked in October 2026). Revenue distinguishes two cases:

• A single-purpose voucher, where the place of supply and the VAT due are known when the voucher is issued, is taxed when you sell it. A voucher redeemable only for hairdressing services at your salon fits this description, since hairdressing carries one known rate.
• A multi-purpose voucher, anything else, is taxed when it is redeemed. A euro voucher redeemable against either your services or the retail shelf usually falls here, because hairdressing services and product sales carry different VAT rates in Ireland.

The classification decides which VAT period the sale lands in and at which rate, and with hairdressing VAT having changed twice in recent years, the difference is not academic for a voucher that can sit in a drawer for five years. This is a one-time conversation with your accountant: decide the treatment that matches what your vouchers can buy, write it down, and apply it to every voucher. The rates themselves, the registration threshold and the receipts are covered in our guide to VAT for hair salons in Ireland; if your salon is not VAT-registered, remember that a strong voucher season still counts toward the turnover that decides whether you must be.

Paper or digital: a numbered register beats both arguments

Plenty of salon platforms sold in Ireland 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, and the five-year rule makes it more important here than almost anywhere else: you are promising to honour a piece of paper half a decade from now.

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 five years later.

Three situations where that register earns its keep, because a five-year promise outlasts most software subscriptions and some owners:

• 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. Our guide to switching salon booking software in Ireland 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, and with five-year validity the pile is deeper in Ireland than almost anywhere. A clean numbered register makes it a five-minute line item in the negotiation; a shoebox of unnumbered cards makes it a discount on the price. Our guide to selling a hair salon in Ireland shows where the voucher liability lands in the deal.
• Closing for good. If the business fails, voucher holders are generally unsecured creditors and 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 January chairs

December is the one month Irish people actively look for gifts, and January is the month the chairs sit quietest. That combination is the entire strategic value of vouchers for a salon: cash taken in the Christmas rush, redeemed across the quiet weeks of January and February, when the diary needs the help. The voucher part of the December plan 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. The Irish Mother's Day in March is the other date people buy salon vouchers without being asked. Everything you print and decide for Christmas gets reused within three months.
• 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 for Irish hair salons.
• 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 colour appointment. Voucher bookings deserve the same confirmation and reminder as any booking. On ViteUneCoupe's Standard plan (from 29 € excl. VAT per month, no contract, billed in euros, so no exchange-rate surprises for an Irish salon), confirmation, reminder and thank-you emails go out automatically. By email only, to be clear: ViteUneCoupe does not send SMS, on any plan. The wider playbook is in our guide to reducing no-shows in an Irish 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 at least five years.

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

Frequently asked questions

How long must a gift voucher sold by an Irish hair salon last?

At least five years from the date of sale, or it must have no expiry at all, under the Consumer Protection (Gift Vouchers) Act 2019, for vouchers sold since 2 December 2019. A shorter printed expiry is overridden: the voucher is deemed valid for five years anyway, and selling it with the shorter term is an offence.

Does the five-year rule apply to discounted salon deals?

No, if the deal is genuine and short. A voucher redeemable only for specified services at a discounted price, valid on a specified date or for three months or less, is excluded from the Act. A voucher sold at face value, or a discounted deal running longer than three months, falls under the full five-year rule.

What happens to the balance left on a gift voucher after an appointment?

A remaining balance of €1 or more belongs to the client. You cannot require the full value to be spent in one transaction; if your terms prevent the balance being used in a later visit, the law requires you to reimburse it in cash, by electronic transfer or with a new voucher of the same value and at least the original expiry. The simplest policy is to leave the balance on the voucher and record it in your register.

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

It depends on what the voucher can buy. A voucher redeemable only for your hairdressing services is generally a single-purpose voucher, with VAT due when it is sold; a voucher also redeemable against retail products is generally multi-purpose, with VAT due on redemption, because services and products carry different rates. Agree the treatment with your accountant once and apply it to every voucher.

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

No. Once a lawful expiry of five years or more 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.

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.