Glossary & Concepts

A quick primer on some of the terms and concepts part of the Gift Local ecosystem and referenced in the documentation that follows.

Term	Meaning
Account	An Account is the highest level organizational unit in Gift Local. It represents the legal entity that has a relationship with Gift Local and is the parent container for all Locations and Users. An Account is also sometimes referred to as a Merchant Account or just Merchant - as most commonly - Accounts are held by businesses that sell goods or services to consumers and that use our Gift Card or Promotional services i.e. they are merchants.
Location	Represents an actual physical place of business where Gift Cards can be redeemed for goods and services. A Location is under an Account - which can have 1 or more Locations. Internally, we store Locations in an Organization table where a Location is one type of Organization. This is notable because in our APIs, you'll see references to `organizationID`s. It should be understood that this is the Location's internal identifier. For an online only business - while the naming is a bit misleading - a Location can still be used to hold information for a digital property or website.
Gifting Program	A Gifting Program (or just Program) is how Gift Local bundles its product offerings and features. Each Gifting Program aims to help businesses solve specific goals - like customer acquisition, customer retention, revenue generation, etc. Locations participate in Gifting Programs at specific Subscription levels - meaning that merchants have flexibility to use only the features most applicable to each of the individual business units. This is relevant because many of our APIs either require or return a `programID` - so understanding what this is referring will be useful.
Gifting Program Subscription	A Gifting Program Subscription (or just Subscription) bundles a specific subset of a Program's features at a specific subscription price. i.e. it defines what specific functional a Location has access to when they participate in a Program. Subscriptions are not generally something an integrator needs to be concerned with other than in circumstances where they are responsible for setting up a merchant's account on their behalf.
Gifting Program Participation	A Gifting Program Participation (or just Program Participation) is the relationship record we use to relate a Location to a Program at a specific Subscription level. Program Participations are not generally something an integrator needs to be concerned with other than in circumstances where they are responsible for setting up a merchant's account on their behalf.
Storefront	Conceptually, a Storefront (or sometimes referred to just as Store) is a place where Gift Cards are sold to consumers. Most commonly in Gift Local, the term Storefront refers to a webpage hosted by Gift Local with a specific URL on https://shop.giftlocal.com. Storefronts can sell Gift Cards good at a single Location or many. There is also the concept of an External Storefront - which is a site outside of Gift Local that sells Gift Cards and uses Gift Local's API for fulfillment and delivery. A Storefront record is still created in this instance for tracking the sale activity - but the hosted URL version is not used.
Gift / Voucher	The terms Gift, Gift Card, and Voucher are often used interchangeably but all refer to the same stored value instrument that can be redeemed for goods and services. It has a sender and a recipient - which can be the same person or different people (or the sender can be a business in the case of promotional gifting) and a value (which can be monetary or item-based). For promotional gifting, it may carry other restrictive terms. It also has a Design which includes branding and a theme for varying its presentation by business. On a more technical note - our internal table is Voucher (so you will see `voucher` and `voucherID` referenced in our APIs). From a purely conceptually standpoint we used Voucher because it is more general term and in the case of promotional gifting - the instrument operates more like an Offer or Coupon than a traditional Gift Card. "Gift Cards" are most often thought to be the consumer-to-consumer stored value instrument - but in our system - all terms are used synonymously.