Selling gift cards, returns, tax invoices, compound tax, WhatsApp, Meta and TikTok: what Brainerce does not support

Most help articles tell you how to do something. This one tells you what you cannot do, so you find out now rather than halfway through building your store.

Everything below is a genuine gap, not a setting you haven't found yet. If one of these blocks you, email [email protected], because knowing who needs what is how it gets prioritised.

Customers cannot buy a gift card on your website

Gift cards themselves are supported. Brainerce issues a code, tracks a balance, records every movement, shows you what you owe, and lets a customer redeem one at checkout. See Gift cards.

What is missing is the sale. There is no gift-card product type, no "sell a gift card" setting, and no storefront page where a shopper picks an amount, pays, and gets a code by email. Listing a product called "Gift Card" mints nothing: you would still have to open the dashboard and issue a card by hand for every order.

You issue every gift card yourself, on Marketing → Gift cards, by typing an amount and a reason. That makes them a fit for goodwill after a bad delivery, a voucher you sold over the counter, staff credit or a prize. It is not yet a way to sell gift cards online.

Gift cards are not switched on for stores yet

Built, not yet released. There is no Gift cards entry in your sidebar today, so you cannot reach the screen from your dashboard, whatever the gift-card articles describe. It appears in the Marketing group, beside Coupons and Discount rules, when the rollout reaches your store.

Two things to know for when it does. Gift cards start switched off for every store and you turn them on yourself, because stored value carries accounting duties that are yours. And your website needs a place to type a code: Brainerce accepting a gift card at checkout and your storefront showing the box are two different things, and the box has to be built. See a feature you turned on is not showing on your website.

Customers cannot subscribe themselves: there is no subscription signup page

This is the real gap in recurring billing, and it is on the shopper's side. There is no subscribe button for products on your storefront, no plan-picker page and no self-serve subscription checkout a customer can complete on their own. The storefront surface for it is not built yet.

The billing itself does work. You start every schedule from the dashboard, under Sell → Standing orders, and only for a customer who already saved a card at a previous checkout, so a first-time visitor cannot put themselves on a subscription. That makes standing orders a fit for an arrangement you agree with a customer directly (a retainer, a repeat delivery) rather than for a self-serve subscription business. See Standing orders.

Monthly donations are the exception. A donor can start a monthly donation on your donation page themselves. See Monthly donations.

There is no subscription product type

Correct, and it is not changing. Product types are Simple and Variable only, and the product editor carries no billing frequency, no renewal setting and no recurring option of any kind.

That is a fact about the product form, not about the platform. Brainerce does rebill a customer on a schedule: the billing fields live on a separate standing order plan that points at a product, and every successful charge creates a real paid order for it. So do not model a subscription as a product; build it as a plan. See Standing orders.

Donations: no dashboard screen, and tax receipts only through a connected receipt app

Donations do work, so this is a half-entry rather than a missing feature. Your storefront can take one-off gifts and monthly donations on a donation page that does not go through the cart, with a free "other amount", funds, dedications in your own wording, an anonymous option and a "cover the processing fee" checkbox.

What is missing is everything around it:

• You cannot reach the Donations page from the sidebar at all yet. Donations are a module and it starts off, so the first step is switching it on under Settings → Modules. Even then the sidebar link stays hidden while donations are in limited rollout, so ask us to open it for your store. A second switch on the page itself is what actually opens donations to the public.
• Tax receipts only through a connected receipt app. Brainerce can issue a donation receipt (Israel, section 46) for each gift through an app that issues receipts, and that provider reports it to the Tax Authority (see Tax receipts for donations). Today that app is Cardcom. Without one connected it issues no receipt and reports nothing to any tax authority. It does not register your organisation with the Tax Authority, issues no receipt for test donations or while the receipt app is in test mode, and does not cover other countries' receipting schemes. Grow and Stripe cannot issue receipts themselves, but a gift paid through them can still get its receipt from the receipt app.
• A donor can update the card on a monthly donation only with Stripe. Donors can pause or stop one themselves from the personal link in their donation emails (see How donors manage their monthly donation). With Stripe they can also put a new card on it from that link (see How a donor updates the card on a monthly donation). With Grow, Cardcom or any other provider they cannot: a monthly donation whose card keeps failing is paused after 3 tries, and you resume it from the Donations page. You cannot change a donor's card from the dashboard with any provider.
• No separate bank account per fund, and no donor wall. Donation campaigns with a goal and a "₪45,000 of ₪60,000" progress bar do exist (see Donation campaigns), and so do funds that record where each gift goes (see Funds), but neither keeps money apart: every gift lands in your one payment provider account.

And unlike most optional features, donations do not hide themselves on your storefront while they are closed: a live donation page will collect a donor's details and then fail. See Donations.

Loyalty points, tiers and paid memberships

Loyalty is available. Set it up under Customers → Loyalty; the loyalty articles walk through it. A paid loyalty membership is also a different thing from a subscription: it charges a recurring fee for a points multiplier, not for a product you ship. To bill a customer on a schedule today, use Standing orders.

Returns and exchanges (RMA): what is supported and what is not

Supported. A signed-in customer asks to return goods (or you open the return for them), you approve or decline it under your return rules, record what arrived, and close it with a refund to the original payment (with an optional restocking fee) or an exchange. Every return has its own number and status. See Handle returns and exchanges.

Still not supported, each of these on purpose:

• Return shipping labels created from a return. The return has no label button and the customer is not sent a prepaid label. Buying a return label for an order exists separately, only with EasyPost, outside the return (see Shipments). You tell the customer where to send the goods in the instructions of your return rules.
• Store credit. A return refund goes back to the original payment. There is no store balance to refund into.
• Automatic replacement orders. An exchange moves no money and creates no order. You send the replacement as an ordinary order and settle any price difference yourself.
• Guest returns. Only a customer signed in to your storefront can ask. A guest writes to you and you open the return.
• Photos attached to a request.

What to do instead for those: a plain refund when no goods are coming back, and your own email or Inquiries for anything the return cannot carry.

Tax invoices

Not issued by Brainerce. No invoice document is created for an order, nothing is numbered, and the customer receives only the order-confirmation email.

What to do instead: connect a payment provider that issues one. Morning (Green Invoice), Takbull, Rivhit (iCredit) and Cardcom produce a tax document under your account with them, and all are in the app store today. Stripe, PayPal, Grow and Sola do not. With those you invoice separately, outside the platform. See Connect payment methods.

Do not plan around MAX or Tranzila. Both apps are built but not released: they do not appear in your app store and cannot be installed, so MAX is not an option for automatic invoicing. If you have seen either named in a screenshot or an older article, that is why you cannot find them.

Compound tax (a tax calculated on top of another tax)

Not supported. No rate is ever calculated on an amount that already includes another tax, and there is no setting that turns that on.

Two taxes on the same sale is a different thing, and that IS supported. Canada's GST 5% plus a province's PST or QST are two rates charged side by side on the pre-tax amount, and Brainerce handles them: mark both rates Charge together with other rates and give both the same Tax Class, or use the one-click Canada preset. The customer sees a line for each. What Brainerce will not do is charge the second tax on the GST-inclusive total.

What Brainerce will not do either is combine two rates that sit in different tax classes. Rates only combine with rates on the same Tax Class, and the dropdown's Standard (all products) option is not the same as a class you created and named "Standard". Split them across the two and only one tax is charged, even though both rates show the Stacked badge. See Only one of my two taxes is charged.

Compounding matters in very few places. Quebec, the classic case, stopped compounding QST on GST in 2013; Israel, the US, the EU and the UK never need it. If you genuinely owe a compounded tax, the only workaround is a single manually calculated combined rate that you own the arithmetic for. See Set up taxes.

Orders: what merging and editing cannot do

Brainerce can merge orders, within limits. You can combine 2 to 10 orders into one (see Merge orders). What it does not do:

• It cannot split an order into two. There is no split button. Create a second order by hand for what should be separate.
• It cannot merge orders of different customers, different sales channels or different currencies.
• It cannot merge two orders that have both been paid. A merge takes at most one paid order, because a refund goes back through a single payment. Refund or cancel one of them first.
• It cannot merge an order that shipped (even partly), has a refund, was paid with a gift card, or was imported from another platform.
• It moves no money and no stock. Nothing is charged or refunded, so a Balance due or Refund due on the merged order is yours to settle.
• The shipping and the promo code (voucher) or discounts of the other orders do not carry over. Only the order that stays keeps its own.
• It does not email the customer and it cannot be undone: the cancelled orders stay cancelled.

Stock counts (cycle counts)

Not available yet. There is no screen for recording a physical count and committing the difference. Correct a warehouse's number with Set quantity on the product's row in Inventory, Warehouses instead. Multiple warehouses, purchase orders and suppliers are available; see Warehouses, suppliers and purchase orders.

Reordering attribute options or modifier groups

Not supported. Both appear in the order they were created or attached. The grip icon next to an attribute option is decorative. To change the order, remove them and re-add in the order you want.

WhatsApp, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) ads, TikTok, Shopify and WooCommerce: not available yet

You cannot connect WhatsApp, Meta ads, TikTok or a Shopify or WooCommerce store inside Brainerce today. The WhatsApp, Meta and TikTok apps are built but have not been released to the app store, so there is nothing to install. Google is the only platform app in the store.

• Meta ads and catalogue: no Meta app to install, no Meta pixel ID box, no product sync to Meta. Run a Meta pixel through your own Google Tag Manager container (marketing tags).
• TikTok: no TikTok app, no TikTok Shop sync, no TikTok ad campaigns. The same Google Tag Manager route works for a TikTok pixel.
• WhatsApp: no WhatsApp app to install in the store today.
• Shopify and WooCommerce: there is no live sync in either direction and you cannot publish products to them. The Migration Tool makes a one-time, read-only copy of products and orders into Brainerce, plus registered customers when the source is WooCommerce.
• Google ads campaigns are the supported exception: see Google Ads campaigns.

One thing that is not on this list: features your website does not show

Everything above is a gap in Brainerce itself. There is a second, much more common reason a feature seems to be missing, and it is not a gap: Brainerce has it, and your website has not been built to display it.

Multi-currency prices, contact forms, newsletter signup, order bumps, bundle offers, saved cards, "Only 3 left" badges and the customer address book all work today and appear on your shop only once someone builds them in. If you are about to conclude Brainerce cannot do something, check that first. See a feature you turned on is not showing on your website.

What's next?

• Introduction to products covers what you can sell, and how to model it.
• Refund an order is the mechanism behind returns.
• A feature you turned on is not showing on your website covers features Brainerce genuinely has, that your website has not been built to display.