Gift options at checkout: wrapping, card, gift receipt

Gift options at checkout decide during the Christmas season whether an order arrives the way the buyer meant it: wrapped, with a message and without an invoice in the box. The demand is documented. In a survey on the 2025 season, 33% of Black Friday and Cyber Week shoppers said they use the discount campaigns mainly to buy gifts (Bitkom). In a gift order, buyer and recipient are two different people: one pays and gets the invoice, the other gets the parcel. This article shows which four options belong in the checkout, what the law and accessibility require, what Shopware offers out of the box and where an extension in e-commerce comes in.

Gift orders: two people, one order

Gifts are no side issue in online retail. 42% of online shoppers bought vouchers and gifts online in the twelve months before the survey (Bitkom). Around Black Friday and Cyber Week, 69% of shoppers intended to use the deals online, while others planned to shop both online and in stores (Bitkom). These shoppers planned an average budget of €312 (Bitkom). The figures come from a survey by Bitkom Research in 2025.

For retail as a whole, the end of the year is the strongest time for revenue: German retail earns 18.5% of its annual revenue in the last two months of the year (HDE). For the 2025 Christmas season, the German Retail Federation expected online revenue of €22.2 billion (HDE), a nominal 3.3% more than the year before (HDE). According to a consumer survey by Handelsblatt Research Institut on behalf of the federation, each respondent intended to spend an average of €263 on gifts for Christmas 2025 (HDE), €34 less than in 2024 (HDE). For shops, this means every gift order that arrives without questions or rework counts.

That has consequences for the checkout. In a normal order, buyer, payer, invoice recipient and parcel recipient are the same person. In a gift order, the roles split, and each role needs different information:

• Buyer: pays, receives the order confirmation and the invoice, is the contracting party and holds the right of withdrawal.
• Recipient: gets the parcel, should not see the price and still needs a way to exchange the gift.
• Warehouse: needs to know which item is wrapped, which text goes on the card and which document goes in the box.
• Customer service: has to match questions from the recipient to an order without disclosing the buyer’s data.

Gift cards follow different rules: they are often sent digitally and redeemed later. Those processes are covered in the article on gift cards in a Shopware store. This article is about goods that are wrapped as a gift and sent to another person.

Four gift options and what each one triggers

The gift feature consists of four building blocks that have to be planned together. Each block starts in the checkout and ends somewhere else: in the price calculation, at the packing station, on the shipping label or in a document.

The order of steps matters. The gift options belong before the summary with the total price, so the buyer sees what the wrapping costs before placing the order. Offering the options only on the confirmation page after the purchase leaves the price outside the contract and means billing afterwards. It is just as important that each option can be deselected on its own: not everyone who enters a second delivery address is sending a gift.

Gift wrapping: a line item with price and tax

Paid gift wrapping is an additional service on top of the goods. The law draws a clear line here: a trader can only agree with a consumer on a payment beyond the agreed price for the main service expressly. In electronic commerce, such an agreement only becomes part of the contract if it is not brought about by a default setting (section 312a(3) BGB). A pre-ticked box “Gift wrap this order” with a surcharge is therefore ruled out.

Schließen der Unternehmer und der Verbraucher einen Vertrag im elektronischen Geschäftsverkehr, wird eine solche Vereinbarung nur Vertragsbestandteil, wenn der Unternehmer die Vereinbarung nicht durch eine Voreinstellung herbeiführt.

Section 312a(3), sentence 2, German Civil Code (BGB), original German wording

The price of the wrapping is part of the total price that the shop has to present clearly, comprehensibly and prominently immediately before the order (section 312j(2) BGB in conjunction with Article 246a section 1(1) sentence 1 no. 5 EGBGB). In practice, the wrapping appears as its own line in the summary, with the price including VAT, not as a note below the order button. More on fair defaults is in the article Avoid dark patterns.

Before the option goes live, five decisions have to be made:

• Per item or per order: per item is more precise when several gifts for different people share one parcel. Per order is easier to pack and to explain.
• Price and tax rate: the wrapping needs its own price and its own configurable tax rate. Which rate applies when it covers goods with different tax rates is something the shop clarifies with its tax advisor before the rule is set up.
• Excluded items: bulky goods, freight items or items shipped in the manufacturer’s original box are excluded by a rule. The option does not appear for them at all, instead of being canceled after the purchase.
• Material stock: paper, ribbon and cards run out. When the material is gone, the option disappears instead of selling a service the warehouse cannot provide.
• Shipping costs: gift wrapping changes weight and size. Shops that charge by weight include the material; the basics are covered in the article on shipping cost models.

Gift message: input, character counter and printing

The gift message is the most personal part of the order and also the most error-prone. It is typed in the checkout, often on a smartphone, and has to end up on a card at the packing station exactly as written. Three things decide whether that works: a clear length limit, a character set the printer can handle and a preview before submitting.

• Derive the character limit from the card: the limit follows from card size, font size and number of lines, not from a round number. The counter shows the remaining characters, and the field does not cut anything off silently.
• Clarify the character set: umlauts and special letters must come through. Not every card printer can set emojis; if the shop does not print them, it says so at the field instead of letting them vanish during printing.
• Decide on line breaks: either the field allows line breaks and the print template keeps them, or both treat the text as running text. An inconsistent mix is worse than either option.
• Show a preview: a small card preview next to the field shows how the text will be set and saves questions after the purchase.

For accessibility, the counter is a status message. Under WCAG 2.2, status messages must be marked up through role or properties so that assistive technologies can present them without receiving focus (W3C). A counter that only counts up visually does not meet this. The field also needs a label or instructions whenever input is required (W3C), which includes the note on the limit before the customer starts typing. How such checks work in a shop is described in the article on the accessibility audit for shops.

A gift message often contains names, occasions and sometimes very personal details about the recipient. It serves a single purpose: it goes on the card. The GDPR requires personal data to be limited to what is necessary for the purposes of processing and to be kept in identifiable form no longer than necessary for those purposes (Article 5(1) GDPR). For the shop, this means the gift message does not belong in newsletter exports, reports or customer profiles, and the field needs a deletion rule once the order is completed.

Out of the box, Shopware offers a comment field on the order completion page that can be enabled in the cart settings; the comment appears in the order in the customer account and in the administration (Shopware documentation). As a gift message it is of limited use. It is a free field for anything the customer wants to say: warehouse and print template cannot tell a greeting from a delivery instruction, and a card preview is not part of it.

Second delivery address: the parcel goes to someone else

The different delivery address is the part of the gift feature that Shopware provides out of the box. In the checkout registration form, including guest orders, the customer ticks the box labeled “Shipping and billing address do not match.” and enters the second address (Shopware source code). Shipping and delivery are among the criteria online shoppers most often rate as very important when choosing a shop, at 53% (Bitkom). For gifts, three details decide whether the delivery works.

• Name of the recipient: the label carries the recipient’s name, not the buyer’s. An address addition helps when the gift goes to a workplace or to neighbors.
• Pickup points: if the gift goes to a parcel locker, some carriers require the recipient’s customer number. How pickup points get into the checkout properly is described in the article Parcel shops and pickup lockers in checkout.
• Notifications: the shop’s shipping emails go to the buyer. If the shop passes the recipient’s email address or phone number to the carrier, the buyer should see beforehand what it is used for, and the transfer should be described in the privacy notice.

Legally, the second address shifts the start of the withdrawal period. For a consumer goods sale, it begins as soon as the consumer or a third party named by the consumer, other than the carrier, has received the goods (section 356(2) no. 1(a) BGB). If the shop delivers to the recipient, the recipient’s receipt counts. If the goods of one order arrive separately, receipt of the last item counts (section 356(2) no. 1(b) BGB). The delivery date from tracking therefore belongs on the order, so customer service can reconstruct the period later.

A different delivery address on its own is not yet an indication of fraud; during the Christmas season it is everyday business. Rules that block a different address across the board or switch it to prepayment hit exactly the gift buyers. A score based on several signals works better, as described in the article on fraud detection in online shops.

Receipt without prices: delivery note in the box, invoice to the buyer

In a store, the gift receipt is usually a sales slip without a price. In online retail, the delivery note takes on that role. The invoice, on the other hand, belongs to the buyer: it states the full name and full address of the recipient of the supply (section 14(4) UStG), and in a gift order that is the buyer as the contracting party. Only a small-amount invoice is not required to include this information (section 33 UStDV). If the invoice is in the parcel, the recipient sees the price and the buyer’s address at the same time.

Out of the box, Shopware provides templates for delivery note, invoice, credit note and cancellation invoice (Shopware documentation). Each template has a setting for whether prices appear: when the option “Display prices” is active, the document shows VAT, unit price and total price of the line items (Shopware documentation). The delivery note is addressed to the shipping address (Shopware source code). Custom templates can be assigned to one or more sales channels. A delivery note without prices for an entire sales channel is therefore quick to set up. A receipt that appears without prices only for gift orders and with prices for all others, however, is a matter of the template and the order data.

A gift receipt that does its job contains:

• order number and delivery date, so exchanges and withdrawals can be matched
• items and quantities, without unit price, total price or payment method
• the gift message, if no separate card is printed
• a note on how the recipient can start an exchange, for example through a form with the order number
• the buyer’s name only if they want to be named, and no other contact details

The buyer receives the invoice by email or in the customer account. Shopware can additionally show documents of a type in the “My Account” area once they have been sent to the customer (Shopware documentation). Shops that print invoices and delivery notes from their ERP system have to pass the gift flag all the way there. That applies to integrations such as JTL-Wawi as well as custom interfaces; before a version upgrade, it pays to check whether such additional fields arrive, see JTL-Wawi 2.x: check the shop integration.

Exchange and withdrawal when the recipient sends it back

Not every gift hits the mark. Distance contracts come with a right of withdrawal, and the period is 14 days (section 355(2) BGB). It belongs to the consumer who concluded the contract, meaning the buyer, and the withdrawal is made by the buyer’s declaration to the trader (section 355(1) BGB). The German consumer advice center reminds gift givers that the withdrawal period should not have expired by the Christmas holidays if a gift bought online is to go back (Verbraucherzentrale).

This leads to three tasks for the shop. First, the refund goes to the buyer: the trader has to use the same means of payment that the consumer used for the payment, unless something else has been expressly agreed and the consumer incurs no costs as a result (section 357(3) BGB). Second, a return that comes from the recipient has to be matched to the order without the recipient knowing the buyer’s data. Third, an exchange for other goods or a voucher for the recipient is a voluntary offer by the shop and should be described as such.

For withdrawal via the website, the electronic withdrawal function asks for the consumer’s name and details identifying the contract (section 356a(2) BGB). A gift receipt with an order number helps the buyer provide these details when the recipient says the gift should go back. How the function is implemented in Shopware is described in the article on the withdrawal button in Shopware.

Some shops voluntarily extend their return period for the Christmas season. That is a goodwill rule alongside the statutory right of withdrawal; terms and deadlines belong clearly on the website and on the gift receipt. How returns run efficiently overall is covered in the article on returns management.

What Shopware offers and where the extension comes in

Part of the gift feature is available out of the box, another part only comes with an extension of the checkout. The overview shows where the line runs.

Technically, we implement the gift options as an extension of the checkout: a selection before the summary, the wrapping as a separate cart line item with price and tax rate, gift message and gift flag as fields on the order and line item, plus a document template that decides per order whether prices appear. On top of that come the view for customer service in the administration and the handover to shipping and the ERP system. For orders the team takes by phone or email, the same options belong in the order entry, see Recording phone and email orders in the Shopware admin.

Involve warehouse, shipping and customer service

A gift option that works in the checkout and gets lost at the packing station does more harm than none at all. The flag has to be visible wherever someone handles the order.

1. Pick list: gift items are flagged, and the gift message appears in plain text next to them or as a separate printout.
2. Packing station: card printing, wrapping and the receipt without prices come together in a fixed order; the invoice stays out.
3. Shipping label: name and address of the recipient, and for pickup points, where required, the recipient’s customer number with the carrier.
4. Partial deliveries: if gift items ship separately, each parcel needs the matching receipt, and the card goes where the gift goes.
5. Customer service: the order view shows the gift flag, gift message and delivery status, so a question from the recipient can be answered without searching.

With connected shipping providers and fulfillment partners, the gift flag belongs in the data handover, otherwise it never reaches the external warehouse. How such handovers are set up is shown on our page on shipping integration.

Test before the Christmas season

Gift options are needed while the Christmas season is running, which is exactly when nobody wants to work on the checkout anymore. Testing therefore happens beforehand, with complete order paths instead of individual clicks:

• order with wrapping per item and a second delivery address, total price in the summary checked
• gift message with umlauts, special letters and a line break, printout from the real card printer compared
• character counter operated up to the limit with keyboard and screen reader
• delivery note of a gift order without prices, invoice received by email by the buyer
• delivery note of a normal order still as usual
• return with gift receipt matched to the right order, refund to the buyer’s means of payment
• handover to the ERP system and shipping provider with all gift fields

If you are preparing the days around Black Friday with a load test anyway, add the gift options to the test paths. What that looks like is described in the article on the virtual waiting room for Black Friday.

How we implement gift options

We build the gift options as an extension into existing Shopware stores and align them with range, warehouse and ERP system. The framework is our work as a Shopware agency; custom adjustments to checkout, documents and interfaces are developed by our programming team.

Which building blocks make sense depends on range and processes. A shop with one-off pieces needs different rules than a shop with sets and bulk orders. Product bundles and set articles are a typical case where wrapping is chosen per set instead of per item.