Bridge the Offline Gap: Earn Points by Submitting Receipts

Your best customer just spent $85 at your pop-up shop last Saturday. She bought two skincare sets and a limited-edition tote. But because she paid in person, her loyalty account shows nothing. No points. No progress toward her next tier. As far as your loyalty program is concerned, that purchase never happened.

This is the omnichannel gap that kills loyalty programs. Customers who shop both online and in-store — often your most valuable customers — get a fragmented experience. Half their activity is invisible. And invisible activity can't be rewarded.

Submit Receipt closes the gap

Joy's Submit Receipt program lets customers upload photos of their in-store or offline purchase receipts to earn loyalty rewards. It's beautifully simple: the customer takes a photo of their receipt, submits it through your loyalty widget or loyalty page, and your team reviews and approves it. Points (or discounts) are awarded. The offline purchase is now part of their loyalty story.

Customers can upload multiple images per submission — up to five photos in JPG, PNG, or JPEG format, with a 5MB limit per image. They can submit through the Joy widget (under "Ways to Earn") or directly on your loyalty page. After submission, the receipt sits in a "Pending" state until your team reviews it.

AI-powered verification (yes, really)

Here's where it gets interesting. Reviewing receipts manually can be tedious, especially at scale. Joy includes an Ask AI feature that analyzes submitted receipt images automatically. The AI extracts customer information (name, phone, email if visible), store details, order items and amounts, and provides a recommendation — approve or reject — with a confidence percentage.

Your team still makes the final call. But instead of squinting at a blurry receipt photo trying to determine if it's legitimate, they get a structured summary and a clear recommendation. It turns a five-minute review into a five-second decision.

You can configure the reward type — points, amount discounts, or percentage discounts — and even differentiate rewards by VIP tier. A Gold member might earn more points per receipt than a Silver member, adding another incentive to climb the tier ladder.

Built-in anti-cheat

Any program that involves user submissions needs fraud prevention. Joy's Submit Receipt includes configurable submission limits — you can cap how many receipts a customer can submit within a given time frame. Ten submissions per day, five per week, whatever makes sense for your business. This prevents abuse while keeping the program accessible for legitimate shoppers.

You can also integrate with Klaviyo to set up automated email notifications. Trigger emails when a receipt is submitted (confirmation), when it's approved (reward notification), or when it's rejected (with an explanation). These triggers are configured in Joy's integration settings and then built as Klaviyo flows — giving you full control over the messaging and timing.

What this unlocks

Submit Receipt transforms your loyalty program from online-only to truly omnichannel. If you run pop-up shops, farmers markets, trade shows, or brick-and-mortar locations alongside your Shopify store, your customers no longer have to choose which channel "counts." Every purchase counts.

This matters more than most merchants realize. Research consistently shows that omnichannel customers have 30% higher lifetime value than single-channel shoppers. When you recognize and reward their full purchasing behavior — not just the online slice — you deepen the relationship and increase the incentive to keep engaging across every touchpoint.

Submit Receipt is available on Advanced plans and above. Set it up at Earning Programs → Add New → Submit Receipt, or follow our step-by-step guide.

This is just the beginning

Omnichannel loyalty isn't a nice-to-have anymore — it's table stakes. Submit Receipt is our first step toward a loyalty platform that works wherever your customers shop. If they're buying from you, they should be earning from you. Period.