Are gift cards accounts receivables for accounting purposes?

Or are they gross revenue? Also how obligated are companies to find the owners if they aren't spend. I read that if they are unclaimed that they should be escheated to the gov, but Bestbuy always reports that millions are never spent. Loaded question I know...and this is not for school I was just curious actually.

They should be recorded as unearned revenue (liabilities) when you purchase a gift card. When it is used it should come out of liabilities and into income. I'm not sure what happens to the unused amounts. It probably depends on the laws of the state of incorporation.

I found this in the Best Buy financials

"We sell gift cards to our customers in our retail stores, through our Web sites, and through selected third parties. We do not charge administrative fees on unused gift cards and our gift cards do not have an expiration date. We recognize income from gift cards when: (i) the gift card is redeemed by the customer; or (ii) the likelihood of the gift card being redeemed by the customer is remote (鈥済ift card breakage鈥? and we determine that we do not have a legal obligation to remit the value of unredeemed gift cards to the relevant jurisdictions. We determine our gift card breakage rate based upon historical redemption patterns. Based on our historical information, the likelihood of a gift card remaining unredeemed can be determined 24 months after the gift card is issued. At that time, we recognize breakage income for those cards for which the likelihood of redemption is deemed remote and we do not have a legal obligation to remit the value of such unredeemed gift cards to the relevant jurisdictions."

They are listed twice on the company books. Once as a cash asset and once as a liabilty on the company books. The net effect is zero.