You set the budget, your employee picks the gift.
A card arrives in the post, or an email lands. On it is one personal code. Your employee types it in, picks a gift from the range you defined, and a few days later the parcel is at the door.
That is all there is to it. No app to install, no account to create, no balance to keep track of. One code, one choice, done.
The screens they see carry your logo and your message — we only appear in the service line at the bottom, for anyone who needs help.
A smiles is not a voucher and not a fixed gift. It is a personal code with which your employee chooses from a range you have defined, on the budget you set. You only pay for what is actually chosen.
For the person receiving it, that is three moments instead of one: the card in the post, making the choice, and unwrapping the parcel. Hence the name.
That is how simply it is built. You set the frame, the recipient chooses, we do the rest.
A standard budget or an amount of your own, a range that suits it, and a platform in your logo, colours and tone of voice. We set that up; you build nothing.
Through a code on a personalised card, letter or email. Within a choice period you set, with an automatic reminder for anyone who forgets.
Individually labelled at the office, or to each recipient’s home. Afterwards a report on what was chosen and what was not — and the latter we do not invoice.
“You actually create several little moments of happiness: the moment the voucher arrives, the moment you get to choose, and the moment the gift lands.”
Lieselot Hamerlinck
CEO, Pegasus Holding
The only tangible thing in the whole chain, and therefore the first thing you see. Three things come together: your message, the code that starts the choosing, and a front that already announces there is something to choose.
Anyone without a work email simply gets this card. Combining physical and digital within one campaign is possible too.
Logo, imagery and message are yours. We appear only in the service line at the bottom, for anyone who needs help.
This is where “the campaign site is yours” becomes visible. Your recipient sees your brand, and nothing else.
The breadth of the range is the message here: kitchenware, a barbecue set, a rucksack and bike lights side by side — visibly different worlds.
That is what “matched to your audience” means in practice. The expiry date at the top right shows in passing that there is a choice period.
“Let your employees choose” means three different things in this market. Knowing the difference saves you a disappointment later.
Smiles sits in the third category.
A cheque or card the recipient spends at participating shops. Maximum freedom, but what you are really giving is purchasing power: it feels like pay, there is no experience, and no parcel arrives.
Choosing from a handful of options: four experience boxes, or a row of gift cards from other brands. It is called choice, but it is a short menu — and the odds that nothing on it fits stay high.
A genuine range at your budget level, in your house style: physical gifts and brands, experiences, vouchers and charities side by side. The recipient chooses, you get a parcel at the door and a report afterwards.
Three things Smiles is regularly confused with. Drawing the distinction is half the conversation.
A voucher is spendable value. A smiles is a gift the recipient picks out themselves — with a parcel, a card and a name on it. That difference is a tax difference too, as you will see below.
A smiles is not tied to one moment. End of year, a work anniversary, retirement, a wedding, a birth, a target hit or a competition — same mechanism, different budget. See gifting occasions(in Dutch).
Not an endless catalogue the recipient gets lost in. A curated range at your level: choice enough to please everyone, few enough to stay an occasion.
This is why our standard budget sits at € 33 and not at € 40. On a gift you can recover the VAT; on a retail voucher there is nothing to recover. So your employee gets a noticeably better present for the same cost.
A retail voucher carries no deductible VAT, so your cost is your budget.
Seven euros less cost, and nobody notices a difference in the gift.
The RSZ exemption (Belgian social security) for an end-of-year gift is € 40 per employee per year, including VAT. Work it back: € 40 ÷ 1.21 = € 33.06 excluding VAT. Our € 33 budget sits just under that. That way you use the exemption in full and the VAT stays recoverable. That is not a rounded number, that is the limit.
Three conditions have to hold together: the gift is a collective social benefit, the purchase price stays below € 50 excluding VAT, and it is one gift per employee per calendar year. Ask us about it if you want to serve several moments a year — that last condition then changes the picture.
Across all our programmes, 14.7% of codes are never redeemed — all campaign types together. With a voucher you simply pay for that share as well. With a smiles it is credited back.
You pay the full value at purchase, whether it is ever used or not.
Every euro you do pay has arrived with somebody.
€ 5,925 difference across five hundred people — thirty per cent — and the recipient sees no difference in value at all. At a hundred people that is € 1,185; at fourteen hundred it runs to € 16,591.
That 14.7% is a real average across all our campaigns, not a marketing figure. We would rather publish it than leave it out.
This is what sets a smiles apart from every other way of handing out value: you stay the author of the gift, rather than the conduit for a voucher.
We build the selection around your people: a production team asks for something different from an office team, and a campaign for business contacts different again. With a voucher everyone gets the same shops, whatever they do.
Entirely in your look and feel, with your message. The recipient sees your logo and your words, not a supplier’s. We are nowhere on that screen, and that is exactly the point.
Every euro you pay is a euro that arrived with someone. Codes that are not redeemed are credited back. With a voucher you pay the full value at the moment of purchase, whether it is ever used or not.
We buy with the weight of our whole volume behind us, even for a campaign of fifty. The recipient sees a gift with a retail value they recognise; you pay the purchase price. Together with the VAT recovery, that is winning twice on the same budget.
In nine conversations out of ten, the voucher is the real alternative. So here is the difference, set out plainly.
See the calculation above: roughly 21% more retail value per euro of budget, provided the three conditions hold. On a retail voucher there is no VAT to recover.
A gift cheque has to meet three conditions to stay exempt: spendable only at participating retailers, a limited period of validity, and never exchangeable for cash. A gift carries none of those limits.
A voucher feels like pay and disappears into a wallet. A gift gets unwrapped, seen at home, and remembered. That is the difference between paying and appreciating.
No boxes in a corridor, no leftover batch in the warehouse, no argument about who got which colour. And no returns landing on your desk.
Along the way you see how many codes have been redeemed; afterwards, what was chosen. That is steering information for your next campaign — a voucher gives you nothing back.
Platform, card and email in your house style. With a retail voucher there is a shop chain’s logo on the present you are giving.
It can be a cheque you spend at participating shops — plenty of freedom, but no parcel and no VAT benefit. It can be a pick from a handful of boxes or vouchers, which is called choice but is a short menu. Or it can be a genuine range at your budget, in your house style, where you only pay for what is chosen.
That last one is what we do. Below we set the four approaches out honestly side by side — including the case where you are better off not giving a smiles at all.
A smiles is not always the answer. Below we set the four approaches out honestly side by side — including the case where something else suits you better.
A smiles needs a choice period: your employee has to choose, and we have to deliver. If you need fifty gifts on the table tomorrow, we are the wrong address. We would rather say so ourselves.
There are plenty of choice-concept providers by now. Yet the same information is missing everywhere.
So here it is. Take it with you, even if you buy nothing from us.
The whole promise is “the recipient chooses on your own platform”, and almost nobody shows that screen. With one provider the choice site is nothing but a login window. Below you simply see it.
“The most tax-friendly solution” is written everywhere, but without a single figure or amount beside it. The calculation above appears nowhere else in this market.
The widest ranges sit with Dutch players, and they generally deliver only in the Netherlands. The Belgian providers have a narrower offer. That combination is our ground.
Six steps. The first part is a half-hour conversation; after that we do the work.
Pick a standard budget or give us your own amount. From € 10, with no upper limit — for an incentive or a work anniversary the budget is often a multiple of that.
Logo, imagery, colours and copy, with a range that suits your budget and your campaign. We configure where others program, so this is a matter of hours, not weeks.
Every recipient gets a personal code: on a personalised card, in a letter or by email. Physical or digital, or a combination for anyone without a work email.
Within the choice period you set. Anyone who forgets gets an automatic reminder — which is precisely what makes or breaks the redemption rate.
Individually labelled to one address, or straight to each recipient’s home. Returns, warranty and the accompanying wording are our concern, not yours.
You can already see how many codes have been redeemed along the way, and afterwards what was chosen. The invoice follows redemption. No set-up costs, no licences, no stock.
Four standard levels, and they are not arbitrary: they follow the Belgian tax thresholds for the officially recognised gifting occasions.
Outside those, any budget works, entirely to your campaign brief. That last part is where Smiles differs from an off-the-shelf package.
€ 24.20 incl. VAT. A token that counts without trying to be an occasion: a thank-you, a small moment, a large volume.
€ 30.25 incl. VAT. Also the level at which you stay comfortably under the threshold when there are several moments in a year.
€ 39.93 incl. VAT. The exemption is € 40 incl. VAT; € 33.06 excl. is exactly the limit. This is where you get the most out of the rules.
Excluding VAT. VAT on a business gift is deductible up to € 50 excl. Also the level for an incentive, a competition prize or a work anniversary, where no exemption threshold applies.
Redemption is genuinely measured, per client and per campaign, with a button to download the codes that were not redeemed. Without this, “invoicing on redemption” stays a promise.
This screen shows all campaigns of one client together, hence the 39.1% expired. Across all our programmes it sits at 14.7%; it varies a great deal per campaign, and a reminder halfway makes the biggest difference.
“Our people receive a handsome card, and then pick a gift for their child themselves on an easy website.”
Metafox
The first one is the question with a smiles. Anyone who does not raise it themselves lets the client walk away with it.
Then we send an automatic reminder within the choice period. If they still do not choose, we credit that code back: you do not pay for it. With a gift voucher that money is simply gone.
How often does that happen? Across all our campaigns, 14.7% goes unredeemed. Which is also exactly what you do not pay for with us.
In practice that reminder is the difference between a mediocre and a high redemption rate. Which is why it is in the flow as standard, not as an option.
No. You get a trade discount from the very first gift, you recover the VAT just as you would on a physical gift, and you do not pay for codes that go unredeemed. There are no set-up costs, no licences and no stock.
What you do give up is the simplicity of one article for everybody.
You cannot recover VAT on a voucher, you pay for it in full even when it goes unused, by law it cannot be converted into cash, and it has to carry a limited period of validity. More importantly: nothing arrives at anyone’s home. A voucher is purchasing power; a gift is appreciation.
If you need it tomorrow, a voucher genuinely is the better call. We will say so.
For you: setting your budget, sending us your logo and colours, and the list of recipients. We do the rest. The platform is ready in hours, not weeks.
Yes. Smiles stands apart from your other systems and can run alongside a loyalty programme or an existing gift policy. For recurring moments we link to your employee records, so nothing has to be done by hand any more.
Yes. As standard we deliver individually labelled to one address, which is handy for a shared moment. Delivery to each recipient’s home is possible too — often the better call for shift teams, home workers or people on the road.
They get a physical card with their code. You can combine physical and digital within one campaign — with a mixed workforce that is the rule rather than the exception.
Tell us your budget, your occasion and how many people you want to surprise. We will tell you what is possible — and whether a smiles is really the best call in your case. No obligation.
Smiles is an ordering platform we set up for a client. For every campaign we build a separate choice environment: a defined range, the client’s house style, one budget and one run time.
It is not a webshop and not a redemption site for gift vouchers. Whoever receives a code picks one gift in it — there is no open shop behind it and no balance being spent. Without a client there is therefore no Smiles environment.
Then you are on the wrong page. The address of your choice environment is on the card or in the email you received from your employer or your contact. That is the only place you can log in.
Lost it, or having trouble? service@attent.gifts or +32 50 67 34 86 — we will look it up for you.
We follow the rules on gifts and cheques closely, because they shape how we build our budgets. The amounts on this page are the values as they apply in 2026, and they can be indexed.
They are here to help you ask the right questions, not as tax or legal advice, and we give no guarantee on them. We do not know your situation: put the set-up to your payroll agency or accountant once. We are happy to think along and to supply the detail they need.
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