Everything that I read about gift certificates says that I need to create a gift certificate by first creating a product. But it looks like I can create a manual gift certificate in 4.0. Am I seeing this correctly? I've got the gift certificate manually created with a pin number. If I want someone to use this, can I just give them the manually created pin number without creating a product?

This is true!! Have the pin created for you, and then send out your own customized email.

This is how I do it!

Yep. You just might want to explain that they need to enter it when asked for " discount code / gift certificate PIN" during checkout. I've had a few customers complain that they checkout and don't see where it's suppose to go. They just cruise through checkout so fast that they miss it.

I've already used it as a way to give a couple of customers free shipping because of the whole Paypal problem. It's WONDERFUL!