Working with order discounts

You can use order discounts to motivate selected customers to purchase more products. Order discounts relate to a whole order. Specifically, these discounts apply to the sum of prices of product items (including selected product options) added to the shopping cart.

For example, use this discount when you want to provide discount to customers:

  • during some special season, e.g., Christmas,
  • who pay in some particular currency, e.g., U.S. Dollars,
  • whose shopping carts contain goods for more than a specific amount of money, e.g., 500 USD.

You can configure order discounts in detail to apply only if specified rules (macro conditions) are fulfilled. These rules use properties of the shopping cart, and can include shopping cart content, billing/shipping address, order currency, etc. You can also specify periods of validity for order discounts.

The system binds order discounts to specific sites, for example, to the sample E-commerce Site.

If you run multiple sites and want to use order discounts, you thus need to define dedicated order discounts for each site.

In all cases, order discounts are calculated after applying taxes. The calculation before applying taxes feature will be addressed in future versions.

Adding and editing order discounts

You can add or edit order discounts in the Order discounts application.

You can combine the order discount limitations.

For example, you can add discounts effective on orders made in U.S. Dollars throughout January, and targeted at your registered customers.

Order discounts limited by periods of validity

To add or to edit order discounts limited by periods of validity:

  1. To add a new discount, click New order discount. To edit an existing discount, click Edit () at the desired discount.

  2. Type a Name for the discount.

  3. Enter the order discount properties in the Duration category:

    • Valid from – specifies the start of the period of validity.
    • Valid to – specifies the end of the period of validity.Specifying properties in the Duration section

Leave both fields empty for permanent validity.

  1. Click Save.

The system saves the order discount. The system now applies the discount only during the discount’s period of validity (if the discount is running).

Order discounts targeted at selected customers

To add or to edit order discounts targeted at selected customers:

  1. To add a new discount, click New order discount. To edit an existing discount, click Edit () at the desired discount.

  2. Type a Name for the discount.

  3. Change the value of the Available for property in the Target customers category

    • All visitors – all customers are eligible for the discount; the default option.
    • Registered users – only registered customers are eligible for the discount.
    • Selected roles – only customers in selected roles are eligible for the discount.
  4. Click Save.

The system saves the order discount. The system now applies the discount (if the discount is running) only for the selected customers.

If you need to add order discounts targeted at custom groups of customers, for example, at selected users, contact groups, etc., please refer to Configuring discount rules.

Order discounts limited by conditions

To add or to edit order discounts limited by conditions:

  1. To add a new discount, click New order discount. To edit an existing discount, click Edit () at the desired discount.

  2. Type a Name for the discount.

  3. Specify Minimum order amount in your on-line store main currency.

  4. Click Edit to set the discount rules and their parameters:

    1. In the Edit macro condition dialog that opens, select the required rule in the right part of the dialog.

    2. Use drag & drop, or double-click, or click Add rule () button to add the rule.

    3. Click the underlined parts of the rule in the left part of the dialog to open the Set parameter value dialog.

      One rule can contain more parameters. That’s why there can be more underlined words.

    4. Select the desired parameter:

      Specifying the rule parameters

    5. Click OK.

    6. (Optional) Repeat editing to set all discount rules and all their parameters you want.

    7. Click Save & Close.

  5. Click Save.

The system saves the order discount. The system now applies the discount only if the specified conditions are fulfilled (if the discount is running).

If you want to allow some other user to add or to edit discounts, see Role management and Configuring permissions.

Permission

Description

Read discounts

Allows users in selected roles to access discounts and free shipping offers.

Modify discounts

Allows users in selected roles to create, modify and delete discounts and free shipping offers.

Read configuration

Allows users in selected roles to access E-commerce configuration, i.e. the on-line store settings, discount rules, etc.

Modify configuration

Allows users in selected roles to modify E-commerce configuration.

If you edit or delete a discount, the existing orders stay with that discount. To update existing orders according to the new rules, you have to manually edit the involved orders.

Displaying order discounts in the invoice

To display a discount applied on the customer’s order in the invoice:

  1. Open the Store configuration application.

  2. Switch to the Invoice tab.

  3. Add the following code into your invoice template:

    
    
    
     {%OrderDiscount.Format(Currency.CurrencyFormatString)#%}
    
    
     

    Invoice template

  4. Click Save.

If you now review an existing order on the Invoice tab, you can see that the invoice includes information about order discount(s) applied on the order.

Invoice - order discount applied

Reference

General

Name

The name of the order discount used throughout the administration interface, e.g., in order discounts lists.

Code name

The unique identifier of the order discount object used by developers in the code.

Unless there is a reason to set a particular value, you can leave the default (automatic) option, and the system generates an appropriate code name automatically.

Description

To make the order discount easier to use and maintain, you can add an explanation about the scenarios for which the discount is intended, etc. The description doesn’t have any functionality, it’s just for better orientation.

Enabled

Indicates if the order discount is enabled in the system.

While calculating the total price of the order, the system skips disabled discounts.

Discount value

Discount

Specify if you want to apply the discount in percentage or in fixed amount.

  • Percentage – the discount reduces the total price of the order by a percentage.
  • Fixed amount – the discount reduces the total price of the order by a specific amount in your on-line store main currency.

Amount

Specify an exact value of the discount in percent or in fixed amount according to Discount. The system reduces the total price of the shopping cart content (i.e. the total price with taxes without shipping costs) by the discount value.

The amount has to be a number. When the amount is in percentage, enter a number between 0 and 100. When the amount is fixed, enter a number greater than 0.

Discount conditions

Minimum order amount

Specify minimum price of the order that customers need to make to be eligible for the order discount. The price is calculated from the total price with taxes without shipping costs.

Further conditions

You can enter further conditions that must be fulfilled for the system to apply the order discounts. By utilizing rules (user-friendly representations of macro expressions), you can write any condition according to your specific requirements.

Clicking Edit opens the Edit macro condition dialog, which allows you to add rules through a graphical interface.

Selecting the discount rules- Use drag & drop or double-click or Add rule button () to add a rule. - Click on a specific rule and click Delete () to delete the rule. - Click Clear all rules () to remove all rules in the current offer. - Click on underlined words in the condition part to change their options.

Example

Currency is Euro

and

Payment method is PayPal

The condition ensures that the order discount is only applied if the customer pays in Euro via the PayPal payment gateway.

You can also edit macros on the Code tab in the Edit macro condition dialog. For details about available macro options and syntax, please refer to Macro expressions.

Coupons

Customer has to redeem a coupon to get the discount

If selected, only customers that type a valid coupon code are able to apply the order discount.

You can set coupons on the Coupons tab in the left menu. After selecting the check box and saving the discount, you will be redirected there automatically.

To learn more about coupons, see Working with order coupons.

Duration

Valid from

Specify from when the discount is running.

If you leave Valid from empty, the discount will be valid permanently till Valid to.

Valid to

Specify to when the discount is running.

If you leave Valid to empty, the discount will be valid permanently from Valid from.

Target customers

Available for

Choose roles of users who are able to apply the discount:

  • All visitors – all customers are eligible for the discount.

  • Registered users – only registered customers are eligible for the discount.

  • Selected roles – only customers in selected roles are eligible for the discount. To add roles:

    1. Click Select roles to open the Select roles dialog.
    2. Select the required roles.
    3. Click Select.

You can enter roles directly by typing in their code names separated by semicolons, e.g., _authenticated_;Members.

You can add registered customers to roles in the Customers application while editing a selected customer on the Roles tab.

Discount calculation

Priority

Specify in what sequence the system applies the listed running order discounts (if any).

Enter 1 for the highest priority. The number has to be greater than or equal to 1.

Use greater intervals between priority numbers. If you want to add a new discount inbetween two already existing, you can add the new discount more easily between 10 and 20 than between 1 and 2. If you already have only small gaps, you can also use decimals.

Apply lower priority discounts

If selected, other order discounts with lower priorities are applied to the shopping cart as well. If cleared, discount processing stops with the last discounts with the same priority level as the edited discount.