How Discounts Work
The shop supports two distinct kinds of discount, and they behave differently.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Commercial:
- Carts — the cart itself and its options
- Shop Insights — what buyers looked for
- Vendor Approvals — applications waiting on a decision
Architect Panel → Data:
- Datastores — then View Data on a cart table, where most shop administration lives
Discount codes
A code the customer enters. It carries an amount, a minimum spend, a currency, a maximum number of uses, a start and expiry, whether it is restricted to new customers, and whether it is advertised as a banner on the shop.
Multi-buy discounts
A different shape: buy a minimum number, get a number free. These carry their own name, code, dates and banner setting, and are scoped the same way.
Scoping is the important part
Both kinds are scoped four ways, each reached as a row action on the discount:
- Applicable products — what it applies to.
- Excluded products — carved out of the above.
- Applicable categories — the broader version.
- Excluded categories.
Exclusions are what make a discount safe. "Ten per cent off everything" is rarely what you mean; "ten per cent off everything except the clearance range" usually is.
Special prices can be excluded
A product on a special price can be marked as excluded from offers, so a promotion does not stack on top of a price that is already reduced. This is the control that prevents a discount code being applied to already-discounted stock.
What lands on the order
Every discount applied is recorded against the sale with its type, its identity, its name and its amount. So an order shows what was discounted and why, which is what you need when a customer queries a total or when finance reconciles.
Set an expiry, always
A code without one lives forever, gets posted publicly, and is still being redeemed years later. Even for an internal code, set a date.
Cap the uses
The maximum-uses limit is the difference between a promotion and an unbounded liability. Codes escape — to deal sites, to social media, to anywhere — and the cap is what bounds the damage.
Worked example
A shop runs a ten per cent code capped at 500 uses, expiring in four weeks, with a minimum spend and clearance products excluded by category. It appeared on a deal site within two days; the cap meant the cost was known rather than discovered.
Recommendations
- Always set an expiry and a use cap.
- Use exclusions rather than trusting "everything".
- Exclude special-priced stock from offers.
- Check the discount recorded on the order when testing.