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Discounts

SoftSlate Commerce supports a variety of discount techniques that you can apply to the products in your store. The types of discounts it supports include percentage discounts, absolute value discounts, quantity discounts, and coupons. You'll also find a number of settings allowing you to control who gets each discount, when the discount starts and expires, what products it applies to, and how many times each discount may be used.

To enable discounting for your store, navigate to the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discount Settings screen, and set the "Apply Discounts" setting to true. You must do this, or none of the discount features will take effect.

[Important]Important

Discounts will not take effect unless the global "Apply Discounts" setting on the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discount Settings screen is set to true.

You'll also find a few other settings on the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discount Settings screen that control the overall behavior of discounts.

A global discount is defined as one that does not apply to a restricted set of products or SKUs, but instead applies to the customer's cart as a whole. A simple example would be a sale in which customers receive 10% off everything in the store. A global discount of 10% would be created, that applies to the customer's cart as a whole, rather than to individual items. Let's go through the steps involved setting up this sort of discount in the following example.

Example 4.5. Setting up a Global 10% Discount

  1. The first step for setting up any discount is to turn the global "Apply Discounts" flag on from the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discount Settings screen, as described above.

  2. Navigate to the add discount form by going to the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discounts screen and clicking the "Add New Record" link.

  3. The add discount form should be fairly self-explanatory. To create our global 10% discount, first enter a unique discount code and give the discount a name.

  4. For the "What Items Does This Discount Apply To?" field, select the "Applies to user's cart as a whole regardless of the items in it (global discount)" option to identify this as a global discount.

  5. For the "What Is the Reward for This Discount?" field, select the "Discount is this percentage off:" option, and enter "10" in the percentage field.

  6. For this example and in many cases generally, you can leave the other fields as they are. But note that these other options are available to control the specific customers that can use the discount, the start time and expiration time of the discount, and how many times it can be used.

  7. That is all it takes! If you go to the customer interface for the store, as soon as you add a product to the cart, you'll see that the global discount appears as a separate line item in the cart. The discount's total is a negative amount equal to 10% of the cart's subtotal.

    [Note]Note

    Global discounts are applied against the order's subtotal. They will not take shipping or taxes into account.

Unlike global discounts, SKU discounts apply to one or more specific SKUs. As we learned in the section on Tracking Inventory with SKUs, a SKU (or "Stock Keeping Unit") can represent a product, or if needed, any combination of attributes and options for a product. In the following example, let's set up a discount for a basic product-level SKU.

Example 4.6. Setting up a SKU Discount to Give $10.00 off

  1. Assuming we have already created some products, the first step is to create SKUs that represent them. An easy and convenient way to do this is to use the "SKU Builder" at the bottom of the Product Catalog -> Inventory and SKUs -> SKUs screen.

    The SKU Builder on the Product Catalog -> Inventory and SKUs -> SKUs screen.

  2. Using the SKU Builder, create a SKU for each of the products in the store by selecting the "Build All Product SKUs" option. If you have a large number of products, it may take a while so please be patient.

  3. Next, let's make sure that the global "Apply Discounts" flag setting is on by checking the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discount Settings screen.

  4. Now navigate to the add discount form by going to the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discounts screen and clicking the "Add New Record" link.

  5. For the "What Items Does This Discount Apply To?" field, select the "Applies to the SKUs assigned to this discount (SKU discount)" option to identify this as a SKU discount.

  6. For the "What Is the Reward for This Discount?" field, select the "Discount is this amount off:" option, and enter "10" in the text field.

  7. For this example and in many cases generally, you can leave the other fields as they are. But note that these other options are available to control the specific customers that can use the discount, the start time and expiration time of the discount, and how many times it can be used. For now, let's go ahead and add the discount.

  8. Now that our SKUs have been created, and our discount is in place, the last thing to do is to assign the SKUs we want to the discount. From the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discounts screen, click the "Details" link next to our new discount.

  9. On the edit discount screen, click the "SKUs" link. This should take you to the SKU Discount assignment screen. You'll see a filterable list of the available SKUs that we created.

  10. To assign one or more of the SKUs to our discount, check off the SKUs you'd like to assign and click the "Update" button.

  11. That's all it takes! On the product page in the customer interface, you should now see a new field named "Discount" appear below the price, with the current discount displayed. In addition, a discount grid will appear that lists all the discounts applicable for the product.

    A Product Page Displaying the Applicable Discounts.

A quantity discount is one which has different Discount Ranges based on the quantity (or price total) of items being purchased. For example, a deal where the customer gets 5% off a product if he orders 10 or more of that product, and 10% off if he orders 20 or more, is a simple example of a quantity discount. Building on our last example, let's go through the steps involved setting up this sort of discount.

Example 4.7. Setting up a Quantity Discount

  1. Assuming we have set up a SKU discount like the one in the above example, the first step is to redefine our discount as one which looks at its Discount Ranges to determine the amount of the reward. Navigate to the edit discount form by going to the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discounts screen and clicking the "Details" link next to our SKU discount.

  2. Change the "What Is the Reward for This Discount?" field for our discount to "Determined by the discount range the quantity falls into". This tells the discount to look at the Discount Ranges under it to figure out the amount of the discount.

  3. Now we must create our Discount Ranges under the discount. From the edit discount form, click on the link that says "Discount Ranges".

  4. On the subsequent screen, click the "Add New Record" link to go to the add Discount Range form.

  5. For the "Floor for This Range" field, enter 5. Our first range will take effect only if the customer is purchasing at least 5 of the item.

  6. For the "Ceiling for This Range" field, enter 9. This marks the upper limit of the first range.

  7. For the "Reward for This Range" field, select the "This percentage off" option, and enter 10 for the percentage. Click Add to add the new Discount Range.

  8. Repeat the above steps to add the parameters of our second range. Enter 10 for the floor of the range, and leave the ceiling at 0, which is used to represent no ceiling. For the reward, enter 20 for the percentage.

  9. That's it! In the customer interface, note that on the product page, the discount grid now included the two ranges and explains the discounts that the customers will receive depending on how many of the item they buy.

    A Product Page Displaying a Quantity Discount.

    [Note]Note

    You can make a quantity discount a global discount. In that case, the quantity used to find the applicable Discount Range is the total number of items the customer has in the cart.

In SoftSlate Commerce, any discount can be easily turned into a coupon. This is done by entering a unique code into the "What Is This Discount's Coupon Code?" field on the discount add/edit form.

Defining a coupon code for the discount tells the system to apply the discount only if the customer enters the code into the coupon form in the customer interface. The coupon form can appear either on the view cart screen, or during checkout above the address form. Navigate to the Product Catalog -> Discounts -> Discount Settings screen to define which location, or both, should display the coupon form.

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