Discounts

If you want to offer your clients discounts on your product prices, you can set up the rules that govern who gets how much off. Discounts can be fixed amounts or percentages, and can be restricted according to the products being ordered, the type of user placing the order, the date, a voucher code that you define, etc. You can even use negative values in a discount to turn it into a fee (this could be useful if you need to apply a booking fee or an extra tax).

To access your list of discounts, select Configuration>Discounts from the main menu as shown in figure 3.17.

This takes you to the list of discounts illustrated in figure 3.18 (a couple of sample records are shown for illustrative purposes).

Tip: There is a filter available at the top of the page for you to type in the name, or part of the name of a discount to narrow down the records that are displayed. If the text you type in appears in more than one discount name, all of the matching records will be displayed.

Click on a discount to edit it, or on the 'New' toolbar button to create a new discount. This will take you to the discount editor as shown in figure 3.19.

This is for your own use in helping you identify the discount. If you have a number of similar discounts, but you don't want to confuse your customers who might not know about the other similar ones, you could use the Display Name (below) for a generic description of the discount that gets displayed to them, and a more technical description as the actual Discount Name so that you can differentiate it from the others.

The name of the discount that gets displayed to the user and appears on invoices etc. If left blank, then discount name (above) will be used.

Indicate whether or not you want to limit the time period during which this discount is applied. If you select 'yes', the start and end dates that follow will define the period during which the discount is available. If you select 'no', the start and end date fields have no effect.

Indicate the starting date for the period that you want this discount to be applied. If the Time-limited option (above) is set to 'no', this value has no effect.

The end date for the period that you want this discount to be applied. If the Time-limited option (above) is set to 'no', this value has no effect.

Whether this discount should be available for ALL of your products or not. If not, the discount will only be used if you specifically assign it to one or more products (this is done in the product editor).

Tip: You can exclude certain products from having global discounts applied to it if you wish by specifying this in the product record.

If you only want this discount to be available to users with a certain access level, you can assign that level here. This is especially useful when you have the JACLPlus or Access Granted component installed, as you can then define your own access levels (you can also allow the purchase of user subscriptions for different access levels by setting up a user subscription product, and installing the user subscription mambot (plugin) available from nbill.co.uk).

Whether the discount should also be made available to users who have a higher access level than the one indicated above, or not (if not, the discount will be restricted only to those users who have the access level defined above).

If you only want the discount to be applied if the user orders products up to a certain value, you can specify the value here. For example, if you offer free carriage for orders over $50, you would set this to 50, set the percentage to 100, and indicate that this is a carriage discount (see below).

Whether or not this discount should apply to the carriage fees for an order only. If set to no, this discount will be applied to the value of the products ordered. If set to yes, only the carriage fees will be affected. It is not possible to set up a single discount that takes of a percentage of both the product itself and the carriage fees - but you can define 2 separate discounts if you want to apply the same percentage to both.

Enter the percentage discount to apply. If you want to use a fixed amount instead, set this to zero, and enter an amount below.

If the percentage value is zero, the amount you enter here will be deducted from the order total as a fixed amount (note: all discount calculations are applied before sales tax is added, if applicable). If you want to allow both a percentage discount and a fixed amount discount, just create 2 separate discount records, and indicate that they are not exclusive (see below).

Whether or not any other discounts can be used in conjunction with this one. At the time the discounts are applied, nBill will check each discount record in order of priority (see below), and add any that are applicable until it reaches one that is marked exclusive. If it finds an exclusive one, all other discounts will be discarded, and only the exclusive one will be applied (even if it is a lower priority than a previous non-exclusive one).

When nBill checks through the discount records to see which ones to apply to a particular order or invoice, it first sorts the records by priority. Enter a number here (an integer - ie. no decimal places) to indicate the order in which to apply discounts (the lower the number, the sooner the discount is applied). See also the 'Exclusive?' option, above.

If the user has to enter a voucher code in order to qualify for this discount, you can enter the code here. When using this option, you would also typically add a field to the appropriate order form to allow the user to enter their voucher code when ordering (see the 'order' tab on the order form).

Whether or not to apply this discount to repeat payments. If set to 'no', the discount will only be applied to the first payment. The discount must be assigned to the order if it is to be used on recurring payments (this is done automatically when new orders are taken via your order forms, but if you create orders manually as an administrator, you have to assign them yourself - see the orders topic.).

If there are already some non-auto-renewing orders in the system which may qualify for this discount when they come to be renewed, you can select here whether or not to allow the discount to be added to the order. If the discount was already associated with the order (because the order qualified for it at the time it was created), it will continue to be applied regardless of this setting - this setting is just to specify whether or not to add the discount if it was not there already.

If you want a discount to be available ONLY to recurring payments, set this to 'no' and Recurring Discount (above) to 'yes'. If you want this discount to be ignored completely (eg. if you have not finished deciding the exact rules, but you want to store the record for future use anyway), set this to 'no' and also set Recurring Discount (above) to 'no'.

If the discount is associated with a voucher code, you can set this option to 'yes' to disable the discount after the voucher code has been used (ie. the 'Available for New Orders?' option will be set to 'no' after the discount has been applied).

If the customer has to already have a certain product before they qualify for the discount, you can specify the prerequisite here. If more than one product is selected, the discount will be granted if they already have ANY one of the prerequisite products. Note: The user must be logged in at the time they place their order if they are to take advantage of a discount with pre-requisite products, otherwise nBill will not be able to tell which products they already have, and will assume they have none.

If you want to specify that the discount is NOT available for anyone who already has an order for a certain product, you can select the disqualifying product(s) here. If more than one product is selected here, the discount will not be applied if the client already has ANY one of the disqualifying products. As with prerequisite products, the user must be logged in at the time they place the order for this to take effect.

You can enter anything you like in the notes - they are just for your reference as an administrator and are never displayed to the end user.