A site discount takes a percentage off the price of every item on your website, or of every item in one category or catalog. You can limit it to a price range, set a floor price, limit it to items added in a date range, and schedule when it starts and ends. Find it under Website › Marketing › Site Discounts in BookRouter™.
How discounts work
- The discounted price is written onto each item, so it shows everywhere on your website and in your exports and feeds, and checkout charges it. Customers do not need a code.
- Several discounts can run at once. When an item qualifies for more than one, the best discount wins. A discount set on the item itself beats them when it is higher.
- Items you add or upload later are discounted on their way in if they qualify. There is nothing to redo.
- An item with Allow Discount switched off on its own form is never discounted (see Editing item fields).
The list of discounts
Each discount is listed by what it does, for example “20% off Everything on the website” or “50% off Fiction”, with Site-wide, Category or Catalog and your own name for it underneath. The other columns are:
- Limits: the price range, floor and date-added limits in words, or “Every eligible item”.
- Runs: the schedule, for example “Runs until you switch it off”, or the start and end dates.
- Items: how many items it is discounting right now, with the time the prices were last applied, or “None right now”.
- Status: one of the badges below.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Live | Switched on and inside its schedule (or it has no schedule). It is pricing items now. |
| Scheduled | Switched on, but its start date has not come yet. It prices nothing until then. |
| Ended | Its end date has passed. It prices nothing, but it stays in the list so you can reuse it. |
| Off | Switched off. It keeps its settings but prices nothing. |
An Updating tag next to the badge means a start or end time has passed and the prices have not caught up yet (see below). The tabs across the top (All, Live, Scheduled, Ended, Off) show one status at a time, and the filters let you narrow by Status, Applies to and Schedule. The keyword search looks at your discount names and category names.
Each row has an edit icon, an on/off toggle that switches the discount without opening it, and a delete icon. Deleting a live discount puts its items straight back to their full price (unless another discount still covers them).
Adding a discount
- Go to Website › Marketing › Site Discounts and click Add New Site Discount.
- Under What is discounted, choose Everything on the website or One category or catalog. For a category or catalog, pick it from the list. Every item in it is included, including items added to it later.
- Optionally give it a Name for your own reference, such as “Black Friday”. Customers never see the name.
- Under The discount, enter the percentage in Take off (a whole number from 1 to 99).
- Set any limits you want (described below), then choose When it runs.
- Click Count the items it reaches in the In short panel to see how many items the discount would cover before you save. The sentence in that panel spells out exactly what the discount does.
- Save. If the discount is live, the prices change as soon as you save, and the message tells you how many items it priced.
The options on the form
Never sell below
A floor price. An item whose discounted price would fall below it sells at the floor instead. An item already priced at or below the floor is not discounted at all. Amounts are in your site’s own currency.
Leave out: Items under / Items over
Items priced below the “under” amount or above the “over” amount get no discount from this rule. Use both to discount a price band only, for example items priced $25 to $500. Leave both blank to include every price.
Which items: date added
Limit the discount to items added to the website between two dates. Fill in only the first date to discount recent arrivals from that date on, or only the second to discount older stock added up to that date.
When it runs
- Switched on: turn it off to keep the discount and its settings without pricing anything. Turn it back on any time.
- Schedule it: without a schedule, the discount runs from the moment you save until you switch it off. With one, set a start and an end date and time. A blank start means it starts when you save; a blank end means it runs until you switch it off. The end time defaults to the end of the day.
Scheduled starts and ends take effect on the hour. Opening the Site Discounts page also brings the prices up to date straight away, and a message tells you when it has done so.
Discounts on inventory locations
If you use Inventory Locations, a location’s standing discount also appears in this list with a Location tag and the note “managed on the Locations page”. You cannot edit or delete it here; its row links to the Locations page, where you change it. The gear menu also has a Discounts by inventory location link.
Re-apply discounts now
The gear menu on the list has Re-apply discounts now. It recalculates every item’s sale price from the discounts that are live right now. You rarely need it, since saving, uploads and the schedule all do this for you, but it is a safe way to bring everything back in step.
Site discounts and coupons
A site discount lowers the price everyone sees, with no code. A coupon is a code a customer enters at checkout, and it can also be limited to one customer. See Coupons. Use a site discount for a sale you want everyone to see while browsing.
Common questions
I saved a discount but the sale prices have not appeared.
Check its status. Scheduled means it has not started yet; Off means it is switched off; Updating means the start time passed within the last hour and the prices are about to change (opening the list brings them up to date). If it is Live but the Items column says “None right now”, the page shows a warning: check the limits, the floor, and whether the category holds items with Allow Discount switched on. Use Count the items it reaches on the form to test your limits.
Why did some prices change when I edited a discount?
Every save recalculates the items the discount covers. If you narrowed it (a lower “items over” amount, a new floor, a shorter date range), the items it no longer reaches go back to full price unless another discount covers them. If you widened it, newly covered items are discounted.
Two discounts cover the same item. Which one does the customer get?
The best one, the one with the biggest percentage off. A discount set on the item itself wins only when it is higher than the site discounts that cover it.
Can I prepare a sale in advance?
Yes. Add the discount with Schedule it switched on and a future start date. It shows as Scheduled, prices nothing until the start, and ends on its own at the end date.
What does the legacy admin show?
The legacy admin’s sales page shows only the discounts that are live now and have no schedule, the best one for each category or for the whole site. When there are others, it shows a notice saying they can only be seen and changed in BookRouter. Schedules can only be set here.