Discounts Product Team Q&A: Ask us anything about Discounts!

[Tom]

On October 27th, 2021, our Discounts product team hosted a Q&A focused on sellers who use Point of Sale, Square for Retail, Square for Restaurants, Appointments, and Invoices.

We're aware that many sellers have questions and requests related to setting up discounts within the mobile app as well as the online Square Dashboard. We appreciated learning about what's going well and where there is room for improvement. We can't share out specific details on our product roadmaps, though we will certainly make sure all of the posts that came through on this thread are incorporated into the decision process. 

A few example questions:

• What's the best way to set up a discount for a limited time sale?
• What's the best way to manage my discounts if I have multiple product bundle offerings?
• I need a discount that does "______" — what is your best suggestion?
• I wish I had "______" reporting for my discounts.

[divyar]

Hi @secondlifeatl, 

Have you tried the coupon feature in Square Marketing?

[divyar]

Hi @secondlifeatl,

You could create an auto discount that applies to that item. $ discounts when manually applied work only at cart level.

[Stacks_Admin]

Is there a link to a LIVE webinar or is this just a forum response Q/A? 

[Tom]

Hi @Stacks_Admin, this Q&A is all in writing within the forum. If you have a question, please don't hesitate to post it below and our product team will be able to address it. 💯

[secondlifeatl]

Is there a way to create a discount for a specific group on a specific day? For example, senior day, military day, or teacher's day.

I know you can create a discount for a group, but then that group always receives the discount. I know you can create a discount for a specific day (we use that for our clothing sale on Wednesdays), but I haven't been able to combine the two and that would be something that would be very helpful.

[kwoodlock]

Hi @secondlifeatl,

Yes:

• Visit your Seller Dashboard and then go to your Items Library > Discounts 
• Click "Create a Discount"
• Fill out name, amount, and other details, then click "Discount Rules"
• Select "Customer Group" and assign it to the group you want
• Click "Set date range" below and select a start and end date/time
• Save

We are working to improve the flexibility of how discount rules can be combined, but the use case you're describing should already be covered.

[Busyewefarm]

I am trying to apply a discount to a specific category.  I want to set up automatic discount if you purchase 3 or more skeins of yarn you will get $1.00 off per skein.   It appears it will only apply $1.00 instead of 3 if 3 skeins are ordered and only if I apply to the transactions.  It doesn’t automatically come up on my terminal.  Is there a fix or don’t I have it set up correctly?

[kwoodlock]

Hi @Busyewefarm,

What you're describing should work correctly. Taking a look at your item catalog, it looks like this discount was set up to apply to a minimum quantity of 16 items, not 3?

You should not need to manually apply the discount to the transaction, as long as the minimum number of items was met.

[Busyewefarm]

This was the second one I tried to set up.  Look at 21-commYarn

[divyar · Accepted solution]

Hello Everyone,

Thanks again for taking the time to share your questions and feedback!

We hope some of your questions were answered—the experiences you've shared will help us as we continue to iterate based on your feedback.

We wanted to do a recap on the themes that came up frequently:

• Top asks that have got our attention and we hope we can address soon - Exempt Items or Categories from a discount, Square Online Discounts do not yet sync with the Square Discounts in Items Library, restrict Stacking of discounts

• Auto Discounts - Many of the use cases shared could benefit from auto discounting. Square offers a strong suite of auto discounting features around Item/Category discounts, Quantity based Discounts, Customer based discounts. We would love to hear more from you if there are any gaps in the auto discounting flow that we can solve for. Please send a Private Message to @divyar if you would like to talk further.

Here are a few important links that you may find useful. How to create Discounts video, Discounts FAQ, Create and Manage Discounts

We appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences and we'll continue to improve Square’s products based on your business needs.   

Again, thanks for your participation. For the latest updates, keep watch for announcements of new features in Product Updates.

[dianad]

We would like to set up an automatic discount based on the amount spent -- for example, 10% off $50, 15% off $75, etc. How do we do that?

[winmker]

Hello Divyar,

I was looking around the discount options to see if there was a way to have more than one rule for any specific discount, but it seems there can be only one rule per discount.

What I would like to do, for example, is to offer a Wine Club 20% discount to my wine club members, but only to the category "Wine Bottles". So if they buy anything else, they don't get any discount.
So I would need 2 rules for the 20% discount: apply to 1 specific group of customer, AND apply to 1 specific category of products. Is there a way to do that?

Thank you.

Eric Cavatore.

[zmartin]

did you ever get a response for this? i am in the same boat as you are, we have case club members that need their discounts.

[TiffanyNR]

Automatic discounts on online store:

1. BOGO

2. Dollar off amount of set purchase amounts and have more than one coupon be active at same time such as: $5 off $50, $10 off $75, etc.

3. Have restricted categories for coupons such as, coupon does not apply on sale items.. etc.

4. Automatic discount applied without need of coupon code

5. Autogenerated coupon codes applied to welcome email when customer signs up for email list, so each customer receives a different code.

Other:

1. Limit purchase qty for specific items/categories, etc.

[amjessey]

Show a subtotal of items before discounts and also a subtotal of discounts. This information is missing from Invoices.

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Feature-Requests-Point-of-Sale/FR-show-subtotal-of-items-before-d...

[Belanger_Bagels]

When will we be able to use the same discount rules on our POS and On-line orders? Example: We sale bakers dozen bagels at a discounted price automatically tallied up on our POS. However on our on-line system we can't seem to be able to do the same. Or, am I missing something?

[allwhowander]

This is something I am waiting for as well. We sell mix 4 packs of beer at a 10% discount, and our inventory changes weekly. So I just put out a generic 10% off code and hope that the customer actually adds 4 beers or more to the order. They do still need to enter the coupon code, so it's not an automatic discount. From my experience I think that's the closest you'll be able to get.

Another option would be to create a "Dozen Bagels" item (at the discounted price) and have 12 individual modifiers listing each bagel flavor, so the customer selects all the ones they want -- this would require a lot of data entry and unfortunately wouldn't keep track of inventory. 

[Belanger_Bagels]

Great feedback and suggestions @allwhowander . For us, inventory is a key factor, it can get pretty gnarly quickly on weekends. Nothing worst than calling a customer to let them know we are out of certain kind of bagels.

[allwhowander]

I've been there as a customer - when my local bagel shop runs out of Jalapeño Cheddar, it ruins my day!

[DM19]

I would like to scan a barcoded coupon to discount an item or to give a discount on the entire ticket.  How do I set this up?

[Candlestore]

What I have done was created a Category called Coupon  Inside this category I have a few items that I want to give a discount to say 25% off.  When I scan the "Coupon" it shows as item X% off.    The coupon is linked to items in a category that gets an automatic discount.

So the "Coupon" is actually an Items UPC with an automatic Discount applied.

1) So you want to give lets say 15% discount for people buying a "Widget"   Widget has a UPC of widget price of $100.00

Create a Barcode UPC for an Item call it "Widget 15% off" with a UPC of 15offprice  Set the price to $85.00

Problem here is you can not keep track of your inventory which is the big issue.  At end of day you can see how many Widget 15% off you sold and subtract them from you Widget inventory.  Good way to track success of your coupon.

2)What I did was I created an ad for 3 local Hotels and if people bring in their coupon from the Hotel they get 2 Free Votives.  I am more so testing how the good the ads are and using a loss leader.   I created "coupons" which are actually names of the Hotels.  When my coupon is scanned it scans as "Hotel Name" for $2.98 and automatically applies a Discount of $2.98, which gives the 2 free votives.  I do not track inventory by individual votive so this works for me.  I only track the votives by a dozen.    So here is what happens.  My Items "Hotel Names" is in a category called Coupons, and when any items in coupons is scanned an automatic discount of $2.98 is applied.  The $2.98 discount could also be a %.  

3) Another thought might be to create the same item with the same UPC but a different name.

For example Item Widget and Widget 15% off.... give them both the SAME UPC.... When you have 2 items with the same UPC you will get a warning when you create the item.   When you scan the UPC you will have to choose the correct item.  By doing this if there is NO coupon you can charge full price, with coupon select the sales price item which could be **bleep**igned to get the automatic discount.   I use this for a Pumpkin Jar I sell, the UPC on the Pumpkin Jar is the same, but I fill the Pumpkin with 5 different scents.  At check out we scan the UPC and list 6 different Pumpkins to choose, our 5 normal scents and a Customer Choice Scent.  So I can track which scents are more popular in the Pumpkins.

These are work arounds I use because Square does not actually offer a scannable Coupon item at this time to subtract a % or dollar amount off of an item. 

For more information on coupons read here:

create-and-manage-discounts 

Hope this helps