How to set up and manage shopping cart price rules in Magento
In
Magento you can set up different promotions and discounts that apply
only to the products in the customer's shopping cart. The shopping cart
price rules can be based on different combinations of conditions. The
conditions themselves can be based on various attributes of the products
in the cart (category, SKU, manufacturer, etc.) and/or on the different
shopping cart attributes such as shipping country, shipping
state/province, total weight, etc.
To add and edit shopping cart price rules in the admin panel of your Magento go to Marketing > Cart Price Rules.
On the page that opens there's a table with the existing shopping cart
price rules. To edit a rule click on its row in the table. By default,
Magento comes with no example shopping cart price rules preconfigured.
To add a new rule click on the Add New Rule button that's above the top right corner of the table:
On the add/edit page the settings for the cart price rule is split into 4 main sections;
Rule
Information : In this section you can add the rules basic information
like name, description and what customer group you'd like the rule to
apply to, Lets go over each setting in more detail.
- Rule Name
- type some name for the price rule. It's for internal use. You can
manage the labels for the price rule as you want them to appear on the
frontend from the Labels section.
- Description
- this is an optional field. You can use it to type some information
that's related to the price rule (e.g. details that will remind
something about the price rule). This description is not shown on the
frontend.
- Status - from this option you can select whether the price rule should be active or not.
- Websites - this is a list of the websites that you have created from Stores>All Stores.
Mark the website(s) on which you want the shopping cart price rule to
apply. To mark/unmark more than one website press and hold the Ctrl (Or Apple key for Mac users) button on you keyboard and click on the name with the left mouse button.
- Customer Groups
- from this list you can select the customer group or groups for which
you want the price rule to be valid. The price rule will apply to all
customers who belong to the selected customer groups. To mark/unmark
more than one group press and hold the Ctrl (Or Apple key for Mac users) button on you keyboard and click on the groups with the left mouse button.
- Coupon - by default, this option is set to No Coupon
which means that no coupon code is required and the price rule will
apply to any customer belonging to one of the selected groups in the Customer Groups option. If you select Specific Coupon, a couple of new options will be added just underneath this one:
This first option is labeled Coupon Code
and, as the name suggests, it's for specifying a coupon code. You can
type a code manually, or you can let Magento generate it automatically.
In case you want to generate code(s) automatically mark the checkbox for
Use Auto Generation. When you do that and you save the rule a new section will appear below the Labels section. It's called Manage Coupon Codes (in fact this section will be added after you save the rule even if you leave the Coupon drop-down menu to No Coupon);
you can use it to specify the rules for generating the codes and to
generate one or more coupon codes. In order for a customer(s) to be able
to use the promotion that's created with the price rule you need to
provide that customer or customers with the coupon code(s).
The second option is Uses per Coupon.
If you leave the field blank or you put 0, the coupon can be used
countless number of times as long as the price rule is active. If you
want customers to be able to apply the coupon a limited number of times,
just type the number in the field. Note that the number of times a
coupon can be used is applied to all customers regardless of what you
put in the field for Uses per Customer (described
below). For example, if the coupon can be used one time and a customer
applies and uses that coupon, then the coupon can't be used by another
customer.
Coupons can be applied on the cart and checkout page on the frontend. There's a special block that's intended for that purpose:
The customer only has to type the code in the field that's provided and click on the Apply Coupon
button. The discount will be automatically shown in the block on the
right that displays the grand total, taxes, shipping charges, etc. At
this point the coupon can be canceled. It's counted as a used coupon
after the order is placed.
Now let's go back to the Rule Information settings of shopping cart price rules:
- Uses per Customer
- you can use this option to specify how many times the particular
promotion can be used by a customer. If you leave the field blank or you
put 0, there will be no limit. If, for example, you put 2, the
promotion can be used by each customer (provided they belong to a
customer group for which the price rule is valid) two times.
- From Date and To Date
- you can use these two options to specify a period of time for which
the promotion will be valid. Just click on the small calendar button
next to each field and select the data from the calender that pops out.
If you leave them blank, the price rule will be applied immediately and
for an indefinite period of time (as long as its Status option is set to Active).
- Priority
- since you can add more than one shopping cart price rule in some
cases more than one price rule can meet the conditions and be applied to
the products in the customer's shopping cart. With this option you can
configure the order in which price rules should be applied. Those with a
lower number for priority are applied before those with a higher one.
For example, a price rule with 0 for priority is applied before another
one that has 1 for priority.
- Public in RSS Feed - by default, this option is enabled. To disable it set it to No.
When you're done with these settings if you want to, click on the Save and Continue Edit button before you configure the options in the other price rule sections.
Shopping Cart Price Rule Conditions
Click on the Conditions tab to configure the conditions which have to be fulfilled in order for the shopping cart price rule to be applied:
The
principle of adding and configuring conditions is exactly the same as
with catalog price rules. So for more information on how to do this
check out the Conditions section of the Magento tutorial on managing catalog price rules.
The difference is that with shopping cart price rules you can add as
conditions not only categories, product attributes and attribute sets,
but also cart attributes such as the subtotal of the cart, the total
weight of the products, the payment method, the shipping method, the
shipping country, the shipping state, province, etc. Thus using all the
available conditions you can create hundreds of combinations depending
on what exactly you want to do.
Shopping Cart Price Rule Actions
Click on the Actions
section below conditions to configure the shopping cart price rule
action settings. Some of the settings are the same as those for catalog
price rules but there are some differences:
The settings that you can configure in this section are:
- Apply - from this option you can select how the discount is to be calculated. By default, Percent of product price discount
is selected; with this option the discount is calculated as a
percentage of the original price which is then subtracted from that
price to form the final price. For example, if you put 10 in the field
for Discount Amount and the product in the cart is £80, then the final price will be £72 (£80 original price - £8 (10 % of 80) = £72).
If you select Fixed amount discount, the discount that you put in the field for Discount Amount
is a fixed sum that's subtracted from the price of the product. For
example, if the discount is 10 and the product costs £80, then the final
price will be £70.
If you select Fixed amount discount for whole cart, the discount is a fixed sum that subtracted from the subtotal of the cart. This is what makes it different from Fixed amount discount
with which the discount sum is subtracted from each item in the cart
and not from the subtotal price of all the items. For example, you have
set the discount to be 10 and there are two items in the cart each of
which costs £80 (subtotal is £160). If the Fixed amount discount for whole cart option is applied, the total discount will be £10 which makes the final price £150. If the Fixed amount discount
option is selected, in the same situation the final price will be £140
because the £10 discount is subtracted from the price of each item and
not from their combined price.
If you select Buy X get Y free (discount amount is Y),
when the customer orders a particular number of items from one product
they get one or more items of the product for free. In the field for Discount Amount that's on the same page you need to put the number of items that the customer gets for free, and in the field for Discount Qty Step (Buy X) you need to put the number of items that have to be ordered so that the customer receives the number of items specified in the Discount Amount field for free.
So, for example, if you put 3 in the field for Discount Qty Step (Buy X) and you put 1 in the field for Discount Amount,
when the customer puts 4 items of a product in the cart one of them
will be free (its price will be subtracted from the subtotal). By
default, the promotion will be applied to any product that's put in the
cart. If you want it to apply, for example, only to a particular
product, you can set the SKU of that product as a condition using the
settings that are on the same page:
The principle of adding conditions is the same as with the general conditions that are set from the Conditions section. If you set any conditions from the Actions section, they will apply not only with Buy X get Y free (discount amount is Y) but with whatever you select from the Apply drop-down menu.
Let's continue with the rest of the shopping cart price rule action settings:
- Discount Amount
- specify the discount amount in this field. It will be calculated as a
percentage, as a fixed amount or as a whole item(s) depending on what
you chose from the Apply option that we described above.
- Maximum Qty Discount is Applied To
- if you leave this option blank or you put 0, this means that there
are no restriction on the number of items in the cart to which the
discount is applied. If you want the discount to be applied to a limited
number of items in the cart, put that number in the field. Note that
what's taken into account is not the total number of items in the cart
but the number of items from each product. So, for example, if you set
this option to 5 and a customer puts six products in the cart and there
are five or fewer than five units from each product in the cart, then
the discount will be applied to all products (provided all products meet
the conditions of the rule). If the customer puts more than five units
from the same product, then the discount for that product will be
applied only to five of the units.
- Discount Qty Step (Buy X) - as we already mentioned, if you select Buy X get Y free (discount amount is Y) from the Apply drop-down
menu on the same page, then you can use this option to specify the
number of units from a product that the customer has to order so that
they can get a certain number of items for free (the number of free
items is specified in the Discount Amount field). As the name of the option suggests this is a step, so if you put 3 for this setting and 1 in the field for Discount Amount
and a customer puts 4 items in the cart, then 1 will be free. If the
customer puts 8 items of a product in the cart, 2 will be free.
This option also works with the other methods that can be selected from the Apply menu. For example, if you set it to Percent of product price discount, you put 10 in the field for Discount Amount and 3 in the field for Discount Qty Step (Buy X),
and a customer puts 3 units of a product in the cart, then each of
these units will be 10 % cheaper. If the customer puts 2 units of a
product, then there will be no discount for those items.
- Apply to Shipping Amount
- by default, the discount is not applied to shipping charges. If you
want the shipping amount also to be discounted, set this option to Yes.
- Discard subsequent rules - by default, this is set to No
which means that if there are other price rules that are valid for
particular items in the cart, then they will be applied too. If you
don't want any other rules to be applied after this rule is applied, set
this option to Yes. Of course, this includes rules that have a
lower priority than the price rule that you're adding/editing (the
priority is set from the respective option in the Rule Information
section).
- Free Shipping - by default, this is set to No. If you set it to For matching items only, no shipping charges will be calculated for the items in the cart to which the shipping cart price rule applies. If you select For shipment with matching items
and there are items in the cart for which the price rule is valid, then
there will be no shipping charges for the whole shipment.
After you're done with the settings in the three sections that we described above make sure you save them by clicking on the Save or on the Save and Continue Edit button.
There are a couple of other sections with optional settings that you don't need to edit. These are the sections Labels and Manage Coupon Codes.
Shopping Cart Price Rule Labels
If you want to specify a name for your discount as you want it to be seen on the frontend by customers, click on the Labels section below actions:
On
the page that opens there's a field in which you can type the label as
it will appear in all store views, If there's no label specified, the
discount will be labeled on the cart page on the frontend as just Discount. If there's a label specified, it will be displayed in brackets after Discount. For example, if the label for a store view is 10 % off promotion, then on the frontend the discount will be listed in the cart as Discount (10 % off promotion).
Manage Coupon Codes
This
section will be accessible once you save the shopping cart price rule.
You can use the settings in this section if you set the Coupon option in the Rule Information section to Specific Coupon and you mark the checkbox for Use Auto Generation.
As we discussed in the Rule Information section of this tutorial, when
you create a price rule as a specific coupon you can either set the code
manually or use the automatic generator. In case you want to generate
codes automatically you have to do it using the settings in the Manage Coupon Codes section:
You can generate many coupon codes at the same time; specify the quantity in the field for Coupon Qty. You can set the length of the codes in the field for Code Length, and from the Code Format
drop-down menu you can select whether the codes should include letters
and numbers, only letters, or only numbers. If you want the generated
codes to have a fixed prefix and/or suffix, type them respectively in
the fields for Code Prefix and Code Suffix.
By
default, no dashes are put between the characters in the code. If you
want a certain number of characters in the code to be separated with a
dash, put that number in the field for Dash Every X Characters.
For example, if you put 2, the code characters will be put into groups
of two and there will be a dash between each group (e.g. e3-wd-7u-tp).
Note that dashes are not put in the prefix and the suffix (if any),
between the prefix and the first character of the code and the last
character and the suffix (e.g. prefixe3-wd-7u-tpsuffix). The dashes are
not counted as part of the code length, but if there's a prefix and/or a
suffix and dashes, the customer has to type the whole thing so that the
coupon is accepted as valid.
After you configure the settings click on the Generate
button to create the coupons. They will be listed in the table under
the options. You can delete coupons by marking their checkbox in the
table and using the Actions button in the upper right
corner of the table. Although the letters in the generated codes are
capitalized, coupon codes are case insensitive so it doesn't matter
whether the customer uses upper or lower case letters. After you're done
with the coupon codes don't forge to click on the Save or on the Save and Continue Edit button.