Discounts and loyalty

Two fields under Settings → Pricing & plans → Discounts price a customer's history into their order. Neither is a programme. There is nothing to enrol in, no card, no tier, nothing for a customer to check — these are pricing rules, read once, at the moment the order is created.

The two rules

First-order discount (%) takes that percentage off a customer who has never ordered from you before. The order records why, in words, in its totals: First-order discount (10%).

Loyalty: every Nth order free counts. Set 10 and a customer's tenth order is discounted by 100%, then their twentieth, then their thirtieth. That order reads Loyalty reward — order #10 free.

Only one can apply to an order, and first-order takes precedence. Leave either field blank and that rule is switched off.

What "free" actually covers

The discount is a percentage of goods — the items subtotal plus any express surcharge — and it can never exceed that figure.

The delivery fee sits outside it. A free tenth order carrying a $5 delivery fee still bills $5, and tax is charged on what remains. The customer's washing is free; the van is not. See Delivery and express for where that fee comes from and how to zero it if you would rather absorb it.

How the orders are counted

The count is the customer's own history with your business, and it excludes this order.

It also excludes orders that have been removed. That is deliberate and it is about money, not tidiness: a mistaken order taken off the books would otherwise cost a genuinely-new customer their first-order discount, and would shift that customer's every-Nth counter by one for the rest of their life with you.

Reading it on the order

A discount appears in the order totals as a single green line carrying its own reason — First-order discount (10%) or Loyalty reward — order #10 free — with the amount subtracted beside it. An operator quoting a total to somebody at the counter can read the reason straight off the screen, which is the whole point of storing it in words rather than as a number nobody can explain.

Tax comes after all of this, on what is left. That order is not accidental: a discount reduces what is taxable, and it is set out in Tax.