Subscription Discounts

After enabling subscriptions on a product, you can apply order or item-level discounts to it. When creating a discount that applies to subscriptions, there are some additional settings for frequency and continuity order that you can configure. This guide explains those elements of the discount settings.

Recall that multiple discounts can also be applied to the same order if they are enabled for stacking, though line-item discounts will need to be applied to different items and order-level discounts need to be applied to different layers.

Subscription Discount Examples

As with all discounts, you can require a specific total quantity or number of distinct products for the order to qualify for the discount. But a subscription discount also has additional settings to consider the subscription frequency and continuity orders. The below gives an overview of how different discount cases might be configured.

• Total Quantity: These order-level discounts are based on the total quantity in an order, regardless of how many different products are purchased. If the discount requires a total quantity of five, then the shopper can either purchase Item A in a quantity of five or they can purchase one quantity each of Item A, B, C, D, and E. 
• Distinct Products: These order-level discounts are based on the number of different products in an order (excluding free products, and a bundle counts as one product). For example, if a discount requires three distinct products in an order then the shopper must purchase any quantity of Item A, Item B, and Item C. The discount would not be applicable if they only purchased Item A and Item B. 
• Frequency: These item-level discounts apply to specific frequencies, encouraging higher subscription frequencies. For instance, a discount could apply to monthly subscription items and would not be valid for subscriptions that are only re-ordered at a bimonthly frequency. 
• Continuity: These order-level discounts apply to a specific continuity, meaning they are redeemable at only a particular rate of orders (such as every three orders), to prevent the customer from using the discount on every order. 

Discount Criteria Logic

Subscription and one-time purchase order-level discounts are evaluated differently when determining whether the discount criteria is met. If the criteria is not met, the discount will not be applied.

• Subscription discounts consider only the quantities, item prices, and order total associated with subscription items in the cart.
• One-time discounts consider the quantities, item prices, and order total for all items regardless of whether they are one-time or subscription items.

Both types of order-level discounts are carried over to the subscription from the order.

Configure a Subscription Discount

To configure a subscription discount, follow the basic steps in the Discounts guide but make the following adjustments for discounts that you want to apply to subscriptions:

1. Select Subscription sales only in the discount's general settings. A discount can only be valid for either a one-time purchase or a subscription, but not both. 
2. A new section titled Subscription Discount Conditions will appear with more configurations. Select whether this discount should be able to apply to the initial order only, continuity orders only, or both. 
3. Your selection in Step #2 determines what other settings are available in this section, in addition to whether you are creating an order-level or item-level discount (based on the Applies To field):
   • If you are creating an order-level discount and selected to apply the discount only to the initial order, no further subscription settings will be available.
   • If you are creating an order-level discount and selected to apply the discount to either continuity orders or both, then enable Nth purchase in a subscription to specify which single continuity order the discount can be applied to. Alternatively, enable Select subscription start and end to configure it as a series of recurring discounts on continuity orders instead. In this case, specify the required start point (the first continuity order that the discount can be applied to) and the optional recurrence rate and/or end point (the final continuity order that the discount can be applied to). For instance, you could configure a discount to begin taking effect on the 2nd continuity order and recur every other order until the 10th order is reached.
     If you do not provide a recurrence, then the discount will apply to every continuity order. If you do not provide an end date, then the discount will never terminate.
     
   • If you are creating an item-level discount and selected to apply the discount only to the initial order, the Subscription frequency toggle will be available. Toggle this option on if you want to specify a required frequency for the subscription, and select at least one frequency from the dropdown that this discount will be valid for.
   • If you are creating an item-level discount and selected to apply the discount to either continuity orders or both, then the continuity recurrence settings will be available in addition to the frequency. This provides you with the same options for the recurrence and/or the Nth purchase as explained above for order-level discounts. If you select both a frequency AND a recurrence/Nth purchase, then the discount can only be applied to subscriptions with that frequency and it will apply per the recurrence/Nth setting. For example, if the frequency is weekly and the recurrence is set to every 2 orders with a start point of 2 and an end point of 6, then the discount will be applied to the 2nd, 4th, and 6th order of the weekly frequency.
4. If you are configuring an order-level discount, you can also specify any requirements for product quantity and distinct products that the order must meet to qualify for the discount: 
   • Under the Discount Conditions tab, locate the Purchase Requirements section. This determines the product requirements that the order must meet in order for the discount to be valid:
     • If desired, set a Minimum Total Order Quantity. This will allow the discount to be applied only if the order's total quantity meets that value.
     • If desired, set the minimum Number of distinct products in the Order. For instance, if you want the discount to only apply if the order includes three or more different products then set this value to three.
   • You can also set any required products or categories that must be purchased in order for the discount to be applicable.
5. Finally, you must link the discount to the price lists you created for subscription pricing.
   • Under the Target Criteria tab, use the Applicable Price Lists dropdown to select the parent price list you created for subscription pricing. This is required for subscription-only discounts and will be validated when you attempt to save the discount.
6. Click Save in the top right to finish creating the discount.