This FAQ chapter covers generalized discounts. For discounts based on quantity of items purchased, visit our powerful quantity discount system

Q:
I want to have a sale. Can I take a percent off all my items without changing the prices on the entire website?

A:
Yes. There are two ways to do it. The first way will automatically discount everything by a given %. The second way requires the user to visit some page on your site to activate the discount.

Method 1:
Use our quantity discount system to do it. You only need to enter one code into the system to take a % off everything.

Use this code:
.*~1=P.90

The above code means: for all partnumbers, in quantities of one or more, charge 90% of the price coded into the page. The power of method 1 is that your quantity discount can affect more than one item on your website.

new! For those of you that generate your website automatically, having a separate system for quantity discounts where the codes reside on other places than on the generated pages can be a problem. To facilitate that, we allow embedded quantity discount codes, which keeps all the data right on your webpage. Here are some examples.

Method 2:
You can add a tag to your cart display that will let shoppers turn on a "global" discount easily. Here is the code:

<a href="http://www.cartserver.com/sc/cart.cgi?item=a-1358^%3Ddiscount%3D^any+text^5">
Click here</a> to enable our limited time special 5% off discount.

Make it nice and bold as a promotion should be. Note that we had to replace the = character with %3D. This is to conform to URL encoding standards when talking to the cart via text link.

A more human readable version if POSTing to the cart is:

<form action=http://www.cartserver.com/sc/cart.cgi method=POST>
<input type=hidden name=item value="a-1358^=discount=^your discount^5">
<input type=submit value="Click to enable 5% discount">
</form>

The POST method is a lot of code to get into that one box in the config form, although it will go in if you get rid of the newline chars.

Q:
I wanted to offer a flat amount off, not a percent. Can I do that instead?

A:
Yes. Just use =discountflat= instead of =discount= in the code above, and the 10 in the above example would take $10.00 off. (remember, the link method has %3D instead of = )

Q:
I want to offer a discount page or coupon to my members. Can I?

A:
Yes. That way you can let THEM know that page URL where the discount button is but not tell the public at large. We have an example of that here

Q:
I want to offer gift certificates from my site. I am able to do this easily through the discountflat option. I also offer member discounts of 10% using the discount option. It does not appear that a member could get 10% off of their order using a gift certificate. This could be a problem. Is there a fix? It appears that as soon as a member logs their gift certificate into the cart it replaces their member discount. What can I do to get around this?

A:
As you've surmised, one discount replaces another in the current revision of the shopping cart. We advise that you convert your gift to be "Negative Price" items, so you can have as many as you wish.

<input type=hidden name=item value="a-1358^=MX1=GC5^$5 Gift Certificate^-5.00^1">

You can use the =MX1= tag in to limit the qty to one.