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Creating Price Rules

Vouchers play an important role in your daily relationships with your customers. Typically, customers like two things when shopping:

  • feeling special, unique.
  • getting good prices.

Both can be achieved with personalized discounts, and this is precisely where vouchers come into play – or more precisely, price rules, which is a new feature in PrestaShop 1.5.

"Price rules" can take two forms:

  • Cart rules. These are actually the successors to vouchers, as they were known in previous version of PrestaShop.
    Basically, it enables you to create per-customer vouchers codes, but also much more. See the dedicated section below.
  • Catalog price rules. Enables you to assign price reductions by category, manufacturer, supplier, attribute or feature.
    For instance, you can set a rule that would say that for Spanish customers belonging to the "Good clients" group would get 10% off on your Electronics category and all Sony products for the first week of July.

Cart Rules

The "Cart rules" page presents an advanced tool that succeeds and builds upon the voucher system from PrestaShop 1.4. Seasoned users of PrestaShop will not be surprised with the features that were added, but will only have to adapt to the new name: when this guide mentions vouchers, we're actually talking about cart rules – which, in themselves, are quite different to credit slips.

Difference between a credit slip, a voucher and a cart rule

A credit slip is first and foremost a written proof that a product has been returned. Most of the time, the user can use it as a voucher.

A voucher is a discount code which does not have to be tied to a merchandise return or a refund, and which can take many more forms than a simple credit slip:

  • a discount on an order (percentage).
  • a discount on an order (amount).
  • free shipping.

You can apply a voucher to all customers, or a group of customers, or a single customer; you can set its expiration date;

A cart rule is basically an advanced version of a voucher: in addition to what a voucher could do in PrestaShop 1.4, the cart rules system introduced in PrestaShop 1.5 enables you to:

  • Name the discount.
  • Allow the customer to use only a portion of the discount.
  • Assign priorities between cart rules.
  • Set the compatibility between cart rules.
  • Have the discount only work with some carriers.
  • Have the discount only work with a selection of products and/or categories and/or manufacturers and/or suppliers and/or attributes... or all of these at the same time if necessary!
  • Have the discount be applicable for free shipping and/or a discount on an order and/or a free gift... or all of these at the same time if necessary!

The "Cart rules" page lists the currently existing cart rules, which can enable or disable by clicking on the icons in the "Status" column.

Creating A New Cart Rule

Vouchers can be created automatically after a product return, but you can create a new voucher at any time manually, and be very specific about its properties.

The creation form has three tabs, forming the

  • Informations. Contains the rule's identifiers and main settings.
    • Name.
    • Description.
    • Code. Give your rule a unique code. You can either create one manually (and therefore use readable words, like 1VOUCH4JOE), or have PrestaShop generate one unique string by clicking the "Click to generate random code" button. Of course, you can also use any other string generator (such as http://www.random.org/strings/).
      Note that if no code is set, the rule will apply to any customer fitting the other conditions:
      • If there's a code, then customer have to enter it during the ordering process.
      • If there's no code, then the rule is automatically applied to benefiting customers.
    • Partial use.
    • **Priority.
    • Status.
  • Conditions.
    • Limit to a single customer.
    • Validity.
    • Minimum amount.
    • Total available.
    • Total available for each user.
    • The four check-boxes at the bottom of the tab are very important, as further filter to what or who the rule is to be applied.
      • Carrier selection.
      • Customer group selection.
      • Compatibility with other cart rules.
      • Product selection.
  • Actions. This is where you choose what the discount actually consists of.
    • Free shipping. The rule treats benefiting customers to free shipping.
    • Apply a discount.
      • Percent (%). The rule applies to a percentage of the order total. For instance, let's say the order is valued at $200 before taxes. The rule has a value of 15%. Customer who benefit from this rule will only have to pay $170 (before taxes and shipping costs).
      • Amount. The rule applies a monetary discount on the order total. For instance, let's say the order is valued at $200 before taxes. The discount offers $20 off the purchase. Customer who benefit from this rule will only pay $80 before (before shipping costs). You can choose whether taxes are applied to the discount or not.
      • None. The rule doesn't offer any discount on the order. Choosing this option makes the next section, "Apply discount to", disappear.
    • Apply discount to.
      • Order (without shipping).
      • Specific product.
      • Cheapest product.
      • Selected product(s).
    • Send a free gift.
  • Choose the voucher's behavior – meaning how it should behave when the order's amount is less that the voucher's:
    • reduce the voucher to the total order amount: do this if you want vouchers to be used only once.
    • create a new voucher with the remaining amount: do this if your customers can use their voucher's value for as long as it has some.
    • create a negative invoice: do this if you want vouchers to be used only once, but you still need to know the final value for your accounting book. The user won't receive any kind of further voucher or discount.
  • Give it a proper description, in every languages that your shop supports (click on the flag to change language). Customers will be able to read this, so write a proper sentence.
  • Indicate which categories the voucher applies to – because sometimes you'd rather have customers not use vouchers for certain products.
  • Set a quantity of available vouchers: either "1" if it is intended for a single customer, or any number if the voucher is for whoever uses one first.
  • You can set the number of times a voucher can be used. That number must be at least equal to the quantity of available vouchers.
    • If that number is inferior to the total quantity of available vouchers, then one single customer won't be able to use all of them.
    • Keeping it to "1" makes sure that each of your customers can only the voucher once. In that case, make sure the voucher applies to a group rather than a customer...
  • Set a minimum amount under which the voucher is not applicable. Your voucher will only be applicable if the customer's order is above the given amount.
  • You can choose whether or not the vouchers are allowed to be used with other promotions on your products or other vouchers. Make your preferences known by ticking the checkboxes.
  • The "To be used by" field enables you to restrict your voucher to only one of your customers. For instance, if you had a delivery delay and you want to apologize, you can create a voucher for this customer that only he or she can access. To quickly find the customer, type in the first few letters of their First or Last name in the "Filter" field.
  • The voucher can have a time limit (for instance, a discount for launch week). Click the "From" and "To" fields in order to choose your dates using the calendar. By default, a new voucher lasts a year.
  • You can decide whether the voucher should be shown in the cart summary or not. Do this if you want to inform a customer that they can use a voucher. If you'd rather not push for the voucher's usage, then do not show it.
  • Finally, the "Enable" field allows you to enable or disable the vouchers.

Once everything has been saved, you can send your voucher to your customers.

Your voucher will appear in the "Vouchers" tab, and you can delete or edit it at any time. If the voucher was set to a specific group or customer, then it will appear in the Front-Office, in the customer's "Vouchers" section of his account:

...as well as in the cart (if you chose to), where they can choose which one to apply to their order:

Vouchers that are set to apply to all customers do not appear in these locations: the customer has to know about them in order to use them.

In order to apply the voucher, the customer needs to visit his cart and enter the voucher in the suitable field and click "Add". The customer won't be able to apply the voucher if he checks out immediately.

Once applied, the cart summary displays the voucher's impact on the order's amount:

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