How do I Use Discounts?
Discounts are used at point of sale to reduce the price of an item or an entire sale. Discounts can be used for short-term promotions, or for supporting long-standing policies, like an incentive to get consignors to spend their credit in-store.
Note that discounts are only available using ConsignCloud Register, our advanced point of sale add-on. You can create a discount by pressing "Add Discount" under the "Discounts" tab in the ConsignCloud Register settings. Learn more about the ConsignCloud Advanced POS in the article below:
Discount Types
There are three basic discount types:
Store Discounts can be used to take a discount entirely from the store share of the sale and leave the consignor's portion untouched.
Consignor Discounts are likewise used to take a discount entirely from the consignor's portion. If this isn't possible, the remainder will be taken out of the store's portion.
Shared Discounts impact both consignor and store portions evenly.
Like surcharges, discounts can generally be set up to be either a fixed amount or a percentage adjustment using the value type field.
Discount Rules and Schedules
Rules
Stores can add Rules to their Discounts if they want their Discounts to automatically apply to certain items in their store whether by tags or categories. For example, a store has a sale day where everything with the tag "SUMMER SALE 2025" is 20% off. They can use this Rule field to associate all items with the tag "SUMMER SALE 2025" with the 20% off discount.
NOTE: Applying a Discount to a tag will only work if the tag has already been created
In the Rules field, click "+Add a Rule" and apply the discount to all items with your correct tag. Also note that if multiple rules are specified, only one rule has to match for the policy object to be applied.
This same rule can apply to Categories too. If that same store had a sale where all dresses are 15% off, they could change the rule to apply to all items with Category "Dresses".
Schedules
Schedules can also be added to a discount. This incentivizes store owners to cycle through their inventory faster. To apply a scheduled discount to a sale, scroll to the bottom of the discount creation screen and click "+Add a Phase". You can add an unlimited amount of phases to your discount schedule, which you can edit based on your store's policy.
NOTE: When using a discount schedule, remember to keep in mind your initial discount value. This amount will usually start at 0% and increase as the phases of the schedule start rolling out. The discount value percentage is where the discount will start at the beginning of the schedule.
Using your Discount
Once a discount has been created, a button will appear for it under shortcuts at point of sale. If you wish to apply a discount to every item in the sale — for instance, on a 20% off everything day — use this button. You can disable this button when creating a discount by toggling off "Add Quick Button to POS".
If you wish to apply a discount to just a single item in a sale, first add the item to the sale, and then click on its name in the Sale Summary. Find the Discounts section and check the box of the discount you'd like to apply. When it has been applied, the name and amount of the discount should appear directly under the item in the Sale Summary.
You can also set discounts up to be applied on a buy-on-get-one basis using the BOGO Threshold field.
Discounts are listed individually in your Sales Summary. This can be helpful for limited-time sale events, where it's important to compare the discounts given against the boost in sales. It is also important to evaluate the effectiveness of long-standing discount policies over time as well — even though they are popular, they may not pencil out for your particular store and customer base.