Discount is a price reduction for sales of specific service plan to specific customer. Discount is defined as percentage of the regular service plan price. Discount definition contains the list of customer accounts (customer classes) the discount is given to, and the list of service plans the discount is given for. When both customer account (class) and service plan he purchases are presented in discount definition, customer gets the discount. Besides a list of service plans, discount can be given for particular subscription period, or for all plans at once.
Thus, a service plan can become eligible for three discounts:
- Discount through the list of discounted subscription periods.
- Discount through the discounted plans list.
- Discount applicable to all plans.
More specific discount has priority over less specific ones. Specific plan discount is applied only if the ordered plan is not found in discounted subscription periods list. All-plans discount is applied only if the ordered plan is not found in discounted subscription periods list and in discounted plans list.
Discount can also be applied to sales of individual resources by maintaining a list of discounted resources. In analogy with service plans, a discount can be given for all resources or for a desired set of resources. If resource is eligible to several discounts, only the most specific discount is applied (resource-specific discount has higher priority over all-resources discount).
Customer can get discount in two cases:
- Customer account is presented in the discounted accounts list of the discount. Customer account cannot be listed in two discounts for the same service plan.
- Customer is a member of customer class presented in the discounted customer classes list of the discount. Each customer of such class is eligible for the discount. A customer class cannot be listed in two discounts for the same service plan.
Customer account can be eligible for two discounts: one through discounted accounts list, and another through discounted customer classes list. In such a case, account-list discount is applied to sales and class-list discount is ignored. Discount is applied to sales, billings, renewals and cancellations as long as discount definition is kept in Billing. If discount definition is deleted, the next billing for subscriptions will be done at regular price.
In other words, discount is termless. If discount existed at the moment of sales order creation, and discount was applicable to customer account (class) and service plan, the discount would be applied to the order. Every recurring billing will use current existing discounted prices at the moment of billing order creation. If discount is deleted, billing order will contain prices without discount. The same rule works for renewal order. The discount will be applied to renewal order, if it still exists at the moment of renewal order creation.
A discount is defined as a percentage off the regular price of a service plan (or a particular subscription period of a plan). The discount can be given to particular customer or to customers of a customer class. If customer falls under a discount through his customer class and under another discount through his account, the account discount is considered effective. The same goes for subscription period. If customer falls under a discount for subscription period and under another discount for service plan, the subscription period discount is considered effective. Therefore, the customer may only fall under one discount at a time.
Discounts Application Priority
In case there are no promotions that can be applied to the service plan, system tries to apply a discount for the particular order a customer placed. There two types of discounts in Billing:
- Discount by Promo Code
- Discount by Account/Customer Class
Discounts provide different options to define the scope of persons who are eligible for discounted prices.
When a customer orders a subscription that does not qualify for any promotion, Billing tries to specify whether any discount can be applied for that customer's order. The discount priority is the following (in order of appearance):
- Discount by submitted promo code.
- Discount for the certain customer and certain plan period.
- Discount for the certain customer and certain plan.
- Discount for the certain customer, regardless of plan.
- Discount for the customer class, to which the customer belongs to, and specific plan period.
- Discount for the customer class and specific plan.
- Discount for the customer class, regardless of plan.
Important: Avoid creating multiple discounts with the same priority level: in such a case the discount to apply will be selected at random.
Perhaps you have created three discounts: first – applicable to all service plans, second and third – applicable to a service plan and to one of its subscription periods respectively. Therefore, theoretically, you have three discounts applicable to one service plan. However, only one of them is applied – the most specific of three. In our example it is the discount on particular subscription period. When customer subscribes to that subscription period, he gets the third discount only. When customer subscribes to any other subscription period of the plan, he gets the second discount. He won't get first discount in any case. Such mechanism may come in handy when you offer general discount on all of your plans and need to single out few particular plans (subscription periods) and give some distinct discount on them.