Promotions

Promotions are for discounts that should apply on their own, every time, without a cashier remembering to key anything in. Open Promotions from the home screen.

What a promotion can do

Each promotion has two decisions in it:

How much comes off — either a percentage or a fixed amount.

What it applies to — a specific product, a whole category, or a combination of the two. Setting both narrows it: the promotion applies to that product within that category.

A category promotion is the usual choice for something like ten percent off all cold drinks for a week. A product promotion is the right shape for clearing one line that is close to its date.

Creating one

Give it a name you will recognise in a list — Ramadan dates 15% rather than Promo 3. Choose the type and the value, choose the target, and save.

The discount then applies automatically when a matching product goes onto a ticket. There is nothing for the cashier to do and nothing for them to forget.

Turning promotions on and off

Every promotion has an active switch. Turning a promotion off leaves it in the list, ready to switch back on.

This is what you want for anything seasonal. Build your Ramadan or Eid promotions once, switch them off, and switch them on again next year rather than rebuilding them from memory. Deleting is for promotions created by mistake.

Checking a promotion works

Before you announce it, ring up one of the affected products on a test ticket and confirm the discount lands and the total is what you intended. Then void the test ticket with a clear reason such as test.

This is worth doing every time. A promotion pointed at the wrong category is not obvious from the list, but it is instantly obvious on a ticket.

Promotions and manual discounts

A promotion applies by itself. A manual discount is keyed in by the cashier on the day. They are different tools and it is worth being deliberate about which one a situation calls for.

If staff find themselves applying the same manual discount repeatedly, that is a promotion waiting to be created. Manual discounts on every third ticket are hard to audit and easy to abuse; a promotion is set once, visible in a list, and applies identically to everyone.

Seeing what promotions cost you

The Dashboard and the sales report show what you took. To see the effect of a promotion specifically, compare the days it ran against the days on either side, and look at whether the volume it bought was worth the margin it gave away.