Introduction 

Retailers run promotions to retain existing customers and attract new ones. Tagrain allows retailers like you to define and configure promotions within the application. However, to define and configure promotions the Offers, Discounts, and Pricing Management plugin must be purchased and activated. These promotions are set to apply automatically when a certain criteria is met. This way you or your cashier is not required to remember all the promotions that are currently in operation. 

Currently the application allows you to define 4 types of promotion. These are: Buy X and Get Y, Buy X for a Fixed Price, Buy X, Save an amount, and Spend X, Save an amount.

All these promotions can be defined from the Promotions menu (Inventory > Promotions). While configuring promotions it is possible that you may have a product covered in more than one promotion. To ensure  that the customer gets the best deal, the application allows you to define the order in which the promotions should be applied. In cases where the order is NOT specified, the promotion that was created earlier (based on date / time) takes precedence.

This order in which the promotions are to be applied can be specified on the Reorder Promotions screen. 

Please Note: Any user who has the required set of permissions, can create, and manage Promotions in Tagrain, provided the Offers, Discounts and Pricing Management Plugin is activated.

How does this Promotion Reordering work?

As stated above, all the promotions defined in the application follow an order. To make things simpler, let us assume that there are 2 promotions running and they both are active. A customer walks in (who is also a part of the promotion group), makes some purchases and walks up to the POS terminal for billing.

When this product is scanned on the transaction grid, the application being smart enough knows that this product qualifies for a promotion that is marked active in the system. It then checks to see if this product is covered in any other promotion. 

If yes, it then checks the display order of both the active promotions on the promotion reorder screen.  Out of these two promotions that it encountered, it goes with the one that is higher in the order. 

Important - Spend X | Save an amount Promotion is not considered when defining the ordering sequence of the promotions. This means in cases where there are multiple Spend X | Save an amount Promotions defined in the application, the order of hierarchy will be based on the maximum spend mentioned across all the Spend X promotions

Let’s assume that you did not define the order AND both the promotions are Active. In this situation, the promotion that was created earlier (date and time stamp) takes precedence.

Multiple Promotions

There can be numerous scenarios that can fall under Promotion Reordering. We cannot cover all the scenarios. However, in this article we have made an effort to cover some of the important ones. 

Some Promotion Reordering Scenarios

Scenario1: 

Let’s say the following 2 promotions are active and configured to run in the below mentioned order.

1. Buy One Get One Free 

2. Buy 2 at a fixed price 

When the cashier scans the second qualifying product at the POS system terminal, the application will ‘qualify’ the Buy One Get One Free promotion. Furthermore, when the third product is scanned, the application keeps aside the most expensive of the products as the Buy Side product and considers the more expensive of the 2 left as the Free product on the Get Side. 

Click HERE to know more about Promotion Types.

Scenario 2

Let's say the following 3 promotions are active and configured to run in the below mentioned order.

1. Buy 2 Get 3rd at a Discounted Price

2. Buy 4 and Get a 20% Discount 

3. Buy 2 at a Fixed Price

When the cashier scans the products, the application will check to see if the scanned products are part of the Buy Side of any of these promotions. 

When the cashier scans the 3rd product, the application will ‘qualify’ the Buy 2 Get 3rd at a Discounted Price promotion. This is because Buy 2 Get 3rd at a Discounted Price is at a higher level than Buy 2 at a Fixed Price. 

When the cashier scans the 4th product, the application will still consider Buy 2 Get 3rd at a Discounted Price as the applicable promotion and not consider Buy 4 and Get a 20% Discount. This is because the application has already ‘qualified’ a promotion and therefore will not consider any other promotion. Therefore, when the user scans the fourth product, the application will ‘keep aside’ the 2 most expensive of the 4 and will consider the more expensive of the 2 left as the free product. 

When the cashier scans the 5th product, the application will subject all the five products to the promotion engine. In this case, the application will first apply Buy 2 Get 3rd at a Discounted Price because this promotion is the highest in the order. The application will then check whether or not the balance products (2) also qualify for a promotion and apply Buy 2 at a Fixed Price.

When the cashier scans the 6th product, the application will again subject all 6 to the promotion engine. In this case the application will first apply Buy 2 Get 3rd at a Discounted Price. The application will then check for the remaining 3 and check if they can also be covered in some promotion. The application will again apply Buy 2 Get 3rd at a Discounted Price. The process (of removing the already applied promotions and again subject all scanned products to the promotion engine) keeps repeating 

As soon as a product is scanned to the transaction grid, the application removes the already applied promotions and runs the promotion engine for all the products in the transaction grid. 

Scenario 3

Let's say the following 3 promotions are active and configured to run in the below mentioned order. (We just changed the order of the above promotions)

1. Buy 4 and Get a 20% Discount 

2. Buy 2 Get 3rd at a Discounted Price

3. Buy 2 at a Fixed Price

When the cashier scans the products, the application will check to see if the scanned products are part of the Buy Side of any of these promotions. 

In this case if the Buy Side of #1, #2 and #3 are the same, scanning the 3rd product will ‘qualify’ promotion #2 because of 2 reasons:

Reason 1: The transaction grid has all the products that qualify for this promotion.

Reason 2: This promotion is  higher up in the order. 

Promotion #3 will NOT be considered because it is lower down in the order. Now, when the cashier scans the 4th product, the application will apply promotion #1.

When the cashier scans the 5th product, the application will apply promotion #2

When the cashier scans the 6th product, the application will apply promotion #1 AND promotion #3

When the cashier scans the 7th product the application will apply promotion #1 AND promotion #2