How can we exclude certain products from a lifetime discount?

[cmscss]

We'd like to offer a lifetime discount to VIPs but in order to make that work, we need to exclude factory seconds.

How do we make a discount work for all products, and exclude two of them?

Currently, it looks like we have to update the code everytime single time we add a product to the store - is that correct?

[Lizzy]

Hey, cmscss.

I'm Lizzy, one of the Gurus on the support team at Shopify.

There isn't currently an option to exclude items from a discount code within the Shopify admin. That being said, you can use an automated collection to make the discount exclude a few products.

The way this would work is that you would create an automated collection with the conditions being "Product Title" and "is not equal to" with the titles of your factory seconds. 

This will create a collection with every item in your store, except for the items excluded from the discount. Then, when you create your discount code you can just apply it to the collection you've built. With this method, when you add new products to your store, they will automatically get added to the collection and be included in the discount. As long as they don't match one of the exclusion conditions.

There are also a few apps in our app store, which would give you a bit more flexibility with discounts. I've linked a couple of them below for you to check out!

Discount Ninja
Bulk Discounts

If you have any other questions about what I've said, please let me know. You can give us a call too or start a live chat at any time. We're here 24/7!

Thank you, 

Lizzy
 

[Catharina_Coyle]

Hi! I found this when I was searching for a solution to the same issue and was wondering if it still works if keep that collection "hidden" on your site, i.e. unavailable on all sales channels? I don't want to add more collections visually on the site, but need this workaround.

[SassySandra]

This is insane being that there are plenty of apps with Rewards programs that auto generate coupon codes. There is no way to exclude a single product from these randomly generated coupons. We need an option to exclude a product from all coupons in general. Why doesn't shopify have a solution for this yet?

[SammieJ]

I completely agree, its such a common thing on stores to only want customers to use one type of discount available and the work arounds are so time consuming and open to human error. Shopify need to look into this one!

[It_s_me]

It's actually pretty crazy. We used to be with Big Commerce, and we'd be able to create a discount, and 'exclude' products from being discounted, so the discount simply would apply to everything in the cart except those that are excluded.

In shopify, they don't have this option, so you have to select the collections/products that are included in the discount, which is super time consuming and annoying. And for those that are not included in the discount, you do not select.

BUT, and this is the craziest part....the discount will NOT apply at all if a non-discounted item is in the cart. In other words, the discount will not work at all if you have an item in the cart that is not included in the discount.

For example, if you want all bikes to get a $20 discount, but NOT accessories that you buy separately, like bike racks, for example. So if there is a bike in the cart, and you add a bike rack to the cart also, the shopify discount feature is not intelligent enough to discount the bike only.

Like, really? And shopify somehow beat Big Commerce in ecommerce stores?

[nomadbrad]

This is crazy, it's a very simple fix and should be implemented right away, we came from Big Commerce and I assumed (wrongly) that a simple essential feature like this would come on every kind of ecommerce platform.

[It_s_me]

You came from BC recently? I left them in 2016 on the advice from my dev...i realise now that he just wanted his job tove easier since there's limited customising due to apps doing the hard work, which ends up costing you far more. I was also promised we wouldn't lose backlinks etc, but as the url structure is different, we lost almost all of them, even with the redirects. Sales dropped and we've never recovered. And the discount issue also means that we lose sales due to limited ways we can apply them to products. 

We make zero profit on one of the items we offer, as it is an add-on to our core item. So because of Shopify's limited abilities, the add-on must be discounted for the core item to be also. We obviously cannot afford this, so we can't run alot of the promo's we'd like to (ie: get 20% off X item for two days only!) because they literally *won't * get 20% off the item if the add-on is included! So we have to discount the add-on also, and lose out, or not offer a promo at all. 

So really,  Shopify are actually out there to murder our sales and ruin businesses, and they're good at it!

[Bea_Rue]

Perhaps Shopify has corrected this issue recently because I enabled this exact method for product exclusion via an automated collection for discounts and it worked perfectly. I tested it by adding two excluded items to my cart along with an included item, and the discount only applied to the included item. Here's a screenshot-

[saucey]

I'm going to try it and test it also. Hope this works. Shopify support, if your seeing this please don't ignore it, put out a 411 to the higher up to fix it to where we can block discount codes on the actual product page. Would save us a lot of time and profit margins.

[cb3]

I agree. This is crazy. How is it impossible to exclude ONE product from sale? Some products never go on sale and you should be able to exclude something from sale. 

[KurtisSpade]

Is there a way to hide the code used at the POS on the customers order summary page (so they can not use the code for online purchase). I also have it set up this way so that this discount only applies to certain items during the checkout process (set to specific collections). Additionally I would prefer not to have to set the code to specific users (there will be way too many).  Any help is appreciated!

[It_s_me]

hey! I am 100% sure you can do this in the code. Shopify support might be able to do this for you (sometimes they do this when they know how to, and if they're genuine in wanting to help). Any developer should be able to do it for you too. If you can't find one, i have one for you. He can do anything! I'll see if i can email you info privately. 

[kpvw]

@cb3 you should be able to create a collection for this purpose e.g. match all conditions: product price > $0 & product title does not contain 'product title', then only apply the discount code to that collection

[farmhounds]

exactly - one year later and nothing, there are so many basic, tiny improvements Shopify could have fixed in 24 hours, but nope - go buy an app.

[EddyChung]

You can do this with Shopify collections - no apps or custom code required. 

1. Create an automated collection that excludes the products (use the "is not equal to" selector) 
2. Add a discount for this specific collection 

Then the discount will work for the collection (which is every product in your store except the ones you excluded).

If you want to exclude more products you can just add more conditions to your collection.

You can exclude based on a lot of things:

• Type
• Vendor
• Price
• Tag
• Weight
• Title
• Stock

The tags one is pretty powerful because you can just tag products with "exclude" and it will be excluded. 

I wrote a tutorial with screenshots here if you need more help. 

[farmhounds]

Yes, tech that's a workaround, but it's extremely painful to
maintain/manage. We launch new products and new promo codes every week,
which means I would have to generate a new collection every time as well.
Plus, it makes sharing the promotional link impossible, unless you want to
have your customers thrown into a collection that is literally everything
you sell except the items you are trying to not discount. Still
completely blown away that Shopify discounts are still stuck in 2008.

[EddyChung]

I'm not following - why do you have to recreate the collection? It is an automated collection, it will update as you add new items. 

[Christophe72]

Hi Eddy

Thank you for your help on this discount issue.

On my site I have several apps creating automated discount codes such as the loyalty program and for birthdates. Thousands. I also create coupon codes for punctual occasions. And I use the compared price option.

Unfortunately I find it difficult to apply your solution in this case.

I t's a shame Shopify didn't bother adding a very simple option on the product's page to avoid this kind of problem.

I have products I can't put live for sale because my clients will apply a coupon code on it. Terrible.

Thank you,

Christophe

[PatrickBrunelle]

Thanks for the suggested solution. However, in our case we tried 2 differents scenarios without success - maybe you have a suggestion for us.  We want an automatic rebate that apply to all products at regular price.  So we try to create a collection of all products at regular price (no rebates).

1- We tried to setup a collection with items with the condition "Compare at price" of $0.00" (Which mean no rebate on this product).  But the collection turn out empty.  Not working as for now.

2- We could alternatively (but painfully) tag product we want to exclude.  But when creating an automatic collection  we can define TAG we want to ADD, but not TAG we want to EXCLUDE.

It appear far more complicated than expected finally.

[EddyChung]

@PatrickBrunelle I hear you. 

Looks like this would be a good candidate for a Shopify app. 

From this thread, I think the app would need two features, exclude with a simple button on the Product page and an "advanced exclude" where the shop owner can specify conditions (like your Compare at price) to exclude products. 

Let me know if there are any other features you would like. 

@Christophe72 What apps are you using that create your discount codes? Your situation is a little more complicated. 

[PatrickBrunelle]

Good afternoon,

In fact, What we need seems pretty simple at first. We want to create an
automatic rebate on all products at regular price. So we tried to create
an automatic collection of all product excluding products which had a
rebate. This proved to be more challenging than expedited at first.

After looking around, we did find an app to do this :
https://apps.shopify.com/advanced-custom-collections

It's just that in the first place we were expecting this to be quite
standard in Shopify.

Thanks for a quick answer.

[Christophe72]

Hi Eddy,

cm commerce email marketing, happy birthday email, loyaltylion generate coupon codes automatically.

Interesting. I found out that gift cards on shopify cannot be discounted with a coupon code. I don’t remember doing anything for this.

I will encounter problems when selling products on which coupon codes cannot be applied. I definitely don’t understand why shopify staff didn’t think about this since they applied the feature to gifcards.

Thank you very much for your intesrest,

Christophe

[Dulsamer]

After you create the collection to be excluded, does it need to be published to any of your sales channels?

[Skedio]

Hi Eddy,

Do you know why this does not work anymore? Was the ability to use the option "is not equal to" removed from Shopify? 

It is now greyed out and I am not able to select it at all on any collections:

Please let me know what you think?

Kind regards,

George

[anton_nv]

Hi @Skedio  - AFAIK you have never been able to use 'Not Equal' with the tag filter. Presumably because producst have multiple tags so they are never exactly 'Equal'. That said I have never understood why 'Contains' isnt an option here.

The solution is to tag non-discountable products or create a collection that doesnt contain items you want to exclude. Cant offer anything as to the rhyme or reason but thats normally how its done.

[Skedio]

@anton_nv I believe this is exactly how the "Equal" option works. If a tag is present in ALL tags that is "Equal" to the tag we want to target the product would show up in the collection.

I don't see why the same shouldn't work for "Not Equal".

Agreed the terminology should definitely be "Contains" and "Does Not Contain" respectfully.

[luvaas]

No, it is not possible to exclude specific products from a collection based on tag. Was this ever true? That sure would be nice though as having the ability to exclude products from a collection using tags would easily solve these issues.

[kallenconsult]

Came across this looking for the "exclude" function.

Sadly, this is not completely accurate.  You cannot exclude based on tags (which would have been great!). When you go to set the condition based on tags, there is only one option "is equal to".  If I could set up a collection that excluded tags, that would be perfect.  But as it stands, I have to base it on Title?  Which opens up the system to inadvertent errors when adding new products?

It's been four years and this has not been addressed.  A glaring omission as just about every other platform supports "excluding" from discounts -- even woocommerce!

[topshop]

@kallenconsult , the ability to exclude (products, collections etc.) is one of the primary features of the Discount Bot app as you can see from this screenshot below. Basically, you can create a discount that's applicable for the whole store or a collection, for example, but then pick which ones (product / collections) should be excluded.

Not sure if this might be useful right away in your situation, but it sounds like it would. Either way, would appreciate greatly if you have any feedback. Also please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

[kallenconsult]

We are nearing release of a conversion from Woocommerce to Shopify.  I'm using Matrixify to copy the data and have found that we have a lot of discounts with excluded products.  With your app:

1) Given the image you provided, I assume this app is integrated into the Shopify admin?

2) Can I import from Woo and include the excludes?

[topshop]

1) Yes, this is an embedded admin app built with Shopify functions.

2) Currently working with Matrixify team to get the integration fixed. Doesn't seem to work as expected currently.

I can dm you directly if you don't mind with any updates.

[Renars]

Hey @topshop 

Confirming here that indeed we looked into this in the Matrixify app support ticket, and the Matrixify app migration is working as expected.

As the data is imported into your store as you see it in the Shopify admin, then such Shopify side limitations can cause issues for the migration as WooCommerce and Shopify are two very different platforms with different requirements and features.

For various features that Shopify does not support natively, trying an app indeed can be a great solution. Another option would be to restructure your data in a way that does match Shopify limitations, but, of course, that might not always be an option.

[It_s_me]

I know.....i am SO SICK of app suggestions. Apps should be for things that are out of the norm, but discounts are done on a daily basis from almost EVERY store in the world, and what we're asking is very basic....I mean, an app for that? Come on...

[tbianchini]

Hello,

Will this method work if the item exists in more than one collection? I've followed the steps, but the items appear to still receive the discount. I was wondering if this is because the item belongs to two other collections?

Thanks!

[crafdec]

This question was originally from 2018 and we STILL don't have the option to just exclude items from discount codes.

I have over 3,000 skus and more coming in every day, it's ridiculous to have to update every time. You've known about this problem for over 3 years at least, please add this option ASAP!

[SimplifiedShop]

There's a new update in March 2021 for this! Please check out my new video guide here 🙂

https://youtu.be/SiPWPXxaguY

[please_address2]

Ugh!  Please fix this.  Ridiculous to not be able to exclude a discounted bundle we've created on workflow discounts.  A disappointing oversight that does not consider shop owners.

[Joe-JS]

2022 now and still no option to exclude a product from a discount... unbelievable!

I have an automatic discount set up for certain collections and I can't even exclude 1 product and set up a separate discount for that! crazy - something so simple mentioned years ago and it's not implemented yet. Very disappointed.

[Skedio]

Hi All,

Lizzy I am not sure why but it seems this "not equal to" option no longer works on Shopify or I am missing something? When I try to use this technique the "not equal to" option is greyed out. In fact, all options except "equal to" are greyed out.

Does anyone know why this might be?

George.

[ChalkMercantile]

Hi Lizzy,

I have a membership and my members get a discount on everything in my store with a discount code. Now I've added gift certificates and they are the only thing that will not be discounted. Can I deactivate/delete the discount code and then create a new one (using the same code so my members won't have to learn/use a new one) using this whole collection rigamarole? 

[PCBros]

I can't say for sure if or how it works, but if you open the discount in
Shopify and scroll down to the bottom, there is a "Delete Discount" option.
I would imagine after deleting it you could just make it again with
different parameters.

[Alexk123A]

As mentioned below, this is not a solution for discounts created automatically through apps. Is Shopify actually working on this? It should be as simple as enabling an option in product creation "Exclude From Discount Codes"

[Tenpinshop]

Until Shopify fixes this, I've found the only way to sort this is to

1. Create collections relevant to what you want to show. For example, I've created a collection where tag = <vendor(s)> that we want to include in the offer.

2. If you want to exclude anything, best to set up another collection that has more defined rules in it, e.g. tag = Vendor and exclude product title/tag does not include <words>. You could also use a bulk tag editor if you have loads of rules, and apply a rule to include the products on which the voucher code will work. Some apps will auto-update the rule too so you can apply it and it will auto-apply depending on the rules you set up within it.

3 . Create a voucher code to INCLUDE certain collections. You can hide these from view and they still work.

Bit of a drag but it seems to be working fine.

@Shopify please give this some attention, I imagine my solution won't work for some for some reason I haven't thought of!

[iccagus]

Hello,

I don't understand what's the problem here...

I am simply able to create a new discount. And Shopify lets me choose which products I want to apply it to.

And when I create a new product. Shopify doesn't attach any discounts to that product by default.

So... what is the issue here? Can someone please explain if I'm doing something different?

[qlbooks]

The issue is that many (probably most) shops have a universal discount. Something like 10% for new signups or customer loyalty. Later, you add a new product that is already heavily discounted so you want it to be excluded from the universal discount. There is no way to do it other than what has been discussed which is a nightmare.

[frenjamin]

Why is it that every time I'm looking for a basic feature it doesn't exist and there's a ludicrously impractical and borderline stupid suggestion for a workaround? The suggestion here might be ok if the collections feature wasn't terrible. I can't even set a collection to include all items except those in a manual collection. What is being proposed here is to manually tag all of my several thousand products and then set each of my hundreds of discount codes to only include that tag. Borderline insane. How about just include basic functionality into the software? 

[web_at_ambi]

Are we still looking into this?  It's been 4 years.  😐

[Christophe72]

Just a followup on a possible solution. Not really 100% but you'll see.

As a reminder I have a bunch of apps generating random coupon codes.

At this point I created a tag for my products I want to be excluded from coupon codes.

Then I created a hidden collection containing these products.

Then I went to the automatic coupon codes creator. 

I created a coupon code specific to the products' collection I created with a fixed amount of 0,01 (your local currency). I tried 0,001 but it's impossible. 🙂

Which means you'll client will get a discount of one cent which I guess is ok. They'll just think great, it's cheaper. Probably a mistake." One cent is not a big deal.

These products will not be discounted by other coupon codes since it's automatically applied.

This may be a good quick cheap solution.

At this point I'm also looking on upwork if I can find some help on coding to get a true "exclude products from all coupon codes" feature implemented.

A shame Shopify doesn't bother about fixing this issue.

[SimplifiedShop]

In 2021 this seems to still be an issue - Created a video to help as a workaround without any apps, just a few automated collections, hope it may help:

https://youtu.be/9fKVkG7xpOE