How can I effectively combine discounts on Shopify POS?

Retail & Point of Sale

Topic summary

New “Combining Discounts” applies percentage discounts sequentially, not additively, leading to smaller total discounts than expected. Example: a 50% sale plus an additional 20% off results in 60% off (50% then 20% of the remaining price), not 70%.

Key POS (point of sale) limitation:

  • Multiple automatic discounts do not stack on POS; staff must manually apply discounts, undermining in-store efficiency.
  • When a cart includes items from two separate automatic sales, POS shows only one discount and ignores the other.

Workarounds reported:

  • Create a 20% off “all items” discount and manually apply the sale-collection discount in POS.
  • For online, mark the sale collection at 60% off so that an additional automatic 20% off brings the effective discount closer to the intended total.

Impact and concerns:

  • Some merchants may need extra transactions to achieve intended pricing due to POS limitations.

Status:

  • No resolution yet. Merchants request support for combining automatic discounts directly in POS and clearer control over discount stacking behavior.
Summarized with AI on January 7. AI used: gpt-5.
1

I am having a couple of issues with the new ‘Combining Discounts’ feature.

First, I am running a sale this weekend and the way that the feature actually operates is extremely clunky and doesn’t combine the discounts in a way that creates my desired discount. For example, I have a sale section that is 50% off and in conjunction, this weekend all items are 20% off. I was hoping that all the sale items would be 70% off but instead with the way the discounts are processed, they are 50% off then 20% making the items only 60% off.

Secondly and more importantly,

The combine discounts feature doesn’t work automatically on POS making ‘combine discounts’ useless for running through POS because staff will have to manually enter discounts for either the sale collection items or all the other items that are 20% off and the sale items.

My roundabout fix:

I’ve set up a discount for 20% off everything (ALL items collection), but my staff will still have to apply the discount for sale collection items manually. For online purchases, I made the sales collection 60% off and then the 20% off everything automatically applies as a combined discount making the items closer to my desired discount.

I hope that combine discounts on automatic discounts will be offered through the POS soon.

4 Likes
2

We’ve run into a similar situation, it will be good if this functionality will carry over to POS. The way we need it to work will generate an extra transaction on occasion.

1 Like
3

Having a similar issue with not being able to use multiple automatic discounts on the POS. We have two sales running on separate items and if someone wants to buy both sales the cart only shows one of the discount codes - and ignores the other.

1 Like