A spring offer on the candles

The sample gift shop in this tour has more soy candles in the stockroom than it can sell at full price before Christmas stock arrives. The owner wants a short offer to move them, but only on the candles: the cushions, the mugs and the serving boards are selling well and should stay at full price. This tour shows the offer being set up at 08:45, before the doors open, in five stops on the Offers screen.

Each stop is expanded below into what you fill in, what you see and why it matters. Then comes a worked example of what 10% off really costs, followed by tips, mistakes and what to read next.

What does the Offers screen show first?

It lists the offers you already have, split into what is running now and what is paused. In the sample, one offer is running: £2 off tea towel sets until 31 October, marked Active. One is paused: Summer garden, 15% off, which ended on 31 August. The paused one is not deleted; it is waiting to be switched back on next summer.

On the other side is the New offer form, headed "A discount on your products, for a set time".

Step by step

1. Look at what is running. Before adding an offer, check you are not about to stack it on top of another one for the same products. The tea towel offer will not touch the candles, so there is no clash.
2. Name the offer for customers. Offer name: "Spring candles". Description: "10% off our soy candles". Use words a customer would understand on a banner, not an internal code.
3. Choose the discount type. Percentage (%) or Fixed Amount. Percentage suits a range of prices; a fixed amount suits one product or a bundle. The owner picks Percentage.
4. Enter the value. 10. The form does not need the % sign; the type already says it is a percentage.
5. Set the dates. Start date Saturday 3 October, end date Sunday 1 November. Outside those dates the offer does not apply, so nobody has to remember to switch it off. The end date is optional, but seasonal offers should always have one.
6. Untick Apply to all products. This is the step that keeps the rest of the shop at full price. With it unticked, a Choose products list appears with a search box.
7. Pick the products. Search and choose "Soy candle, fig" and "Soy candle, cedar". Only these two lines will get the discount at the till.
8. Tick Featured and Active. Featured (show in banner) makes the offer easy to see. Active switches it on. If you want to prepare an offer now and launch it later, leave Active unticked.
9. Create offer. It appears under Running now. From the first scan of a fig candle at the till, 10% comes off that line automatically, and the till shows the customer what they saved.

What does 10% off actually cost you?

It costs more than 10% of your profit. Here is the fig candle, priced at £12.00 including VAT at 20%, and assumed to cost £4.20 before VAT from the supplier.

The customer saves £1.20. Your profit per candle falls by £1.00, which is about 17% of it, not 10%. To keep the same total profit, you would need to sell about one fifth more candles during the offer. That is the trade-off to have in mind before you choose the percentage. Our guide to markup and margin explains the sums, and how to price products covers when a discount is the right tool.

Why limit the offer to chosen products?

Because a whole-shop discount gives money away on things that were going to sell anyway. The cushions and the serving boards are not overstocked; taking 10% off them would only reduce what you earn on sales you already had. Choosing products keeps the discount where it does the job: moving stock that is sitting still.

It also keeps reports honest. Sales before and after discount show how much the offer gave away. If that figure is spread across the whole shop, you cannot tell whether the candles moved because of the offer or the season.

Tips for running offers

• Always set an end date for seasonal offers. It is the easiest way to avoid an offer running into Christmas by accident.
• Keep old offers paused rather than deleted. Next spring, switch "Spring candles" back on and change the dates.
• Use Featured for offers you want customers to notice. A banner does more for a short offer than a line at the till.
• Check stock before you start. An offer on a product you only have three of is an offer that ends at 10:15. Read the morning Home check first.
• Compare the results. At the end of the offer, look at how many candles sold and what the discount cost in Reports, then decide whether to run it again.

Common mistakes

• Leaving Apply to all products ticked. The most expensive mistake on this screen. Every product in the shop gets the discount.
• Typing 0.1 instead of 10. With Percentage chosen, enter the number you would say out loud.
• Overlapping offers on the same product. Where two could apply, the till uses the one that takes the most off, which may not be the one you meant.
• Naming offers for yourself. "CNDL-OCT-10" means nothing to a customer reading the banner.
• Forgetting Active. An offer created without Active ticked will sit on the screen doing nothing.

What should you do next?

See the offer at work in the Saturday till tour, where a fig candle is scanned and the till takes 10% off that line on its own. If the candles then sell faster than planned, order what is low shows how to reorder them from their usual supplier. Our guide to stock control is useful for deciding which products are overstocked enough to need an offer in the first place.

How EasyTaskr helps

EasyTaskr lets you set percentage or fixed-amount offers with start and end dates, on all products or only chosen ones, and the till applies them to the right lines. Reports then show sales before and after discount, so you can see what an offer gave away. The shop and figures in this tour are sample data.