Every PricePulse rule is built on the same set of fields, in the Rules Details panel of the rule screen. Some fields change depending on the rule type you choose, but the ones below appear on almost every rule. This page explains what each one does; the rule-type pages link back here rather than repeating it.
Rule Name and Offer Banner Image
↑ Back to topThe title at the top of the screen is the rule’s name. It appears in your rules list and, if you use the offers page, on the offer card shoppers see — so write it as something a customer would understand, such as “20% off Hoodies” rather than “cat rule 3”.
Set Offer Banner Image in the sidebar sets the picture used for this offer on the offers page. It is optional.
Rule Type
↑ Back to topRule type decides what the discount applies to, and it is the first thing to choose because the rest of the form changes to match it. The nineteen types are grouped into three sets:
- Single Product – Specific Product, Specific Category, Specific Product Variation, Specific Tag, Product Attribute, Tiered rule on Product, Tiered rule on Category.
- Multiple Products – All Products, Multiple Products, Multiple Categories.
- Advanced Rules – Cart, Payment discount, Shipping discount, bogo (buy x get y free), Next purchase discount, Least amount product discount, Nth order discount, Specific Customer, Plus Member.
Changing the rule type reloads the form, so pick it before filling anything else in.
Who the Rule Applies To
↑ Back to topUser Role limits the discount to a kind of shopper:
- All users – everyone, signed in or not. This is the default.
- All guest users (Not logged in) – only shoppers without an account, or who have not signed in.
- Any WordPress role — Customer, Subscriber, Shop manager and so on — restricts the discount to signed-in users with that role.
Choosing a named role means guests never qualify, because a guest has no role. If you want a discount for everyone, leave it on All users.
Discount Amount
↑ Back to topDiscount based on
↑ Back to top- Percentage discount – takes a percentage off each item. Enter 20 for 20% off.
- Fixed discount – takes that amount off the line as a whole, however many items are in it.
- Flat discount – takes that amount off every item.
The difference between the last two only shows when a shopper buys more than one. On a $100 product with the amount set to 20, a Fixed discount charges $80.00 for one and $180.00 for two — $20 off the pair. A Flat discount charges $80.00 for one and $160.00 for two.
Not every rule type offers all three:
- Payment discount offers Percentage and Fixed.
- Shipping discount, Specific Customer, Next purchase discount and Plus Member offer Percentage and Flat.
- bogo (buy x get y free) and Least amount product discount have no Discount based on field at all — the first gives a product away, and the second has its own percentage field.
On the cart, payment and loyalty rules, which add a discount line rather than changing a price, Fixed discount takes its amount off the basket once and Flat discount takes it off for each item in the basket.
How much
↑ Back to topThe discount value. The label reads How much ($ Discount) with your store’s currency symbol, and it shows that symbol even when you have chosen Percentage discount — in that case the number is read as a percentage, not an amount of money.
Maximum Discount
↑ Back to topAn upper limit on what this rule can take off. It is most useful with percentage discounts, where a percentage of an expensive product can be more than you intended to give away.
The ceiling limits the discount, not the price. A 10% rule on a $100 product normally saves $10, so the shopper pays $90.00. Set Maximum Discount to 5 and the saving stops at $5: the shopper pays $95.00.
The same ceiling bites very differently across a mixed catalog. With a 20% rule capped at $5, a $100 product saves the full $5 and a $20 product saves $4 — under the ceiling, so it is unaffected. This is why a cap is worth setting on store-wide and category rules and rarely needed on single-product ones.
Leave it blank or enter 0 for no upper limit. Zero means “no cap”, not “cap the discount at nothing”. One exception: Tiered rule on Category requires this field, so enter 0 there rather than leaving it empty.
The ceiling is applied everywhere the offer appears, so the price advertised on your shop page is the price charged at the till.
Exclude products that are already on sale
↑ Back to topTick this to skip any product that already has a WooCommerce sale price, so your discount does not stack on top of a markdown you have already made. It appears on the rule types that discount product prices; cart, payment, shipping and customer-based rules do not have it.
Conditions
↑ Back to topConditions add a requirement the cart must meet before the discount applies. Choose a Conditions type, then set Minimum, Maximum, or both.
- None – no requirement. The discount applies whenever the rule matches.
- Cart Total Quantity – how many items are in the cart altogether.
- Cart Total Value – the cart subtotal.
- Category Product Quantity – how many items from the chosen category are in the cart.
- Category Product Value – the value of those category items.
- Product Quantity – how many of the chosen product are in the cart.
- Product Value – the value of that product in the cart.
Only the condition types that make sense for the rule type you chose are offered, so the list on your screen is usually shorter than the one above. A category rule offers the category-level conditions and not the product-level ones; Shipping discount, Next purchase discount, Plus Member and bogo have no Conditions section at all, and use their own threshold fields instead. Specific Customer adds four conditions the others do not have, measuring what the customer has bought in the past.
Minimum and Maximum
↑ Back to topSet either bound, or both. A Minimum of 3 on Cart Total Quantity means the discount waits until the third item is added; a Maximum of 10 means it stops applying beyond ten.
Blank or 0 means no bound, for both fields — the note beside them on the rule screen says the same. A Maximum of 0 does not mean “carts of nothing”; it means there is no upper bound.
Rule priority
↑ Back to topPriority decides which rule wins when more than one could apply to the same product. The lowest number wins. A rule with priority 1 beats a rule with priority 10.
Priority only decides the winner when your store is set to apply one rule at a time. If you have chosen to apply every matching rule, they all apply and priority decides the order. See How Matching Rules Combine.
New rules are given the next unused number automatically, so you only need to change it when you deliberately want one rule to beat another.
Schedule
↑ Back to topStart Date and End Date set when the offer runs. Both are optional:
- Leave both blank and the rule runs for as long as it is enabled.
- Set only a start date to begin an offer at a chosen moment and leave it running.
- Set only an end date to run an offer until a deadline.
Dates use your site’s timezone. The current server time is shown beneath the fields so you can check the two agree before scheduling a sale.
Offer Message
↑ Back to topThe text shoppers see for this offer, on product pages, in the cart and on the offers page. PricePulse fills in a sensible default when you pick a rule type, and you can rewrite it.
Messages can include placeholders in square brackets, such as [discount_value] and [product_name], which are replaced with real values when the message is shown. The hint under the field lists the placeholders that rule type supports, and they differ by type. See Offer Message Tokens for the full list.
[discount_value] prints the rule’s configured amount, so a rule set to 10% prints “10%” wherever it appears. It is not recalculated per product, which matters when you have set a Maximum Discount: on an expensive product the ceiling may mean the shopper saves less than the advertised rate. Where that is possible, write the ceiling into the sentence with [max_discount] — for example Get [discount_value] off, up to [max_discount]. That placeholder prints nothing when the rule has no ceiling, so the same message reads correctly either way.
Publishing and Enabling
↑ Back to topClick Publish to save the rule. A published rule is enabled straight away, so if you are building an offer for later, set a start date before publishing.
You can turn any rule off without deleting it using the Enable checkbox in the rules list. See How to Create Your First Discount Rule.