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Adding discounts to Sales orders
Adding discounts to Sales orders

Apply discounts on sales orders to manage pricing effectively across channels.

Dayvid Lorbiecke avatar
Written by Dayvid Lorbiecke
Updated over a week ago

Adding discounts to sales orders simplifies the management of pricing across various sales channels, ensuring consistency and customer satisfaction. This article explains how to apply percentage or flat-rate discounts directly on sales orders and how these discounts can be synced with e-commerce platforms and accounting software.

On Sales orders (SO), you can apply discounts as a percentage value within the Discount column of a SO table.

Shows the discounts column on a sales order

A discount will apply to the price per unit (i.e., price before tax). Once a discount is applied, the Total price column will show the final cost after discounts (excluding taxes).

The Total items not shipped (with tax) represents the final price including discounts and taxes. To remove a discount from a line item, delete what is there or enter "0%" as the discount value.

Sales order total

The sales order subtotal (tax excluded) displays the total amount of the SO before discounts. The discount shown in the subtotal represents the sum of all line discounts in the order's currency.

Sales order totals, specifically the subtotal and discount

Adding/Removing the discount on PDF printouts

The Default SO PDF printout shows discount(s) that has been applied to a SO in Katana. If you don't want to share discount information with a customer, you can use the default sales order printout Sales order without discount.

To add discount information to a custom PDF, in the editor look for the following syntax:

  • Order rows: {discount_percentage}

  • Order total discount: {total_discount}

To create custom PDFs without discounts, you can use the following syntax:

  • price_per_unit_after_discount

  • sub_total_after_discount

Adding discounts from e-commerce Integrations

Discounts that have been applied to a SO within an e-commerce platform can also be sent to Katana. Line-based percentage discounts are imported as they are. If a line item has a flat discount (an amount deducted from the full price), the amount deducted will be represented in Katana as a percentage.

For example, if a line item costs $15 and has a $5 discount applied to it, after importing the sales order to Katana, the item discount will be displayed as 33%.

If there are promotions applied at the order basket level, such as "$10 off the order" or "buy 2 get 1 free", the amount discounted on the order will be allocated proportionally between the products on the sales order. In Katana, the amount discounted is represented as a percentage.

For instance, if there are 3 items priced at $6 each in the basket, and a "buy 2 get 1 free" promotion is applied, the order total is $18 (3 x $6) before the promotion. After applying the promotion, the total cost becomes $12 ($18 - $6). The $6 discount is divided between the 3 items in the basket, applying a $2 discount to each line, which is 33%.

All promotions applied to a sales order are distributed on the e-commerce platform side, and Katana pulls in the final discount applicable for each sales order line.

Note: In Katana, discounts are applied to the price before taxes. If the prices of products in Shopify include taxes, the discount applied in the SO subtotal is calculated before taxes. Also, shipping fee discounts aren't imported, only the final amount after discount.

Sending discounts to accounting software

Discounts on an invoice can be automatically sent to accounting software.

Learn more details about sending discounts to QuickBooks Online and Xero.


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