Promotions

Promotions can offer discounts on your Products & Services, Product Addons, and Domains. To create a promotion code, navigate to Setup > Payments > Promotions.

See also Common Promotions.

Types of promotions that can be offered

• One Time Discounts
• Recurring Discounts
• Limited Recurring Discounts (for example, first two months free)
• Monetary Discounts (for example, $5 Off)
• Percentage Discounts (for example, 20% Off)
• Price Override (for example, Regular price $10, Discount price $8)
• Free Setup
• Apply to Specific Products/Addons/Domain TLDs
• Apply to Specific Billing Cycles or Registration Periods
• Apply Once per Order or to All Applicable Items in Cart
• Lifetime Promotion
• Valid for New Signups Only
• Valid for upgrade orders only

How to create a new promotion

To create a new promotion:

1. Go to Setup > Payments > Promotions.
2. Click the Add New link at the top of the page.
3. Enter a promotion code. This is the code that customers will need to enter on the order form to receive the discount.
4. Choose one of the four promotion types:
   • Percentage — Discounts by a percentage of the original price.
   • Fixed Amount — Discount a specified amount from the original price.
   • Price Override — Changes the product price to this value. Useful for offering a consistent discount across multiple billing cycles.
   • Free Setup — Discounts any setup fee from the original price.
5. To have the discount only apply to the first invoice, leave the Recurring checkbox unchecked. When you check this, the discount will apply to renewal invoices. Set the Recur For field to 0 for all future renewals to discount, or enter a different number to specify how many cycles the discount lasts for. This is in addition to the initial invoice for the product. If you wish to provide a discount 6 times, enter 5 in the recurring box.
6. In the Value field, enter the amount of the discount in numbers only.
7. Select the products, addons, and domain TLDs that the promotion applies to and what billing cycles or registration periods the discount requires. These should match those of your products. Your can Ctrl+click to select multiple entries.
8. Optionally, set the start and expiration dates. If you use these settings, the coupon will only start working after the start date and will stop working at expiration. You can use one option or both to achieve the desired effect.
9. The final checkboxes allow you to specify who can use the promotion:
   • Apply Once — If the client orders multiple qualifying products, the system only applies the discount once.
   • New Signups — Only new clients can use the promotion.
   • Apply Once / Client — If a client has an existing active order that uses this promotion, they will not be able to use the code a second time.
   • Lifetime Promotion — Client will retain this discount even if they upgrade or downgrade their service in future.
   • Existing Client — Only existing clients with one or more active orders can use the promotion.
   • Enable for product upgrades – Refer to #Upgrades/Downgrades below.
10. In the admin notes section, add information pertinent to the promotion.

The promotion code changes the First Payment Amount when a customer or administrator uses the code while ordering. It does not change the Recurring Amount. If it did automatically update the recurring amount, this would prevent administrators from being able to manually update the recurring amount value when a promotion code was in use.

Instead, the system uses the promotion code to discount the Recurring Amount automatically on renewal invoices.

Limiting Usage

With WHMCS, you can set the maximum number of times to honor a promotion. To do this:

1. Go to Setup > Payments > Promotions.
2. Locate the promotion you want to limit the usage of and click the edit icon next to it.
3. In the Maximum Uses field, enter the number of uses that you want to allow (the number of times that customers have used the promotion will display below the field).
4. For unlimited uses, enter the value zero.
5. Click the Save Changes button.

Prerequisites

By selecting products from the "Requires" menu, you can stipulate which products or services the client must also have in their shopping cart before applying the discount. This can be used to offer "buy x get y half price" style promotions.

The "Also allow existing products in account to qualify for promotion" option allows the system to include products that the client already owns in the promotion criteria.

For example, if the client already owns product x, they would be able to use the promotion code when ordering product y. If you disable this option, the client would need to order both products x and y at the same time to qualify.

Upgrades/Downgrades

When you check this checkbox, the client will use the promo code when placing an upgrade or downgrade order, which is particularly useful for offering incentives when upselling. When you check this, some new options will appear:

Products/Services

Select the Products/Services radio option as the Upgrade Type.

Use the Type, Recurring and Value fields to specify the value of the discount and how long it lasts.

Use the Applies To field to select which products to apply the promotional code to. The client will receive the discount when upgrading to this product.

For upgrades and downgrades, you use the Requires field slightly differently. It restricts which products clients can upgrade. For example, they can upgrade from Product y (selected) to this product and receive a discount, but not upgrade from Product x (not selected) and receive a discount.

Configurable Options

To offer discounts to clients for configurable options, select the Configurable Options radio option as the Upgrade Type.

Use the Upgrade Discount fields to specify the discount value as a percentage or fixed amount for the configurable options. Then, use the Config Options Upgrades menu to select which option this discount applies to.

If you use the main Type, Recurring and Value fields at the top of the page, the system will apply a discount to the parent product as well as to the configurable option. Leave this blank to only apply the discount to the configurable option.

Promotion Links

You can give links to users that will automatically apply a certain promotion code to their order if it applies. To do that, use a link like the one below:

cart.php?promocode=TEST OR cart.php?a=add&pid=1&promocode=TEST

Both of the above will apply the promotion code "TEST" to the order. With the first link, the user can choose the package they want. With the second, they will go straight to step 2 of the order process with product ID 1 selected.

For more information, see Linking to WHMCS.

Management

When you create a promotion, you can specify an expiry date. If you want the promotion code to become invalid before this date, click the Expire Now link on the Setup > Payments > Promotions page.

You can create a copy of any promotion by clicking the Duplicate Promotion link. This is particularly useful for quickly running a successful promotion again or providing a personalised promo code to a client.

Manually Applying a Promotion

WHMCS allows you to manually add a Promotion Code to an existing service. You can make this type of addition when viewing a client’s existing service in the Admin Area.

On this page, you will see a “Promotion Code” drop-down menu. Click on this menu for a list of all the active promotions on the installation. From this list, you can select the promotion you would like to apply to the service, and then click on the “Save Changes” button to commit your changes.

The “Recurring Amount” value on the service page is the final amount to bill the client for after taking the selected promotion into consideration. Selecting a promotion code by itself will not change the invoice amount.

Due to this behavior, it is important to update the “Recurring Amount” value so that it reflects the amount you want the customer to pay after applying the promotion code. You can do this in one of two ways:

1. Manually calculate the amount that you would like the customer to pay after the discount and enter it into the “Recurring Amount” field. Then, click on the “Save Changes” button.
2. Select the “Auto Recalculate on Save” button, and then click on the “Save Changes” button. This option will have WHMCS take the current pricing for the Product/Service, apply the discount from the selected Promotion Code, and then set the “Recurring Amount” to that value.

For client services with a promotion code, WHMCS alters how it generates the service’s invoice items for renewal invoices.

To provide the client with information concerning discounts from promotion codes, WHMCS will generate two invoice items. The first item will display the sum of the “Recurring Amount” value and the discount amount. The second item will display the discount amount.

As an example, if you have a service with a “Recurring Amount” value of “10.00” and apply a promotion code that offers a 50% discount, then the system will generate the following invoice items when the service renews:

• Invoice Item for Service Renewal: 20.00
• Promotion Code (50% Off): -10.00
• Invoice Total: 10.00

This is the recommended method to convey a discount to clients.

If you had this same service with no promotion code, then the system would generate the following invoice items upon renewal instead:

• Invoice Item for Service Renewal: 10.00
• Invoice Total: 10.00

Both invoices result in a charge of 10.00, however one shows the client that they are paying this price because of a promotion code.

If you want to provide the client with a discount, but not create a promotion code invoice item, then you could do this by either manually specifying a “Price Override” value when creating the order, or by modifying the “Recurring Amount” value.

Notes

Limited Recurring Promotions

The system counts the number of recurrences for a Limited Recurring promotion (which are configured using the "Recur For x Times" setting) by looking at the invoice line items for the service. By looking at the number of invoice line items for a service, WHMCS makes a determination for how many times it has applied the promotional discount.

After the system has used all of a promotion code's recurrences for a given service, the service will revert to the standard price automatically.

If you wish to provide an an extension of the promotion, it would be necessary to increase the "Times" setting in the promotion code configuration. This will apply to all existing services using this promo code, instantly. Deleting invoices will not extend the duration of the promotional discount.

Fixed Amount Promotions and Additional Currencies

When defining the value for a Fixed Amount promotion, it is important to note that this value applies to the Base Currency. For example, if the installation's Base Currency is USD, then setting the Value for a Fixed Amount promotion to 100 will provide a discount of $100.00 USD when customers use it.

If the installation has additional currencies beyond the Base Currency, the system will use the Base Conversion Rate to determine the discount for customers using these additional currencies.

For more information, see Currencies.

Create Custom Promo

A "Create Custom Promo" button displays next to the Promotion field when you manually add a new order via the Add Order section of the Admin Area.

Clicking this button displays a modal that allows you to specify a custom promotion code that the system will automatically create and apply to the immediate order.

Use of this feature requires that the Administrator User have both the "Use Any Promotion Code on Order" and "Create/Edit Promotions" permissions. You can read more about permissions on the Administrators and Permissions page.