danneh.org

I figured out today that the discount/promotion rules in Magento aren’t exactly obvious, nor straight forward to apply. If you don’t have the logical mind of a programmer, setting up rules for products that only meet certain criteria can be a tricky one. Take this example:

Buy 4 for 3 on any product in [this] category.

Sounds simple, no? Actually, no. Things you have to take into account are:

• Number of items in the cart
• Categories of all products in the cart
• Products that may not be in the specified category in the rule actions
• Number of these products also

So, bearing in mind all this, and working with the constraints of Magento’s rule condition selections, Here’s how we come with the solution. In these examples, we’re using this extension, with this fix, on Magento 1.4.0.1:

Rule Information

• Name: Buy 4 for 3 from [example] category
• Description: Buy 4, get cheapest item free from [example] category.
• Status: Active
• Website: [make your selection]
• Customer Groups: [make your selection - we're using NOT LOGGED IN and General]
• Coupon code: B4F3
• Uses per coupon: 0
• Uses per customer: 0

Conditions

• If ALL of these conditions are TRUE
  • If total quantity equals or greater than 4 for a sub-selection of items in cart matching ALL of these conditions:
    • Category is 2604

Actions

• Apply: Buy X get lowest item free (Discount amount is lowest item price)
• Discount amount: 1
• Max Qty discount is apply to: 0 (this allows groups of 4 items to be discounted 1 item)
• Discount Qty Step: 4
• Free Shipping: No [but as your requirements]
• Stop processing further rules: No
• If ALL of these conditions are TRUE:
  • Category is 2604

Labels: As you require

Save the rule and test by adding a various combination of different products from different categories into your cart. It’ll discount 1 of the the cheapest item(s) of any products matching the criteria, 1 product for each multiple of 4 products. If you proceed to add a product into the cart form another category, it will ignore this product. If you subsequently remove one of the matching products from the cart, even though there may still be 4 items in the cart, the 4th item doesn’t match the criteria, therefore the discoule rule no longer takes effect, and is removed.

Magento is very powerful – it’s just not exactly obvious!