Surcharges and Spend & Save discounts

Charge more when a design costs more to print, and reward bigger orders with tiered discounts that the app applies at checkout.

Two pricing levers live in the template builder. Surcharges add cost when a design costs more to print. Spend & Save shows customers the discount tiers waiting for them if they order more — and applies the discount at checkout.

Surcharges

A back print costs more than a front-only print. An extra sleeve costs more than no sleeve. Surcharges let the cart price reflect that automatically.

How they work

Surcharges attach to print files. When a customer adds an image or text to a side placed on a surcharged print file, the amount is added to that item's unit price at checkout. Stickers and backgrounds alone don't trigger it. The customer sees the amount on the side selector ("+$5.00"), as a Surcharge row in the review panel, and as "Customization: +$5.00" under the cart line.

Setting one up

  1. Open the template in the builder and pick the Output Settings tool.
  2. Expand Surcharge Settings. Each print file is listed with the sides placed on it.
  3. Click Add surcharge on a print file, enter the Amount (in your store currency) and an optional Message — "Includes back print", "Premium".
  4. Save.

The message, when set, replaces the default label on the side selector, in the review panel and in the cart.

Shopify Plus only

Surcharges run on Shopify's cart transform function, which Shopify offers only to Shopify Plus stores (and development stores). On other plans the section shows a Shopify Plus only badge and Add surcharge is disabled.

If you're not on Plus and need per-side pricing, the workaround is product variants — a "Front only" and a "Front + Back" variant with different prices.

Where the surcharge appears in your theme's cart

The label under the cart line is placed by the app's cart preview script. Settings → Theme Cart Integration → Surcharge Price Injection Selector is only needed if it lands in the wrong spot on your theme; colours live in Brand & language → Cart Preview Theme. Settings → Checkout Surcharges is information only.

On the order

Surcharge details ride along as line item properties on every order: _pw_surcharge_total (in cents), _pw_surcharge_message and _pw_surcharge_sides. The Analytics page totals them as Surcharge revenue.

Spend & Save discounts

Spend & Save shows a discount progress bar in the review panel — "Add 2 more to Save 10%" — nudging customers toward bigger orders while they're deciding how many to buy. Switch on Apply automatically at checkout and the app creates and manages a matching Shopify automatic discount, so the saving shown is the saving applied.

Setting it up

  1. In the template builder, pick Template Settings and expand Spend & Save Discounts.
  2. Switch on Enable discounts. This shows the progress bar.
  3. Switch on Apply automatically at checkout. If you had already built a matching discount by hand in Shopify, delete it first — otherwise customers get both.
  4. Pick a Threshold type — Quantity (number of items) or Spend amount (total value).
  5. Pick a Discount scope:
    • This template only — items designed on this template count toward the threshold
    • Same product (any customisation) — any customised version of the product counts
    • All customised items in cart — everything customised counts
  6. Add your Discount tiers: a quantity or spend threshold, % off or $ off, the value, and a Message (shown at checkout) — "Buy 5, get 15% off". Fixed amounts apply per item.
  7. Optionally switch on Combine with other discounts so the tier can stack with your other Shopify discounts. Off, Shopify applies the better discount, never both.
  8. Save. The Shopify discount is created when the template saves.

What the customer sees

  • In the review panel: a segmented progress bar with a lock or tick per tier and the message "Add 2 to Save 10%", "Add 3 more to Save 15%", "Maximum discount unlocked!". Wording is editable under Brand & language → Discount Progress Bar.
  • In the totals: a Savings row and the original total struck through. Switch on Show per-unit pricing in the cart summary (Brand & language → Layout Options) to show "6 × $55.00 → $44.00 ea".
  • At checkout: a discount labelled with your tier message, or "Spend & Save" if you left it blank.

How the Shopify discount works

The app owns at most two automatic discounts in your store — Spend & Save (Pixel Wrangler) and Spend & Save (Pixel Wrangler) — exclusive — and every template's tiers live inside them. So however many templates use Spend & Save, you use two of Shopify's 25 automatic-discount slots. When more than one tier could apply to a line, the best saving wins; tiers never stack with each other.

If the discount can't be created, the builder shows "Setting up the Shopify discount" until it can. If that notice doesn't clear on your next visit, your store is probably at Shopify's limit of 25 active automatic discounts — remove an unused one and save the template again. If you delete the app's discount by hand it's recreated on the next save.

Display-only mode

Leave Apply automatically at checkout off and the tiers are display-only: customers see the progress bar, but nothing is discounted unless you create a matching automatic discount in Shopify yourself. The builder shows a warning banner with a Create the discount in Shopify link while you're in this mode. If the tiers you show and the discount Shopify applies don't match, customers notice at checkout — in the bad direction.

What's next