Automatically Apply Discounts

You can use the Square Catalog API to configure pricing rules to enable the automatic application of discounts to payments made with Square Point of Sale applications including Square for Retail, Square for Restaurants, and Square Appointments.

The discount can be a volume discount like a Buy One Get One (BOGO), a minimum order discount, or an exact quantity purchase discount. It can be a bundled discount applying to a combination of categories of purchased items. It can also be a time-based discount applying over a specified period of time, like a happy hour.

Requirements and limitations

• Pricing rule-based discounts are not supported in Reader SDK or the Checkout API.

• Pricing rules created through the Catalog API are not editable in Square Point of Sale.

How pricing rule-based discounts work

Pricing rule-based discounts can be applied based on:

• Specific items (or categories of items) purchased.

• The time of day, the day of the week, or a window of a promotion.

To set pricing rules to enable the automatic application of discounts, you typically use the following types of CatalogObject instances:

• Product Set. Represents a collection of catalog products. Product sets can be a collection of different Catalog object types, such as an ITEM, CATEGORY, or ITEM_VARIATION. You can also specify whether one or all products must be present and in what quantity.

• Pricing Rule. Represents a set of conditions under which a discount or fixed price applies to a product set.

• Time Period. Represents a (potentially recurring) time period. Dates and times use the iCal Date-Time Format.

Before you start

To follow the tutorial-based guide presented in this section, you must have Drinks and Meal categories created in your catalog.

Create a Drinks category

Follow the example to create the Drinks category. Make sure you copy the ID of the resulting CatalogObject of the CATEGORY type. You need the ID to complete the tutorial in this section.

Request

curl https://connect.squareup.com/v2/catalog/object \
  -X POST \
  -H 'Square-Version: 2020-05-28' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer {SQUARE_ACCESS_TOKEN}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "idempotency_key": "9c03631d-bf67-4a4c-a5d8-4175589cdae0",
    "object": {
      "id": "#drinks",
      "type": "CATEGORY",
      "category_data": {
        "name": "Drinks"
      }
    }
  }'

The "id": "#drinks" key-value pair is optional. It is required only if the Drinks category object is referenced elsewhere in the same request payload.

Response

The successful operation returns a 200 OK response with the payload similar to the following:

{
  "catalog_object": {
    "type": "CATEGORY",
    "id": "GXFTT46M3RCBR6LV54HKALC6",
    "updated_at": "2020-06-01T18:17:18.159Z",
    "version": 1591035438159,
    "is_deleted": false,
    "present_at_all_locations": true,
    "category_data": {
      "name": "Drinks"
    }
  },
  "id_mappings": [
    {
      "client_object_id": "#drinks",
      "object_id": "GXFTT46M3RCBR6LV54HKALC6"
    }
  ]
}

Create a Meal category

Follow the example to create the Meal category. Make sure you copy the ID of the resulting CatalogObject of the CATEGORY type. You need the ID to complete the tutorial in this section.

Request

curl https://connect.squareup.com/v2/catalog/object \
  -X POST \
  -H 'Square-Version: 2020-05-28' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer {SQUARE_ACCESS_TOKEN}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "idempotency_key": "31cd23fa-83bc-49f0-a605-44f62288d6e5",
    "object": {
      "id": "#meal_category",
      "type": "CATEGORY",
      "category_data": {
        "name": "Meal"
      }
    }
  }'

The "id": "#meal_category" key-value pair is optional. It is required only if the Meal category is referenced elsewhere in the same request payload.

Response

The successful operation returns a 200 OK response with the payload similar to the following:

{
  "catalog_object": {
    "type": "CATEGORY",
    "id": "GCCTVZOTCOPI246SREKXNMYX",
    "updated_at": "2020-06-02T00:15:13.884Z",
    "version": 1591056913884,
    "is_deleted": false,
    "present_at_all_locations": true,
    "category_data": {
      "name": "Meal"
    }
  },
  "id_mappings": [
    {
      "client_object_id": "#meal_category",
      "object_id": "GCCTVZOTCOPI246SREKXNMYX"
    }
  ]
}

Next steps

Complete the following steps to create volume discounts applying to a number of products, bundled discounts applying to an item combination, or time-based discounts applying to a specific time period:

• Create Volume Discounts

• Create Bundled Discounts

• Create Time-based Discounts