Overview:

There are lots of discounting options in osCommerce. No one module is perfect for everyone. A lot of people wanted more power than Better Together had, but they didn't like the complexity and lack of an admin panel that came with Big Chooser. So I tried to meet them half way with Discount Chooser Mega Module.

So you're asking yourself, "What the heck is a Mega Module?" Easy. A Mega Module contains the catalog side code and an admin panel all in one. No more separate purchases, and no updating PHP code!

Discount Chooser Mega Module allows you to specify up to 12 conditions (required purchases) of products or categories, and up to 12 possible gifts. For example, the configuration below shows that if you buy product 8 and product 19, you may choose from products 16 and 12 as free (or discounted) gifts.

Note that in Discount Chooser 1.0, a discount of 100% was implicit. In version 1.1, you may specify different discounts.

Discount Chooser Admin Panel

The page is broken into two areas: on the top, a list of existing discounts, and on the bottom, a form to allow you to add new linkages to create new discounts.

Discounts are listed in the order they were created. Discounts can currently be deleted but not edited directly; instead, to edit a discount, delete the existing one and create a new one.

Discount Chooser Discount Creation

The page is broken into two areas: on the top, a list of existing discounts, and on the bottom, a form to allow you to add new linkages to create new discounts.

The image above is what the new discount creation portion of the page looks like. Here's what the list of new discounts looks like:

Discount Chooser Discount List

Discounts are listed in reverse chronological order. Discounts can currently be deleted or deactivated but not edited directly. The discounts which are currently inactive are shown in red.

Discount Chooser is an order total module, so it appears on the second page of your checkout as a discount (unless Discount Preview is used, which allows the discount to be shown in the cart).

Please note that Discount Chooser only provides a discount; it does not automatically add items to the cart.

Order Confirmation Page displaying Discount Chooser Discount

Discount Chooser Example 1

In example 1, the customer can buy a printer, and get any 3 items from mice, keyboards or CDROMs for free. So a customer could buy the printer and get 3 keyboards for free.

Discount Chooser Example 2

In example 2 by contrast, the customer can buy a printer, but may only get one item from each of from mice, keyboards or CDROMs for free. So if they bought a printer and 3 keyboards, only the least expensive keyboard would be discounted.

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To change this to "Buy a printer, get an item from mice, keyboards or CDROMs for half off, simply change the Discount Amount to 50.

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To change this to "Buy a printer, get an item from mice, keyboards or CDROMs for $10 off, simply change Discount Units to Currency Amount Off and the Discount Amount to 10.

Discount Chooser Example 3

Example 3 is is a classic kit discount, where the customer must buy a printer, a mouse and a keyboard in order to get a CDROM drive free.

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An alternate technique for kit discounts is to set a final price for the entire kit. (Note that this technique will work best for shops which do not have embedded taxes such as a VAT; it is not recommended if you have Display Prices with Tax set to true.)

To set a final price for a group of items, you will still express the offer in terms of a discount, with the final item being the Free Gift Discounted item. Using the above example, to set a package price of $600 for the printer, mouse, keyboard and CDROM, set the Discount Units to Package Final Price and the Discount Amount to 600.

The actual items will not change prices, but a discount to reduce the total price by the required amount will be created. This is most easily visualized by your customers when you have Discount Preview (with the subtotal feature) installed, as shown below.

Installation Instructions:

Please see README.txt in the mod.

Installation Problems:

The most common installation problems for this module are as follows:

1. Unfamiliarity with installing mods. Please review my Guide to Mod Installation on osCommerce.
2. Not updating the sort orders for your order total modules.
   One method I recommend is to multiply the default values by 10, and adjust from there. For example:

   Sub-Total 10
   Shipping  20
   Discounts 21-29
   Tax       30
   Total     40
   

   Be sure the values are unique (i.e. do not use any particular number twice).
3. Some hosts require scripts which are run from a URL - for example,

   http://your-store.com/your-admin/free_gift_chooser.php
   

   to have permissions 644. You may see a message like
   

   HTTP 500: Internal Server Error
   
   The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
   

   when running Discount Chooser Admin if this is the case with your host. Simply set the permissions of admin/free_gift_chooser.php and admin/free_gift_chooser_backend.php to 644 using your FTP client (or perhaps your cPanel File Manager).
4. If you are pulling in jQuery and/or jQueryUI already in your admin panel, you will need to comment out the require statements that do that in ./admin/free_gift_chooser.php.
5. Did you read the incompatibilities list? You may have too many categories, for example. If this describes you but you have already bought the software, please contact me; I may be able to write some custom logic (at additional cost) to help you make this mod work.

If you are having trouble installing this module, you should also refer to my Guide to Mod Installation on osCommerce. I'm also happy to install most of my mods for a fee.

Optional Installation Instructions:

1. I highly recommend Discount Preview with all my discounting modules. Without Discount Preview, your customers cannot see the price reductions they are entitled to until the second page of checkout (checkout confirmation). Obviously this is a disadvantage, particularly for new customers who need to go through the additional step of creating an account before they can see this information. Sometimes seeing is believing, so here's a video showing Discount Preview in action.

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Notes on Taxes for osCommerce 2.3

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If you don't use embedded taxes, and don't have a mix of taxable and tax-free products, and don't have a different rate of tax for shipping, please skip this section.
However, if you any of the above apply to you, please read my Notes on Taxes.

Payment Modules in osCommerce

Some contributed payment modules in osCommerce Phoenix are not naturally aware of the existence of discounts (mine or any other contribution or extension). For this reason, you must ensure any payment module you use takes discounts into account.

For some carts, PayPal Website Payments Standard has been changed to accommodate these osC discounts, but in a bizarre way. If you have

Subtotal: $30
Postage: $7.69
Discount: -$12.00
Tax (7%): $1.26
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Total:   $26.95

PayPal turns this into

Subtotal: $17.16
Tax (7%): $2.10
Shipping: $7.69
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Total:   $26.95

The final number is correct (and your actual order total figures as shown in osC admin will be correct per the checkout confirmation page).

I have seen this work on some carts and not on others depending on mods and settings; please test your own cart carefully.

PayPal Express in osCommerce Phoenix still has problems with osCommerce discounts. Here is one way to fix it:

In ./ext/modules/payment/paypal/express.php, right above the block on line 544-545 that sets the item and tax amounts:

      $params['ITEMAMT'] = $items_total;
      $params['TAXAMT'] = $tax_total;

insert the discount computation. Here's an example for Quantity Discounts. Pull in the module and its language file. Then compute the discount and add it in as a line item.

      // Add OT
      require('includes/modules/order_total/ot_quantity_discount.php');
      include(DIR_WS_LANGUAGES . $language . '/modules/order_total/ot_quantity_discount.php');
      $discount = new ot_quantity_discount();
      if ($discount->check()) {
         $qd = $discount->calculate_deductions();
         if ($qd['total'] > 0) {
            $amt = $qd['total'] * -1;
            $params['L_NAME' . $line_item_no] = 'Discount';
            $params['L_AMT' . $line_item_no] = $amt;
            $params['L_NUMBER' . $line_item_no] = 0;
            $params['L_QTY' . $line_item_no] = 1;
    
            $product_tax = 0; 
            $params['L_TAXAMT' . $line_item_no] = $paypal_express->format_raw($product_tax);
            $items_total += $paypal_express->format_raw($amt);
            $line_item_no++;
         }
      }

For other modules, here are the filenames. The object to be created is the filename without the .php suffix.

Module	File Name
Quantity Discounts	ot_quantity_discount.php
Better Together	ot_better_together.php
Discount Chooser	ot_freegift_chooser.php

Marketing

What good is having cross selling and upselling specials if you don't advertise them?

Discount Chooser Discounts may be automatically displayed on the product info page.

To install the marketing text on the product info page, do the following: In Admin > Modules > Content, press the Install Module button. Then select Discount Chooser Marketing Text, and press Install Module. It creates a message on your page that looks like what you see at the top of Discount Chooser Admin.



Only one div block of text will be produced, with the div id freegiftChooserDiscountPolicy.

Notes on Taxes for osCommerce 2.3

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If you don't use embedded taxes, and don't have a mix of taxable and tax-free products, and don't have a different rate of tax for shipping, please skip this section.
However, if you any of the above apply to you, please read my Notes on Taxes.

Major Versions

• 1.2 08/17/2019 - Support for Phoenix

Discount Chooser versus other Discounting Modules

Module	Comparison
Better Together	Better Together supports two for one offers across a category; this allows you to create a "Buy one, get one of the same item" promotion. With Discount Chooser, you can only do "Buy one, get another from the same category." (Note that the lower priced item is always the one that gets discounted in this scenario.) Better Together supports cross sells. Better Together requires a separate admin panel (unless you wish to use the PHP based configuration facility). Better Together allows you to set the discount amount, but only allows 1 condition and 1 discounted item.
Big Chooser	Big Chooser allows you to specify exceptions to conditions and discounts, to make discounts mutually exclusive, to make some constraints mandatory and others selectable, to constrain by price or manufacturer, to do attribute level matching, and a variety of other advanced features which are not available in Discount Chooser. However, Big Chooser is configured using a PHP API, which is may be too complex for shopowners without programming experience.
Unique to Discount Chooser	Discount Chooser allows you to create a final package price for a set of products. None of my other modules have this feature.

FAQ

Q: Why do I have to enable Javascript to run the Discount Chooser Admin Panel?
A: Because it uses AJAX, a Javascript based technology. This creates a faster, more responsive user interface. If you do not enable Javascript in your browser, you will see a flashing red error message at the top of the page, and the Discount Chooser Admin Panel will not operate.

Q: Why is it called Discount Chooser?
A: In the original vision and first releases, it only offered 100% discounts. I later realized it would be much more useful to permit flexible levels of discounting.

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