Setting up quantity rules and volume pricing in B2B
You can use quantity rules and volume pricing to set certain quantity requirements or price breaks for B2B orders:
- Use quantity rules to sell a product in certain increments or to set a minimum or maximum limit the product can be purchased in at one time
- Use volume pricing to offer price breaks to customers who purchase products in larger quantities.
Volume pricing and quantity rules can be used together or independently.
On this page
Understanding quantity rules
You can set up increment quantity rules, or minimum or maximum quantity rules for your products.
Increment quantity rules
If you want to sell a product in certain increments, then you can use increment quantity rules. For example, if your products are boxed in multiples of 10, then you can set your increment rule to 10 so customers must purchase 10, 20, 30, products at a time.
The default increment that a product can be purchased in is 1. Increment quantity rules must be a positive whole number of 1 or more. You can set up different increment rules for different products.
Increment rules apply to product variants. For example, if you sell a hat that comes in blue and grey variants, then you can require your customers to purchase the grey variant in increments of 10 and the blue variant in increments of 10. Customers can’t combine 5 grey hats and 5 blue hats to meet an increment of 10 hats.
Minimum or maximum quantity rules
Minimum quantity rules let you define the fewest number of an item that can be purchased at one time. Maximum quantity rules let you define the greatest number of a product that can be purchased at one time. You can set a minimum quantity rule or a maximum quantity rule, or both.
Minimum and maximum quantity rules apply to product variants. For example, if you sell a hat that comes in blue and grey variants, then you can require your customer to purchase a minimum of 10 of the blue variant and a minimum of 10 of the grey variant. Customers can’t combine 5 grey hats and 5 blue hats to meet the minimum of 10 hats.
Set up quantity rules for products using catalogs
You can set quantity rules in the Catalogs section of your Shopify admin, or by importing a CSV.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Products > Catalogs.
Click the catalog that you want to edit.
In the Products and pricing section, click Manage > Manage products and pricing.
Choose to set quantity rules for a product or for a specific product variant:
- To set quantity rules for all variants of a product, hover over the product that you want to edit.
- To set quantity rules for a specific product variant, click the link to the variants underneath the product name, and then hover over the product variant that you want to edit.
In the Quantity rules column, click + Add.
In the Edit quantity rules and volume pricing dialog, do the following:
- In the Increment field, enter an increment quantity for a product.
- In the Minimum field. enter the minimum quantity for a product that a customer needs to purchase.
- In the Maximum field, enter the maximum quantity for a product to limit the amount of the variant that a customer can purchase in one order.
- Review your quantity rules, and then click Done.
Click Save.
Understanding volume pricing
Volume pricing lets you offer additional price breaks to customers when they purchase larger quantities of a product in a single order. You can add up to 10 price breaks per product which are applied to each variant.
Customers need to meet the required quantity for each variant to qualify for the price break. For example, if a hat is sold in blue and grey variants, then a customer needs to order at least 20 blue hats to qualify for volume pricing. Review the following example of volume pricing.
| Setting | Quantity | Unit price |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum | 1 | $20 USD |
| Price break 1 | 20 | $18.50 USD |
| Price break 2 | 50 | $17.75 USD |
| Price break 3 | 100 | $16 USD |
Set up volume pricing for products using catalogs
You can set volume pricing in the Catalogs section of your Shopify admin, or by importing a CSV.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Products > Catalogs.
Click the catalog that you want to edit.
In the Products and pricing section, click Manage > Manage products and pricing.
Choose to set volume pricing for a product or for a specific product variant:
- To set volume pricing for all variants of a product, hover over the product that you want to edit.
- To set volume pricing for a specific product variant, click the link to the variants underneath the product name, and then hover over the product variant that you want to edit.
In the Volume pricing column, click + Add.
In the Edit quantity rules and volume pricing dialog, do the following:
- In the Volume pricing section, click + Add quantity price breaks.
- In the Quantity section, enter a price for the first price break. Price break quantities must be greater than the minimum order quantity, as well as a multiple of the increment that you set in your quantity rules.
- Optional: To add multiple price breaks for the same product, click Add break, and then enter a price for additional price breaks.
- Review your volume pricing, and then click Done.
Click Save.
Considerations for using scripts with volume pricing and quantity rules
There are some considerations you should be aware of when scripts are applied alongside quantity rules and volume pricing, so that you can avoid preventing customers from checking out or adding further discounts to orders.
Quantity rules and scripts
Quantity rules apply to line items before scripts, and are re-validated in checkout. This means that customers can only add and purchase quantities that are above the minimum, below the maximum, and multiples of the increments defined in quantity rules.
If a script is used to adjust line item quantities, such as by splitting and then deleting lines, then it's possible to generate carts that have invalid quantities and therefore prevent customers from checking out.
Volume pricing and scripts
Volume pricing is applied before script discounts, which can further reduce prices. For example, a script that applies a fixed amount discount would be added after any volume-based pricing discount.
If a script discount uses a line item price to determine the discount amount, then the discount is based on the price break that it was eligible for before any script operations were applied.
If a script changes the line item quantity, then the script won't re-run to re-calculate the volume pricing based on the new quantity.