Promotional product returns and discount analytics: where do the numbers go?

In retail, various promotions, cumulative discounts and bonuses are key tools for customer retention. However, when it comes to returning promotional goods or goods partially paid for with bonuses, business owners need to clearly track the movement of these funds using the "Discount Usage Analysis" mode. 

This tool is needed to assess the real effectiveness of marketing activities, monitor manual discounts given by sellers, and see whether a promotion has brought real profit. 

Entrepreneurs usually ask the following questions: "Why do the amounts in the discount analysis not match the fiscal sales data?", "How are bonuses calculated and returned if the customer returned only one item from the receipt?", "What happens to the promotion terms if one of the promotional items is returned?", "How is the amount of losses on the discount formed?" and "Why does the customer’s bonus balance sometimes go negative?". 

Below, we will review in detail the algorithms of the Torgsoft program that answer these questions.

What happens to a promotion when goods are returned?

Let’s imagine a situation: a store has a promotion with an activating group, for example, when buying two items, the third item gets a 20% discount. The customer buys three items, the promotion is applied, but the next day they decide to return one of the items that activated this promotion.

The Torgsoft program automatically tracks such changes. When an item is deleted from or returned from a sale, which leads to the cancellation of the promotion terms, the promotional discount for the remaining goods is cancelled, or "reset to zero". Instead, the customer’s standard client discount or regular product discount, if provided, will apply again to the goods that remain with the customer. This algorithm prevents possible manipulation when a buyer purchases many items to get the maximum discount and then returns most of them, keeping one item at an unreasonably low price.

Entrepreneurs also often ask how the system processes goods with an existing discount, for example, marked-down goods with a 0% discount. Previously, this could cause confusion, but now work with a 0% product discount is fully governed by discount priorities: first, the discount with the highest priority wins, and if priorities are the same, the discount with the higher percentage is applied.

Logic of writing off and returning bonuses

How are bonuses returned for one unit of goods? 

Payment with bonuses in Torgsoft is linked not to the entire receipt as a whole, but to specific goods in it. If, during a sale, you paid for all goods with bonuses, the program distributes this payment starting from the first item in the list. Accordingly, when only one unit of goods is returned from a large receipt, exactly the bonuses linked to that specific item will be returned to the customer’s card.

Payment for promotional goods with bonuses 

Sometimes there was a situation when, when paying for a promotional item fully with bonuses, the amount due became negative, for example, -0.01 UAH, because of mathematical rounding and percentage recalculation. To avoid this, the Torgsoft algorithm was changed: now, if the price of a promotional item becomes lower than the amount of bonuses paid for it, the bonus amount is automatically reduced to the actual price of the item.

The "Bring a Friend" promotion and returns. If a customer made a purchase using their friend’s promo code, the friend receives bonuses. But if this customer returns part of the goods, the system automatically cancels the bonuses accrued to the friend to prevent abuse. The write-off algorithm depends on the settings:

• If a fixed amount was accrued to the friend — it will be written off in full upon the first return of any item from the receipt.

• If it was a percentage of the purchase amount — the friend’s bonuses will be written off proportionally to the amount of the returned goods.

Why can a customer’s bonuses go negative? 

Technical support periodically receives questions about why a negative bonus value appears on a customer’s balance. This is a software error that may occur if the cashier changed customer information during the sale. For example: the cashier selected Customer A, who has bonuses, clicked "Pay with bonuses", but then, before closing the receipt, deleted that customer and selected Customer B, who has no bonuses. In this case, the bonuses are actually written off from Customer B, creating a negative balance.

Discount Usage Analysis: discrepancies in reports

The "Discount Usage Analysis" mode is the main tool for checking whether a promotion or discount has brought real profit and which employee gives the most manual discounts. This report has an important column: "Amount of losses on the discount". It is calculated using the formula:

Discount amount (the difference between the retail price and the selling price) + Amount of bonus payments.

The most common question about analytics is: why does "Discount Usage Analysis" show a different sales amount than "Analysis of Sales of Fiscal Goods" or "Product Report"?

The answer lies in the different algorithms used to generate these reports:

1. The "Discount Usage Analysis" report is intended exclusively for evaluating the effectiveness of sold goods. Therefore, sales of goods that were later returned are removed from this report.

2. Instead, "Analysis of Sales of Fiscal Goods", like general product reports, takes into account all sales and all returns that occurred within the selected period.

 Example: if a product was sold in March, the previous period, and the customer returned it in April, the current period, this April return will not affect the discount report for April, because the sale itself was made in March. But it will definitely be included in the fiscal analysis or product report for April, reducing the overall revenue indicators.

That is why comparing these reports directly is incorrect — they serve different business purposes. The Product Report focuses on the real movement of money and goods over time, based on document dates, while Discount Usage Analysis evaluates the net result, excluding returned goods, of a specific marketing activity.