Sometimes, products in your store are on a storewide sale. In Shopify, the "price"/"compare at price" are completely separate from the discounting system, which often causes confusion.

Every merchant has a different idea for how these products should be handled by discount apps. In order to give you control over the behavior, we have added "How to handle items already on sale" options to our app.

Definitions of terms used in this article

In Shopify, products/product variants can have 2 prices:

• Price: Required. Also known as "sale price."
• Compare at price: Optional. Used to globally mark down the price of a product/variant.

A line item is considered "on sale" if:

• The product/product variant has a "compare at price"
• The "compare at price" is not equal to 0
• The "compare at price" is greater than the "price"

Where to find these settings

This setting is part of the collapsible Advanced Options section at the very end of the discount page as highlighted in the following screenshot.

If you're currently in the fullscreen logic builder, click the "Back" button at the top left of the screen to escape to the "Edit" page and find these settings.

Options available for handling products already on sale

• Don't apply discount to items already on sale: If a line item's product/variant is "on sale," as defined above, then our app will exclude it from discounts.
• Calculate discount based on compare at price: See the following section for information about this setting.
• Stack discounts on top of sale price: The discount will be applied to the "price" of products on sale.
• Stack discounts on top of sale price and product discounts: Only for order discounts. Same as "Stack discounts on top of sale price," but, when possible, percentage discounts will be calculated based on the subtotal AFTER product discounts rather than BEFORE.

Calculate discounts based on compare at price

This setting is only available in the advanced logic builder. This is because the advanced logic builder applies discounts to line items individually, while the basic logic builder applies a single discount to a group of items.

When this option is enabled, our app will:

• Compute the difference between the "price" and "compare at price"
• Subtract this difference from the discount before applying it

The result is that the final discounted price will be equal to what it would have been if the discount were applied directly to the compare at price.

The final price after the discount is applied cannot be greater than the sale price, due to limitations in Shopify. This is because in Shopify, discounts always apply to the "price," not the "compare at price." Our app calculating discounts based on compare at price is a workaround for this, but it cannot overrule the restrictions in Shopify itself.

The "Product variants already on sale" option is disabled

If your discount is set to not apply discounts to items on sale, then a "Product variants already on sale" condition can never pass. To prevent confusion, we simply disable this option when it wouldn't make sense to use it.

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Updated on: 21/10/2025