Rundocs › Pricing

Creating Promotions

Last updated 2026-06-08

Temporary price adjustments applied automatically at checkout — percent off, margin target, or fixed dollar — scoped to a vendor/department/class/fineline, a specific product, or everything.

How to use this page: if you're setting up your first promotion, follow the Creating a promotion walkthrough. Already know the form and want a quick recipe? Skip to Common patterns.

Where to find Promotions

POS mode → Products in the sidebar → the Promotions tab.

The list page shows each active promotion by name, the products it covers, the locations it applies in, and when it was last updated. Click Add promotion to create a new one.

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Can't see the Add promotion button? Two things to check:

You're on the right page. Add promotion only lives on POS > Products > Promotions (the list tab). There's no Add promotion button on a specific product's detail page — promotions are set up company-wide, not from an individual product.
Your staff permission is off. Creating and editing promotions is gated by the Create, edit, and manage promotions and spiffs permission on your staff record. If it's unchecked, the Add promotion button won't render for you. An admin can turn it on from Staff — open the staff member, click the Permissions tab, and check the box. See POS security for how staff permissions and company-wide security toggles stack.

Creating a promotion

The form has five sections. You don't need to fill in every field — Rundoo uses sensible defaults.

Details

Name — what the promotion shows up as in the list and on receipts.

Assign to

Who gets this price. By default, All customers. (Customer-specific pricing lives in the adjacent Custom prices tab — see Custom prices when a price should stick for one customer permanently, not run on a schedule.)

Products

Three ways to choose what's on sale:

By rules — the broad option. Pick a Vendor, Department / Class / Fineline (Rundoo's product categorization hierarchy), and/or a Product tag. Every product matching the filters gets the promotion. Good for "10% off Benjamin Moore" or "everything tagged summer clearance." A promotion carries one rule set, not several stacked rules — the three filters above combine on a single promotion, so for two different rule shapes (say 10% off Benjamin Moore and 15% off everything tagged summer clearance) create two separate promotions and run them side by side.
By product — pick specific SKUs. Good for a handful of named items on sale.
All products — storewide. Good for tier-wide discounts (see Pricing strategy below).

Pricing strategy

What kind of adjustment this is — pick one:

Discount — a percentage off a reference price tier. Pick the Reference tier (e.g., base list price), the Discount percentage, and optionally a Price rounding rule to land the final price on a clean number.
Margin — target a specific gross margin. Rundoo computes the sell price from current cost so the margin lands where you want. Good for keeping margin locked across cost changes.
Dollar — a fixed dollar amount. Overrides to a flat price regardless of tier or cost.

Schedule and location

Start date — when the promotion goes active. Defaults to Today.
Expiration date — optional. Leave blank for an open-ended promotion that stays active until you end it manually.
Locations — which stores honor this price. Defaults to All locations.

Click Save at the top right. The promotion applies to matching transactions from the Start date forward.

Common patterns

One-day percent-off a vendor

Pass through a vendor-offered promo for a limited window.

Products: By rules → pick the Vendor.
Pricing strategy: Discount → Reference tier = your base tier, Discount percentage = the markdown.
Schedule: Start today, Expiration = tomorrow (or whenever the window ends).

Storewide tier discount

Everything X% off this weekend.

Products: All products.
Pricing strategy: Discount → Reference tier = base tier, Discount percentage = the markdown.
Schedule: set a Start and Expiration.

Fixed price on a specific SKU

One product with a specific sale price regardless of tier.

Products: By product → search and select the SKU.
Pricing strategy: Dollar → enter the sale price.
Schedule: open-ended or windowed.

Free samples and giveaways

There isn't a native "free sample" promotion type, but stores run them three different ways depending on what they're tracking.

Sales notes tag. Ring the product at $0 via Edit price and add a Sales note like Free sample - Aura promo on the line. Lightest path; reporting comes from a Sales report exported to Excel and filtered on the Sales note column. Good when you don't sample often enough to want a dedicated SKU.
Dedicated $0 SKU. Add a non-stock product (e.g. SAMPLE Aura, Tier 1 = $0, non-taxable, non-stock) and ring it instead of the real product when handing one out. Cleanest for reporting — the Sold Products report filtered to the sample SKU is your giveaway count — and avoids touching the real product's sales numbers.
Sample tag on a customer or job. If a single contractor is collecting samples for a project, attach a Sample tag to the customer or job and run a Sales report filtered to that tag. Useful when one customer's samples have to roll up separately from yours.

Pick the lightest one that gives you the reporting you need. Most stores start with sales notes and graduate to a dedicated SKU once they're sampling weekly.

Running a BOGO coupon

The Promotions form doesn't have a native "buy-one-get-one" option, but stores run BOGOs cleanly with a small pattern. It's what Rundoo trainers walk customers through on every BOGO question.

Set up once:

Create a BOGO product. Add a new product (e.g. BOGO Regal Select) with the coupon number in the Additional IDs field. Mark it non-stock, non-taxable, and set the default cost and Tier 1 price to $0.
Make the real product non-nesting. On the paint (or whatever the promo is on), go to Settings > Checkout and flip on non-nesting so two of the same SKU show as separate cart lines instead of stacking to Qty 2.

At the register, when the customer presents the coupon:

Scan or add the real product at full price.
Add the same product a second time, open Edit Price, and set it to $0 — that's the "get one" leg.
Scan or search the BOGO [Product] SKU to attach the coupon record to the sale. Optional: add a Sales note like Part of contractor BOGO coupon so it shows up when you report on BOGO activity later.
Complete the sale.

Reporting comes from either angle:

By coupon SKU. In POS > Analytics > Reports, open Sold Products, filter by the BOGO SKU, pick the date range. You'll see how many coupons got redeemed.
By sales note. Run the Sales report over your date range, export to Excel, and filter or sort the Sales note column. This is richer if you're pattern-matching multiple BOGO flavors or want to see who rang each one.

Managing existing promotions

From the Promotions list page:

Sort / Filter — narrow by date, location, or product.
Status: Active — switch to Archived to see past promotions.
Show/hide — column picker.
Download spreadsheet — export the list.
Import promotions — bulk-create from a CSV.

Editing promotions inline in the list

Click into the Price, Margin %, or Discount % cell on any row to adjust a promotion in place — no need to open the detail page. The editable column depends on the row's Strategy:

Dollar strategy → Price is editable.
Margin strategy → Margin % is editable.
Discount strategy → Discount % is editable.

Edit as many rows as you want and apply them all at once with the Update N… button + confirmation. Defaults lead with Name · Strategy · Price · Margin · Discount under the PROMOTION group; Start / Expiration tuck behind Show/hide if you need them on screen.

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Use the detail page (next section) when you need to change anything other than Price / Margin / Discount — Schedule, Products, Locations, and the strategy itself are still detail-page edits.

Editing a saved promotion

Click any row in the list to open Edit promotion. A saved promotion is partially locked — some fields can still be tweaked, others are baked in at creation time.

Editable after save:

Name
Pricing strategy — swap between Discount / Margin / Dollar, and change the percentage, margin target, or dollar amount.
Start date and Expiration date.

Locked after save:

Assign to — the customer scope (All customers vs a specific group) is fixed at creation.
Products — you can't add or remove products from an existing promotion, whether it was built with By rules, By product, or All products. The Search input and the remove controls are disabled on the Edit promotion form.
Locations

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If you need to change the product list, customer assignment, or locations on an already-saved promotion, you can't — Deactivate it and create a new one with the revised scope. Rundoo doesn't let you restructure a saved promotion in place, so scope matters at creation time.

Ending a promotion

Two ways, same outcome:

Click Deactivate in the Edit promotion header — immediate end, cleanest option.
Or edit the Expiration date to today — useful when you want a specific off-date on the record for reporting.

Recommended Rundocs

Custom prices — customer-specific pricing that doesn't expire.
Running Reports — use the Additional fees / Sales by day reports to see a promotion's impact.