Timely provides a way to add a series of discounts that can be applied to invoices. These discounts can be applied to the entire invoice, or against an individual invoice line.
In this guide, we'll show you how to:
This feature may not be available on your current plan. Find out how to upgrade in our How to change your Timely plan guide.
Set up your discounts
Before you can start discounting your services and products you will need to add some discounts to your account.
We’ve provided you with a “ General/Misc” discount to start with, but you're welcome to add your own discounts as required.
You have a couple of options when applying a discount:
- Generic, where you can specify the discount when adding it to the invoice.
- Apply a percentage discount (For example: a 10% student discount).
- Apply a discount at a fixed amount.
- Head to Setup > Discounts in your Timely account:
- Click the Add discount button.
- Give the discount a Name and select the Tax rate (if your business uses multiple tax rates, use Not applicable):
- Choose which Discount type will be applied from one the dropdown:
- If you choose a Percentage or Fixed amount discount, you can then add a Discount value i.e. 10 for percentage, or 30.00 for amount):
- If you have Xero connected then you can choose the Xero account that the discount will be attributed to.
- Finally, click Save to add your new discount. It will appear at the bottom of your discount list:
When applying a discount to an invoice, the tax category must match the service or be "Not applicable", otherwise you will end up with a negative subtotal and your invoice will not save.
Add a discount to an invoice
Once you have some discounts added, you will be able to discount individual services or products, or entire invoices.
This is done when you first raise, or Edit, an invoice:
- Raise an invoice from the Calendar or the Sales tab.
- To apply a discount to the entire sale click the Discount at the bottom of the sales tab
- To apply a discount to part of the sale click the service or product you want to discount
and then click on the discount drop-down to select the discount you want to apply: -
The discount will then appear under the item that is discounted, with a line through the original price of the service/product:
Reporting on discounts
If you're routinely giving discounts to customers you may wish to keep track of those total discounts given, or identify which are your most popular discounts.
The total value of Discounts given will be shown for each staff member, as well as the business as a whole, in the Executive summary report:
If you'd like to drill down further and see which discounts are most popular, you can check out the Standard discounts section of the Sales report: