Free goods and gifts

Free goods (Naturalrabatt) are standard practice in wholesale: order twelve, get thirteen, pay for twelve. The mechanic is straightforward. The invoice and the stock are where it goes wrong.

Build the rule

1. Go to Marketing › Promotions, New promotion, effect Free goods.
2. Set:
   • Trigger article or group — what the buyer must order.
   • Trigger quantity — 12.
   • Free quantity — 1.
   • Free article — the same article, or a different one.
   • Repeat — does 24 give 2, or still 1? Decide; buyers will test it.
   • Maximum free units per order — always set this.
3. Scope it as any other promotion: markets, channels, price lists. See Create a promotion.
4. Set validity and activate.

Repeat with no ceiling is the classic accident. A wholesale customer ordering 1,200 pieces gets 100 free, which was never the intent of a 12 + 1 rule aimed at a shelf-level order.

Choosing the free article

Three patterns, in descending order of how well they work:

• The same article. 12 + 1 of the same item. Simplest, and what wholesale buyers expect. Stock is straightforward: you shipped 13.
• A related consumable. A machine plus a starter pack of what it consumes. Genuinely valuable — it puts your consumable in their store room — but it needs the catalogue relationship to be right, see Reference entities.
• A promotional item. A branded torch with every order above €1,000. It works in some trades and reads as cheap in others. If you do it, it needs a SKU, a stock figure and a price like anything else.

Let the buyer choose from a small set where you can. Choice raises redemption and prevents the case where the gift is something that customer already has a cupboard full of.

The invoice treatment

This is the part that matters.

Practically, on the invoice:

VAT is calculated on the line total, because the free unit is part of one supply granted as a rebate in kind — not a separate gratis delivery. Where you give away an article that is not part of the purchased supply — the branded torch — the treatment is different and your tax adviser, not this article, decides it. Keep the two cases apart in your promotion set so nobody has to work out which is which later. See also Currencies and tax.

Stock

The free unit is real stock. It leaves the warehouse, it has to be picked, and it has to be reserved.

• Reserve it like any other line. A free unit that is not reserved is one that gets sold twice, and the second buyer gets a short delivery.
• Check availability before granting. A promotion promising a free unit of an article you cannot ship converts a gift into a back-order.
• Cap the total free units per campaign, not only per order. Ten thousand free units is a stock decision, not a marketing one.

See Stock and locations.

Returns

A partial return has to decide what happens to the free unit. Set the policy before the first return arrives:

• Return 13 of 13: refund the 12 paid, the free unit comes back.
• Return 6 of 13: the trigger quantity is no longer met. Either recover the free unit's value from the credit note, or write it off. Recovering is correct and needs to be stated in your terms; writing it off is simpler and costs money.

Whichever you choose, say it in the promotion's terms so the buyer is not surprised. See Returns.

What to check

• Order 12 as a test buyer. The 13th appears as its own line, named, with the discount stated — not at €0.00.
• Order 24. You get exactly what your repeat setting says, and no more than the per-order maximum.
• Look at the invoice document, not the cart. Quantity, unit price, discount and line total must all be present and must add up.
• Check the stock movement. Thirteen units left the warehouse.

Next

• Bundles and kits — the other way to put more in the box.
• Test a promotion before it goes live — including the invoice check.