Pricing

Running discounts and offers in a small shop without giving away the profit

How to plan a shop offer that pays for itself: decide what it is for, work out how many extra sales a discount needs, choose the right kind of offer and the right products, set an end date, and check the result. Worked examples in rupees.

23 October 2026 · 10 min read · By Muhammad Ahmad

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The shop across the road has a new banner: "10% off everything this week." By Tuesday two of your regulars have mentioned it. One asks, half joking, whether you will match it. You look at your shelves and wonder whether you should put up a banner of your own.

Before you do, take ten minutes with a pen. An offer can bring people in, clear a shelf and remind the neighbourhood that you exist. It can also hand away a month's profit without anyone noticing, because the shop is busy and the drawer is full. The difference is almost always in the planning, not in the size of the discount.

This article is about planning one offer properly: what it is for, what it really costs, which products can carry it, when it ends, and how you know afterwards whether it worked.

Decide what the offer is for

Every offer should have one job. Write it down in a single sentence before you choose a product or a number. Most shop offers do one of these:

• Clear slow stock. Turn goods that have sat for months back into cash and shelf space.
• Move near-date goods. Sell items before their expiry date instead of throwing them away.
• Bring in new customers. Give people who walk past a reason to come inside once.
• Thank regular customers. Give something back to the people who keep the shop running.
• Meet a season. School opening, winter, Ramadan, Eid, a local fair.

The job decides everything else. A clearance offer goes on the products you want to be rid of. A new-customer offer goes on something people notice from the door. A thank-you for regulars may not need to be a discount at all.

An offer with no job, "everyone else is doing it", is the one most likely to lose money. If you cannot finish the sentence "This offer is to...", do not run it yet.

Work out how many more you must sell

A discount does not come off your price. It comes off your profit. That is the whole arithmetic, and it is why a small-looking discount can be so expensive.

Take an example product. You sell it for Rs 100 and it costs you Rs 80, so you keep Rs 20 on each one. Now see what each discount leaves you, and how many more you would need to sell to earn the same Rs 20 per original sale:

These numbers are examples. Your own will differ, but the shape is the same for every product: the thinner the margin, the faster a discount eats it.

Now take a product that you sell for Rs 100 and that costs you Rs 60. You keep Rs 40. A 10% discount leaves you Rs 30, so you need only one third more sales to stand still. The same "10% off" sign is cheap on this product and ruinous on the first.

So before choosing the size of a discount, know the margin of the product it goes on. The free profit margin calculator gives you the margin from the cost and the price, and the discount calculator shows the new price and what the discount costs you. If you are working out how much an offer has to sell to cover a fixed cost, such as printing a banner, the break-even calculator helps.

Choose the right kind of offer

"Percentage off" is only one way to make an offer. The others often cost less for the same pull.

• Rupees off one item. "Rs 20 off this oil." Clear and easy to check at the counter. Good for one product you want to move.
• Percentage off a group. "10% off all school bags." Simple to say, but check the margin on every item in the group, not just the one you were thinking of.
• A bundle. Two or three items sold together for a little less than their separate prices. Pairing a slow product with a fast one moves the slow one without discounting your best seller on its own.
• Something extra with a purchase. A small item given with a bigger one. It costs you what you paid for the small item, not what you sell it for, which is often a cheaper way to give the same feeling of value.
• A minimum spend. "Spend Rs 2,000 and get Rs 100 off." It only pays out on larger bills, so it tends to raise the size of each sale rather than cut the price of small ones.
• A better price for a larger quantity. "One for Rs 60, two for Rs 110." Useful for goods that keep, and for products customers buy regularly anyway.

Match the kind to the job. For clearing stock, rupees off or a bundle usually works best. For new customers, one striking offer on a product people notice works better than a long list. For regulars, something extra often means more than a discount.

Pick products that can carry it

Not every product deserves an offer. Some carry one easily. Others should never have one.

Good candidates:

• Products with a healthy margin, where a discount leaves you something on each sale.
• Slow sellers that have sat for months. If you have not read it yet, fast and slow sellers shows how to find them.
• Near-date goods that will otherwise be thrown away. Here even selling at cost is better than a total loss, as covered in reducing stock loss.
• Items you are no longer going to stock, to free the shelf.

Poor candidates:

• Staples with a thin margin, such as flour, sugar and oil in many shops. A small discount can wipe out the profit entirely.
• Your fast sellers. They already sell. A discount on them mostly gives money away to people who would have bought anyway.
• Products you are short of. An offer that empties the shelf before the next delivery leaves customers disappointed, not pleased.

A useful test is to ask: "Who buys this product now, and would they have bought it without the offer?" If the honest answer is "the same people, the same amount", the offer is a gift, not a plan.

Set a start, an end and a limit

An offer without an end becomes your new price. Customers stop seeing it as a deal and start seeing the old price as too high. Decide three things before the first sale:

1. The start date. Pick a day and tell your staff the evening before.
2. The end date. A week, a weekend or until a stated quantity is sold. Say it on the sign: "Until Sunday" or "While stock lasts".
3. The limit. One per customer, a fixed number of bundles, or only the stock already on the shelf. A limit protects you from one buyer taking the whole lot to resell.

Then keep to the end date. Extending an offer once, because it is going well, is a reasonable choice. Extending it every week means you have quietly lowered your price without deciding to.

Make it clear at the counter and on the bill

An offer that only the owner understands creates arguments and mistakes. Before it starts:

• Write the sign so a customer can check it. Which products, what price, until when. "Cooking oil 5 litre, Rs 50 off, until Sunday" is better than "Big savings".
• Tell everyone at the counter exactly what the offer covers and what it does not.
• Record the discount on the bill. Ring the sale up at the normal price and show the discount as a line, rather than typing a lower price. That way you can count later what the offer gave away. Discounts that are given but never recorded are one of the billing mistakes that make profit look higher than it is.
• Keep a short note of the offer: dates, products, the discount and the reason. A line in your notebook is enough. You will need it for the next step.

Check the result after it ends

Most shops never check whether an offer worked. They remember that the shop was busy and assume it did. A ten-minute look the week after tells you much more.

Compare the offer period with the same length of time just before it:

• How many of the offer products sold, before and during.
• The gross profit on those products, before and during. More sales at a lower margin can still mean less profit.
• The rest of the bill. Did offer customers buy other things too, or only the offer item?
• The week after. If sales dropped sharply once the offer ended, many customers simply bought early what they would have bought anyway.

Then write one line in the same note: "Worked, run again in spring", or "Busy but no extra profit, do not repeat." Over a year these lines become your own guide to which offers suit your shop and your customers.

When the shop next door cuts its prices

Back to the banner across the road. You do not have to answer it with a banner of your own.

First, check what is actually on offer. "10% off everything" often turns out to be a few products, or prices that went up the week before. Second, remember what your regulars come to you for: the right stock, honest weight, a fair bill, credit when they need it, a shopkeeper who knows them. Those are hard to copy with a sign. Pricing your products covers why chasing a neighbour's rate rarely ends well.

If you do want to respond, choose one or two products where you have the margin to spare, give a clear offer with an end date, and let your other prices stand.

Questions shopkeepers ask

Is a percentage discount or a rupee discount better?

On a single product, a rupee amount is clearer and easier to check at the counter. On a group of products, a percentage is simpler to explain. What matters more is the margin of each product the offer covers: work out what each one leaves you before you decide.

How long should an offer run?

Long enough for your regular customers to see it, which for most shops means at least one full week or one full weekend. Short enough that it still feels like an offer. Two weeks is usually the most a single offer should run before you stop and check the result.

Should I give a discount to every customer who asks?

A shop that bargains with everyone ends up with no real prices. It is better to have clear prices, clear offers with end dates, and a small number of decisions you make yourself for good reasons. Whatever you give, record it on the bill so you can see what it adds up to over a month.

Is giving something free better than a discount?

Often, yes. A free item costs you what you paid for it, while a discount of the same selling value costs you that full amount in profit. It also keeps your normal price intact. Make sure the free item is something customers actually want, not something you are only trying to get rid of.

What if an offer brings in crowds but no extra profit?

Then it was a busy week, not a good one. Check whether the products had enough margin to carry the discount, and whether the extra customers bought anything else. Next time, try a smaller discount, a bundle, or a minimum spend, and compare the results.

In Saleva, each product keeps its purchase price, so Reports shows the gross profit for any period you choose, which is the number to compare before and after an offer. The Forecast screen lists products with no sale in ninety days under Not moving, the natural place to look for clearance offers, and shows under Thin margin the products that cannot afford one. The products and stock guide shows where each of these lives.

Keep reading

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