Surcharges and Spend & Save discounts

Charge more when a design costs more to print, and nudge customers toward bigger orders with tiered discounts.

Two pricing levers live in the template builder. Surcharges add cost when a design costs more to print. Spend & Save shows customers the discount tiers waiting for them if they order more.

Surcharges

A back print costs more than a front-only print. An extra sleeve costs more than no sleeve. Surcharges let the cart price reflect that automatically.

How they work

Set a surcharge amount on any output file in the template builder's Output panel. When a customer's design uses a side mapped to that file, Pixel Wrangler adds the surcharge to the cart line. The customer sees it before checkout, and it appears on their invoice.

You can also set a customer-facing message — "Includes back print (+$5)" — so the extra charge explains itself.

Shopify Plus only

Surcharges run on Shopify's cart transform function, which Shopify offers only to Shopify Plus stores. On other plans the surcharge settings appear in the builder but stay disabled, with a tooltip explaining why.

If you're not on Plus and need per-side pricing, the workaround is product variants — a "Front only" and a "Front + Back" variant with different prices.

Cart display settings

Settings → Checkout Surcharges controls how surcharges appear in your cart — including the CSS selector Pixel Wrangler uses to place the surcharge note in your theme's cart. Most themes work out of the box; if the note doesn't show, that selector is the first thing to check.

On the order

Surcharge details ride along as line item properties: _pw_surcharge_total (in cents), _pw_surcharge_message, and _pw_surcharge_sides.

Spend & Save discounts

Spend & Save shows a discount progress bar inside the customizer — "Add 2 more to save 10%" — nudging customers toward bigger orders while they design.

One thing to be clear about: Pixel Wrangler displays the tiers; Shopify applies the discount. You create a matching automatic discount in your Shopify admin, and Spend & Save makes sure customers know about it at the moment they're deciding how many to buy.

Setting it up

  1. In the template builder, open Settings → Spend & Save Discounts and tick Enable discounts.
  2. Pick a threshold type — quantity (number of items) or spend (total value).
  3. Pick a scope:
    • This template only — items designed on this template count toward the threshold
    • Same product (any customisation) — any customized version of the product counts
    • All customised items in cart — everything customized counts
  4. Add your tiers — e.g. 2+ items → 10% off, 5+ items → 15% off. Percentage or fixed amount.
  5. In your Shopify admin, create the automatic discount that matches those tiers exactly.

If the tiers you show and the discount Shopify applies don't match, customers notice at checkout — in the bad direction. Set the Shopify discount first, then mirror it in the template.

What's next