How the plugins work together
Each plugin does one job and keeps its own records. Here is who is in charge of what when you run several, and what that means at the checkout.
The principle
No plugin reaches into another's work. Dynamic Pricing sets prices, Free Gifts & BOGO gives gifts, Store Credit holds balances, B2B decides who is a business customer. Where two of them meet, one rule decides. You never have to wire them together: they recognize each other when they are installed.
Two things are shared:
- AffStackDev Suite: one menu and one dashboard for all of them (The Suite). Optional.
- Commerce Core: an invisible layer that comes inside the plugins. It passes facts between them, for example "this shopper is a business customer". Nothing to install, nothing to set. It needs 64-bit PHP 8.1 or newer and WordPress 6.7 or newer (B2B needs the same PHP anyway).
At the checkout, in order
When several plugins have something to say about one cart, this is the order:
- Who is the customer? If B2B says "business account", consumer offers step aside (see below).
- Prices. Dynamic Pricing lowers the prices of matching products. B2B does the same for business customers with their own prices.
- Gifts. Free Gifts & BOGO looks at what the shopper now really pays for products and adds earned gifts.
- Coupons. WooCommerce applies coupons. Each plugin has its own rule about whether an offer may be combined with a coupon.
- Store credit and gift cards. They pay part of what is left. They are payment, not a discount.
Who steps aside for whom
| When ... | then ... |
|---|---|
| a customer has a B2B business account (waiting, approved or on hold) | they get no consumer discount from Dynamic Pricing, no consumer gift from Free Gifts & BOGO, and can be kept out of Refer a Friend. Also when their business discount is zero. |
| Dynamic Pricing lowers a price | Free Gifts & BOGO counts the lowered price toward "spend X". A rule that takes 100 down to 75 does not reach a "spend 90" gift. |
| a line in the cart is a Free Gifts & BOGO gift | Dynamic Pricing leaves it alone. A paid copy of the same product is priced normally. |
| the shopper pays with store credit or a gift card | nothing steps aside. Credit never blocks a Dynamic Pricing offer or a Free Gifts & BOGO gift and never lowers the amount that counts for them. |
| the shopper applies a coupon | Dynamic Pricing withholds its offer unless you listed that coupon as permitted. Free Gifts & BOGO follows each promotion's "coupons allowed" setting. The Refer a Friend discount is a coupon in this sense. |
| a product is a gift card | it cannot be bought with credit, cannot be discounted by a coupon, keeps its full price during a Dynamic Pricing sale, counts toward no Free Gifts & BOGO promotion unless you tick Gift cards in Free Gifts & BOGO's Settings, cannot be given as a Free Gifts & BOGO gift, and does not count toward a Refer a Friend minimum. |
Worked example: one cart, three plugins
Harbor & Pine, the sample store of these pages, runs Dynamic Pricing's "Wool socks: buy more, save more" (10% off from three packs), Free Gifts & BOGO's "Socks: buy two packs, get one free" and an ordinary $5 coupon, camp5, which the owner listed under Ordinary coupon codes allowed with pricing offers in Dynamic Pricing.
A shopper puts three packs of socks ($28 each) in the cart and applies camp5:
- Prices. Dynamic Pricing prices the three packs at $25.20 each: $75.60.
- Gifts. Free Gifts & BOGO adds one more pack at $0.00 ("An earned free gift was added to your cart."). Dynamic Pricing leaves the gift line alone.
- Coupons. The coupon takes $5.00 off: the total is $70.60.
- Free Gifts & BOGO's "Free beanie with orders over $150" counts $70.60 (the lowered price, after the coupon, as its Coupon spend basis is at the start): "Add $79.40 more to unlock ...".
Had the coupon not been listed in Dynamic Pricing, the socks would cost $28 each with the coupon ($79.00 in all): Dynamic Pricing steps aside for a coupon it does not allow, the coupon and the gift stay (the same cart, pictured).
Partners and credit
AffiliPartnerCS pays partners their commissions. One of the ways is store credit: the partner gets a balance to spend in your store instead of money. AffiliPartnerCS keeps the commission record; Store Credit keeps the balance. A commission paid this way is paid once: spending the credit, or refunding an order paid with it, does not pay it again.
Refer a Friend (Store Credit) is for ordinary customers and has nothing to do with partner commissions. If you run AffiliPartnerCS it can take over the handling of those customer referrals; the rewards stay store credit.
Unified Email Manager sees the emails the other plugins send through WooCommerce and WordPress (for example the Store credit / gift card issued email) in its Site Emails list, where you can pause and, where the source allows it, reword them. Gate Manager's four emails can be edited from Email Manager as well. Support Desk keeps its own email templates in its own settings.
Every plugin sends through your site's one mail connection. If email does not work for one, it does not work for any: fix the connection first.
Looks and content
Theme Manager finds the appearance and form-design screens of Gate Manager and Support Desk and opens them for you; the settings stay with those plugins. Image Manager can look at your public pages again after you change the design, so that lighter pictures are prepared for the new layout.
Access
Gate Manager can use a role that B2B (or any membership plugin) assigns to open a dealer area, and can check its gates again at Add to cart and checkout. It never sets a price or changes a cart.
Licenses
Every plugin has its own license and its own key. The Suite has none. One plugin's license never switches another on or off. See Activate your license.
When two plugins seem to disagree
- Find out which plugin owns the thing that looks wrong: a price is Dynamic Pricing or B2B, a missing gift is Free Gifts & BOGO, a balance is Store Credit.
- Use that plugin's own tester: the Simulator in Dynamic Pricing, Preview in Free Gifts & BOGO, Price preview in B2B. Each names its reason.
- Remember the table above. "The gift vanished when I added a coupon" or "my business customer gets no sale price" are usually the rules working as intended.