thread Automatic Discounts and Split Items Workaround in Payments Troubleshooting

Automatic Discounts and Split Items Workaround

Brando23 — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 16:27:03 GMT

Hello,

We utilize Square for Restaurants, and had just run into an issue with automatic discounts.

We run a BOGO style discount weekly for items, which works quite naturally on the POS - until you split the items across seats.

Once the items are split across seats and into new bills, the automatic discount no longer applies.

If the bill is split evenly, the automatic discount will apply, however even splits aren't always the best option when some guests are enjoying a glass of wine while others enjoying a glass of water.

Does anyone know of a way to keep the discount applying automatically upon splitting the bill?

The server can go in to each fractional and eligible item and manually apply the discount, however this would not help with timeliness.

The server can also move beverages to a separate check and split the eligible food items, but would have to charge the guest twice.

I can also just create unique items to appear on deal days that are priced according to the special, but they could be used incorrectly.

Is there anything I might be missing on the dashboard side? Has anyone in the community found this issue and the most ideal workaround?

Thank you,

Brando23

Re: Automatic Discounts and Split Items Workaround

Sammie_C — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 20:50:04 GMT

Hi @Brando23, welcome to the Square Community! This is a great question.

I am going to tag in a few of our Square Champions as they may have some insight or a workaround for this.

Since you all own businesses in similar fields, @TheRealChipA, @Donnie-M, and @saydad, do you all know of any workarounds for this Seller's inquiry, by chance?

Re: Automatic Discounts and Split Items Workaround

TheRealChipA — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 21:25:12 GMT

Hey there @Brando23 (and @Sammie_C)

Here's what's going on, which is also the reason why I'm going to go ahead and suggest that you submit a feature request here.

When you split a check evenly, it does not actually move items around. It just prorates the total into as many new transactions aw you specify.

However, when you split items across seats, that moves items into their own transactions. Assuming that Item1 has a BOGO, each split check now only has one of those, so the automatic discount rules don't recognize that the BOGO was satisfied. It now looks to the POS as if you have two checks with two single items on each.

This issue is so obscure that it probably did not come up during the extensive beta test that was performed. And, since it would never happen in Square Online stores, there was even less of a chance that it would be found. You just happen to be the unlucky seller who uncovered it.

Anyway, submit a feature request. Keep it as simple as possible, but definitely point out that:

When you split an item with a BOGO automatic discount, the discount is removed
The POS needs to look at the whole check when determining automatic discounts and apply those to the sub-checks to which they apply.

Is it a bug? Maybe or maybe not. But it is a pretty uncommon scenario, I would imagine. I'm not surprised that you are the first seller to run across and report it. For now, one of your existing workarounds will have to do even at the expense of timeliness.

Good luck!

Re: Automatic Discounts and Split Items Workaround

SONNYS — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 19:36:44 GMT

it is a bug, it used to work well. IT NOT WORKING SINCE COUPLE MONTHS AGO AND NOT BE FIXED.