How tiers work

A customer's tier comes from what they spend in a calendar year. Three rules decide everything else.

The three rules

1. Upgrades are immediate. The moment an order takes this year's spend over a tier's threshold, the customer moves up. Their tag, fields and Rewards page update within seconds.
2. A slow year never takes a tier away mid-year. Spending nothing further doesn't lower a status. Only the January review does.
3. The January review decides the new year. The tier a customer's spend earned in a year is the tier they hold for the rest of that year and all of the next. Then the spend counter starts again at zero.

One exception to rule 2: if an order is cancelled or deleted, its spend comes off straight away and the tier follows it down. The customer never actually spent that money.

Do past orders count?

You decide this once, as the first step of setup, and it can't be changed after your tiers are saved.

Count past orders means the last two years of orders decide where each customer starts. Last year's spend sets the tier they hold this year, and this year's spend can raise it. Someone who spent $800 last year is Gold now, even with nothing this year. Choose this when you're moving an existing program over, so loyal customers are recognised straight away.

Start everyone from zero means only orders placed after Launch count. Existing customers show $0 and no tier until their first order after Launch, and the first tier they reach is genuinely earned. Choose this when loyalty is new to your store.

In both cases, reward codes are only given for orders placed after the start. See Reward codes.

A worked example

With the default tiers, Bronze at $200, Silver at $500 and Gold at $750:

What counts as spend

Spend is what the customer paid for the goods, after discounts and refunds. A refund lowers spend however it was entered, as returned items or as an amount. Tips and duties never count. Shipping and tax don't count either, unless you turn on Count shipping and tax as spend in Settings, which adds what the customer paid for them, after refunds. Discounts always reduce spend, including TierWise's own reward codes, so a reward can never pay for the climb to the next tier. Changing the setting re-tiers everyone, so press Update all customers afterwards.

These orders don't count at all:

• Cancelled orders.
• Test orders. On a development store they do count, so you can try the program out.
• Orders with no customer attached, such as guest checkouts. There's nobody to credit.

All thresholds are in your store's currency.

Reaching a tier by order count

In Settings, any tier can also be reached by placing enough orders in a calendar year, for example 3 orders for Bronze. A customer reaches the tier by spend or by order count, whichever comes first, and the January review treats both paths the same way.

Setting a tier by hand

You can put a customer in a higher tier yourself, from their page in the app: a friend of the brand, an influencer, a customer you want to thank. You choose how long it lasts. They still move up by spending, and when it ends they go back to the tier their orders earn. See A customer's page.

Years follow your store's timezone

TierWise reads your timezone from Shopify. An order placed at 11:50 pm on 31 December in New York belongs to the year that's ending, even though it's already 1 January in UTC.

Leaving the club

A member whose year earns no tier at all leaves the club at the January review. Their member and tier tags come off and they're tagged tierwise-lapsed, so you can find past members for a win-back campaign. Their join date and history are kept, and the order that takes them over a threshold again brings them straight back.

When the review runs

TierWise runs the January review by itself in the first hours of the new year, and only ever once per year. If the app was asleep, it runs the first time the app is opened or an order arrives, and nothing is lost: every customer's tier is already correct from their order history, and the review brings their tags and fields up to date all at once. You can see who it would affect at any time with the year-end filters on Members, and the totals on Analytics.

Renaming tiers or changing thresholds

Change them any time in Settings. Tiers are tracked by position, not by name, so renaming Silver to Platinum keeps every customer where they are. Old tags are cleaned up on the next sync. Click Update all customers after a change to update everyone at once; otherwise each customer updates on their next order.