How tiers work
A customer's tier comes from what they spend in a calendar year. Three rules decide everything else.
The three rules
- 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.
- A slow year never takes a tier away mid-year. Spending nothing further doesn't lower a status. Only the January review does.
- 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.
A worked example
With the default tiers, Bronze at $200, Silver at $500 and Gold at $750:
| Year | Spend in the year | Tier during the year | Tier the next year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | $220, first order in March | None, then Bronze from that order | Bronze |
| 2027 | $640 | Bronze, then Silver in August | Silver |
| 2028 | $300 | Silver all year | Bronze |
| 2029 | $0 | Bronze all year | None, they leave the club |
What counts as spend
Spend is the order subtotal after discounts. Shipping, taxes, tips and duties don't count. Discounts always reduce it, including TierWise's own reward codes, so a reward can never pay for the climb to the next tier.
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.
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 loyalty-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 the first time the app is opened in the new year, and it only ever runs once per year. Nothing is lost if that's a few days in: 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 Re-apply to all customers after a change to update everyone at once; otherwise each customer updates on their next order.