Loyalty and referrals

Use Loyalty to reward a customer’s qualifying personal activity with points. Use Referrals to offer a benefit to a new customer and reward the person who introduced them. The two programs have separate settings.

Points

A non-cash balance exchanged for a supported reward. A promise of 100 points does not mean ₹100 unless your redemption offer gives it that value.

Discounts

Reduce the eligible selling price. Minimum spend, expiry, customer eligibility, and discount-combination settings still apply.

Store credit

Pays part of an order in the store’s currency. Promotional credit can carry personal-use, expiry, and recovery restrictions.

See Financial semantics for the difference between discounts and payments. All ₹ examples below assume a store using INR.

Find the right screen

These are the current admin navigation labels:

What you want to do	Where to go
Create earning and redemption rules	Loyalty → Overview, then Ways to earn or Ways to redeem
Set points expiry, purchase exclusions, participation, and redemption settings	Loyalty → Settings; the page is titled Program settings
Set tier thresholds and benefits	Loyalty → VIP tiers
Create a timed points offer	Loyalty → Boost campaigns
Inspect a member’s balance, holds, or adjustments	Loyalty → Customers, then open the customer
Configure friend and advocate rewards	Referrals → Offer
Configure referral eligibility and limits	Referrals → Preferences
Review suspicious referrals	Referrals → Fraud; requires customer access
Check referral results or configure their presentation	Referrals → Performance or Referrals → Widgets

Set up a small first program

In Loyalty → Settings, choose who can participate and review the purchase exclusions, expiry, rounding, and redemption limits. Save the changes.
In Loyalty → Overview, configure one purchase earning rule and one supported redemption offer. For example, earn 1 point per ₹10 of eligible merchandise and exchange 100 points for ₹50 off a purchase of at least ₹500. These are example values, not product defaults.
Check the offer using a personal customer account. A ₹1,000 eligible purchase should create 100 points at that example rate. Check when those points become available, then verify the ₹50 reward and its minimum purchase.
Rehearse a partial return, a full cancellation, and an interrupted redemption before advertising the offer. Use the customer’s reward history to confirm the result before granting a manual replacement.

Purchase exclusions decide which amount earns points: discounts, tax, shipping, gift-card products, and gift-card or store-credit payments can affect the basis. Excluding store-credit payments from points earning does not turn store credit into a discount or reduce reported sales.

Earn rules also cover supported actions such as signup, birthdays, newsletter opt-in, spend thresholds, products, punch cards, reviews, referrals, custom actions, and customer-field conditions. Use eligibility, schedules, and frequency limits to keep each offer specific. A social link click is a visit or click; do not advertise it as a verified follow.

Understand the reward lifecycle

Points balance	What it means
Pending	Recorded but not yet spendable; the purchase or configured hold still needs to qualify
Available	Approved, unexpired points that are not already reserved
Reserved	Held by a cart or redemption, so the same points cannot be spent elsewhere
Unrecovered	Points that must be reversed but were already spent; later earnings repay this amount first

History keeps the original earning, spending, expiry, and correction. A refund adds a reversal; it does not erase the customer’s earlier activity.

When purchase rewards become available

Automatic purchase points and purchase-backed referral rewards wait for the order to qualify. Depending on its contents, this includes:

full collection of payment, including COD;
delivery of retained physical items and the applicable return window;
delivery of a digital item and its digital refund window;
completion of an event or service;
resolution of an open return, cancellation, or refund request; and
any additional reward hold promised for that award.

The order’s saved return policy governs its hold. Shortening today’s return window does not release older awards early. Split deliveries can extend the wait. A saved policy with an unlimited return window can leave a reward on hold without a release date; ask support to inspect it rather than awarding a duplicate.

Apparel example: A paid ₹1,000 shirt earns 100 pending points. Its saved policy allows returns for seven days after delivery. The points remain pending until that window closes and any longer reward hold ends. If the customer opens a return during the window, resolve it before expecting release. The admin’s release date is an estimate conditional on continued eligibility.

For automatically held purchase points, the saved points-expiry duration starts when the points become usable, so the delivery wait does not consume their spending period.

Redeem points

The supported loyalty reward types are fixed-amount discount, percentage discount, and free shipping. Configure the points cost and, where relevant, minimum spend, eligible products or collections, countries, customer or tier requirements, expiry, frequency, and online/POS channels. Check the explicit product, order, and shipping discount-combination settings.

Do not advertise points-to-store-credit, points-to-gift-card, or free-product redemption: those definitions are currently rejected. Store credit from a separate referral or review incentive is not a loyalty redemption option.

Example: A customer has 140 available points and redeems 100 for ₹50 off. The remaining balance is 40 points. The ₹50 benefit is a discount subject to its own restrictions; it is not a ₹50 cash withdrawal or an unrestricted wallet top-up.

When customer self-refund is enabled, an eligible unused, unexpired issued reward can be reversed to return its points. A used reward cannot simply be turned back into points. If a successful reversal’s response is lost, the same customer can retry the same action: the completed result is returned even if the program or self-refunds were disabled afterward. It does not return the points twice. New reversals still need to meet the current self-refund settings.

Online and POS

Online accounts and POS use the same member balance. Staff can look up a member by their member code or QR code; the reward still needs to permit the POS channel. An online-only offer is not automatically usable at the register. Ordinary in-store traffic does not create a referral attribution by itself.

Refunds, cancellations, and points debt

Order-earned points follow the eligible merchandise amount saved with the award. A refund containing tax or shipping does not automatically reverse points as if those amounts were qualifying merchandise. Full cancellation, void, and terminal full refund unwind order-earned points. Partial purchase-point reversals depend on whether Partially refunded is included in the configured clawback statuses; a fixed or threshold award may lose its entire qualification.

Partial-return example: At 1 point per ₹10, ₹1,000 of eligible merchandise earns 100 points. If partial-refund reversal is enabled and ₹400 of that eligible merchandise is refunded, the proportional purchase earn becomes 60 points. This example assumes no multiplier or threshold bonus.

Already-spent example: Asha earned and spent 100 points. The qualifying purchase is then fully refunded. The missing 100 points become unrecovered points. A later qualifying earn of 70 repays 70, leaving 30 unrecovered and no new spendable points. A further 50-point earn repays the remaining 30 and leaves 20 available once its own hold has ended.

Returning an item bought with a loyalty discount is a separate calculation from reversing points earned on that purchase. Partial refunds use the discounted purchase amounts; they do not also return all points used for the discount. Full-unwind and free-shipping cases have additional rules in Order & rewards lifecycle.

VIP tiers and campaigns

Set tier thresholds in Loyalty → VIP tiers and the qualification window in Loyalty → Settings. Qualification can use approved points, eligible order count, or eligible spend. New programs default to a rolling, spend-based approach; existing settings are retained. The rolling window is the preceding 12 months.

Qualification and membership are different: qualifying for an automatic tier creates a 12-month membership term. Ordinary aging of purchases or a later threshold edit does not silently shorten that active term. A completed refund that removes the activity needed for qualification can remove the tier earlier. Opening a return request alone does not revoke an already-earned membership. The customer detail shows Membership valid until.

Example: Kavya reaches a ₹10,000 eligible-spend threshold on 10 November. Her membership normally lasts until the following 10 November. An older purchase falling outside today’s rolling window is different from refunding the purchase that made her qualify. At the end of the membership term, eligibility is reassessed.

VIP spend excludes tax, shipping, gift-card products, and promotional funding; purchased gift-card value and genuine refund credit are treated differently from promotional credit. Purchase-point earning has its own exclusions, so VIP spend and the amount earning points need not match.

Supported tier benefits include earn multipliers and birthday points. Text in a tier description does not itself create free shipping, a discount, or automatic tags. Configure an actual supported reward for those offers. Use Boost campaigns for timed multiplier or flat-bonus offers, and verify the combined award before publishing overlapping promotions.

Configure customer referrals

In Referrals → Offer, set the friend’s benefit and the advocate’s reward. Use Preferences for qualification requirements, holds, expiry, and limits. A shared link alone does not earn a reward: the friend’s qualifying personal purchase must be identified, paid, and eligible.

The usual progression is attributed → qualified → pending/held → rewarded. A referral may instead be disqualified or require review. Advocate rewards can be store credit or a discount code; store-credit amounts are fixed in the store’s currency. Discount offers can use the supported fixed or percentage settings.

Example: Offer a friend ₹100 off an eligible first order of at least ₹1,000, and offer the advocate ₹150 store credit after qualification and the return hold. The friend’s discount and the advocate’s credit are separate benefits. Do not tell the advocate that the ₹150 is available merely because checkout succeeded.

A referral accepted at checkout keeps that checkout’s offer and buyer identity, including when payment confirmation and order creation happen later. Changing ₹150 to ₹200 for future advocates does not reprice the accepted ₹150 offer; pausing new referrals does not erase it. A link visit alone is attribution, not acceptance. Changing the buyer, code or checkout can require a new acceptance.

Lifetime net rewards is history, not the wallet balance. It is the referral value issued minus value actually recovered. For example, an advocate receives ₹500, spends ₹300, and the reward is then invalidated. Recovering the unspent ₹200 leaves ₹300 lifetime net rewards and ₹0 spendable credit. A later refund recovering ₹100 from that original source reduces lifetime net rewards to ₹200. Waiving the remaining ₹200 does not issue credit or reduce that historical net figure. Expiry is also distinct from recovery.

Review suspicious referrals

Open Referrals → Fraud. Clear self-referral evidence, such as the same customer or a shared verified contact identity, can block an award. Shared addresses, devices, networks, or disposable-email signals can instead create a review hold. A shared household or workplace is not proof of fraud.

The case shows the evidence summary used for the decision. Viewing requires customer access; decisions require Manage customers and a reason.

Decision	What it does
Approve	Removes the fraud-review hold; payment, delivery, return hold, and other requirements still apply
Reject	Cancels a pending reward or initiates reversal of an issued benefit; already-spent value cannot be described as recovered
Override reject	Rejects a previously approved case with an audited reason
Override approve	Can restore a false-positive award canceled before issuance; does not silently reissue a reward that was already issued and then rejected

A technical evaluation failure is not a fraud verdict. Some failures retry; others require support. Do not approve around a technical hold or issue replacement credit without checking the existing award.

Reviews and personal versus company purchases

Review incentives are separate from purchase points. An authentic review does not need a positive rating or public display to deserve its promised incentive. An ordinary return or hiding the review does not invalidate it, but removing content required by the accepted offer can. For example, deleting the qualifying photo can invalidate a photo-required benefit. Fraudulent, duplicate or deleted submissions require reconciliation too.

Do not promise that a Reviews discount or credit will stack with loyalty review points. The systems share entitlement checks intended to prevent a second financial incentive for the same order. A loyalty review offer can include base points and a qualifying media bonus, but uploads still need to finish and pass checks before evaluation. Public display is not the reward gate. A later upload reminder is not a second reward opportunity.

Accepted loyalty review terms preserve the base points, media bonus and delay. A review accepted at 150 points keeps that offer after future offers change to 10 points or the program is paused. Required uploads and authenticity checks still need to finish. Direct review rules with once per customer enabled share that cap across the customer’s orders; repeated processing does not reset it. See Review requests and rewards for the offer deadline, content conditions and customer limit.

Company purchases do not earn or use personal rewards. The same person may shop personally and for a company; the purchase context decides, not simply whether they belong to a company. An employee’s ₹20,000 company order must not build a personal VIP tier or fund their personal referral/review incentive. Their separate ₹1,000 personal purchase can qualify normally. Personal balances remain visible when company shopping is selected, with a prompt to switch to personal shopping to use them.

An ineligible company referral ends with its recorded reason. A waiting payment or temporary failure is checked again later; it does not prevent other eligible claims from being processed. Ask support about a claim that stays unresolved rather than repeatedly changing its offer.

Work through pending rewards and adjustments

Go to Loyalty → Customers and use Pending rewards and adjustments to find members needing attention. Open a member to see the order, hold reason, pending since date, and estimated release when available.

Message	What to check
Waiting for full payment	Payment or COD collection on the order
Waiting for delivery confirmation	Fulfillment and tracking for all retained items
A return, cancellation or refund is open	The unresolved request
The return window or reward hold is still open	The saved deadline; normally no action is needed
Referral eligibility needs review	Use Review referral to open the referral queue
Reward issuance is being retried or Eligibility needs checking	Refresh; ask support if unresolved. Do not assume a second award is needed

The member’s Promotional reward adjustments section separates Reversed, Recovered, Waived, Expired before reversal, and Outstanding amounts. These are money amounts, not points. Outstanding promotional value is not an automatic cash bill to the customer.

Credit-recovery example: An advocate spends ₹150 promotional credit. That promotion is later invalidated, leaving ₹150 outstanding. If a later refund returns ₹50 from that original credit, that ₹50 can settle part of the adjustment; it does not become fresh unrestricted credit. The remaining ₹100 stays outstanding. Unrelated purchased credit or cash is not automatically taken.

Authorized staff can enter a Reason for goodwill waiver and choose Waive outstanding amount to accept the unrecovered cost. A waiver does not pay the customer cash, create a replacement reward, or extend credit expiry. Credit already past its promised expiry is classified as expired, even if a scheduled expiry check has not run yet. Only value actually removed or withheld through recovery belongs in Recovered. A live checkout reservation can delay invalidation until it settles or releases its hold.

If an action fails or appears stuck

Refresh the customer and order history first. Temporary failures retry using the existing claim; a repeated request should not become a replacement grant. Retry the existing action where offered. If the result remains unclear, give support the customer, order, action and time. Avoid manual adjustments while a retry is pending, because a separate grant can overcompensate the customer.

Pausing loyalty stops new participation according to its settings and blocks new redemptions. Existing balances and history remain inspectable, and accepted review obligations retain their terms. A pause does not bypass the obligation’s eligibility or content checks.

Settings and recovery

Check saved offers, customer limits and retry behavior in Rewards: settings and recovery.