Cumulative purchase limits track what each customer has purchased and limit purchases against a total that carries across orders. There are two rule types, cumulative quantity rules and cumulative price rules, and they share the same specifications for enabling, limits, and stopping.
Prerequisite: Cumulative purchase limits are a Full plan feature. To use them, you need to approve the additional permissions for checking order and customer information, and enable cumulative purchase limits.
They differ in what they limit. How counting works and how messages are set are explained in each rule type's own article.
Rule type | What it limits |
|---|---|
Cumulative quantity rules | The total quantity a customer has purchased |
Cumulative price rules | The total amount a customer has purchased |
Enable cumulative purchase limits before creating your first rule. Enabling is shared by both rule types: if you have already enabled it for one, you can create rules of the other type right away.
The additional permissions allow checking order and customer information, and saving each customer's total and each order's tracking state.
Only orders placed from the point when you create the rule and counting starts are included. Purchases made before that are not counted retroactively.
Uninstalling the app also removes the tracking setup.
Note: Once cumulative purchase limits are enabled, they cannot be turned back off. To stop limiting, disable or stop an individual rule instead.
These limits count cumulative quantity rules and cumulative price rules together.
Item | Limit |
|---|---|
Breakdown entries per customer, per rule | 250 products or variants |
Rules tracking at a time | 20 (both rule types combined) |
Rules you can create | 50 (including stopped rules, both rule types combined) |
You cannot create a new rule while 20 rules are tracking. Stopping a rule you no longer need lets you create one.
You cannot create a new rule once you have 50 rules. Stopped rules count toward this, so delete the ones you no longer need.
When counting per product or per variant, a rule keeps a separate total for up to 250 products or variants per customer.
Once a rule reaches 250 for a customer, the products and variants already recorded keep being counted and stay limited. Only products and variants that are not recorded yet are left out of the total and are not limited by that rule.
Each enabled rule uses one of Shopify's checkout rules. A store can have up to 25 checkout rules enabled, including those of your other rules and other apps.
Totals can take a few minutes to update.
In the following cases, the purchase cannot be stopped at checkout. The total used for the check has not been updated yet, so this cannot be fully prevented.
The same customer places orders one after another before totals are updated.
The same customer checks out in several tabs or on several devices at the same time.
These orders are detected when totals are counted and marked “Review required” on the order. Find them by following “How Orders Over the Limit Are Detected”, then handle each one yourself, for example by canceling the order or changing the quantity.
In the following cases, a customer's total does not match their actual purchases.
Refunds, returns, and order edits: They are not reflected in the totals. Only cancelling the whole order subtracts from them.
Cancellations after a rule is stopped: They are not subtracted from the totals.
A deleted or merged customer: Their purchases disappear from the totals. They are not carried over to the customer they were merged into.
There is no way to adjust or reset a customer's total. To start the numbers over, stop the rule and create a new one.
Counting and limiting start separately and end separately. Each one happens at the following point.
Event | When | State afterwards |
|---|---|---|
Counting starts | When you create the rule | Counting runs on its own. The limit is not applied |
Limiting starts | When you enable the limit | Both counting and limiting run |
Limiting ends | When you disable the limit | Counting continues. The limit is not applied |
Counting ends | When you stop the rule | Both counting and limiting end. Totals are kept |
Data deleted | When you delete a stopped rule | Every customer's total is deleted as well |
The preparation that counting needs happens automatically when you create the rule. Until it finishes, the app shows “Setting up” and neither counting nor limiting has started. If a rule stays at “Setting up”, select “Try again”, or stop the rule and create a new one.
Enabling the limit is a separate step from creating the rule. Creating a rule does not apply the limit.
Only orders placed from the point counting started, and before the moment the rule was stopped, are counted. Purchases made before that are not counted retroactively.
Turn the limit off before you stop a rule. Only a stopped rule can be deleted.
Enabling a disabled rule again resumes limiting with the latest totals.
Note: Stopping and deleting cannot be undone. A stopped rule cannot be restarted.