This feature utilizes Shopify's cart transform functions to allow any product in your catalog to serve as both a regular purchase item and a gift reward, automatically applying free pricing when threshold conditions are met.
Shopify Plus account (required for cart transform functions)
EliteCart Professional or Enterprise account
Gift rewards configured in EliteCart
Cart transform functions run at checkout, automatically setting gift product prices to $0 when customers qualify. The same product can be:
Purchased normally at full price
Given free as a reward when thresholds are met
Gifts are automatically protected from quantity manipulation, even at checkout
Go to Cart Designer → Rewards & free shipping
Switch to the Settings & design tab
Scroll down to Automatic gift application
Click Enable function
The function will utilize all of your existing reward settings:
Threshold types:
Cart total: Based on subtotal value
Item count: Based on quantity of items
Market-specific rules:
Always show: Available in all markets
Hide specific: Block in selected countries
Show specific: Only available in selected countries
Multi-currency support:
Automatic conversion using presentment currency rates
Thresholds in store currency or market currency
Seamless operation across all markets
The function automatically excludes from threshold calculations:
Addon products (count toward total but not item count)
Gift cards
Gifted rewards themselves
Products with exclusion tag _elite_exclude_from_reward_calculation
This feature utilizes Shopify's cart transform functions rather than discounts. This has the benefit that they reliably work alongside other store discounts without interference.
Operational notes:
Discounts apply both in the cart and at checkout, if the product was added as a gift by EliteCart.
Functions respects all configured market visibility rules
If you allow customers to modify item quantities at checkout, the following applies:
If a customer increases the quantity of a gift to greater than 1, the gift will revert to full price. (It will be discounted again if the customer changes the quantity back to 1)
If a customer changes other items in the cart and goes below a gift's threshold, the gift will revert to full price
If a customer changes their shipping country, market rules for that country will be applied
For technical reasons, EliteCart cannot remove or add gifts during checkout, but only before checkout (in the cart). In the checkout, we can only enforce rules by changing the price of the gift between full price and free.
Discount limitations:
For technical reasons, EliteCart has no access to the discounted product prices in the checkout. That means that all our operations in the checkout are based on non-discounted product prices. EliteCart might therefore, in some cases, still mark products as free even if thresholds aren’t met anymore.
Example: You have set up that the customer receives a gift when the cart total is $100 or greater. The customer’s cart total is $105 and EliteCart adds a gift to the cart. The customer proceeds to checkout. Now the customer applies a 20% discount, which brings the cart total to $84. Since EliteCart only sees the non-discounted cart total ($105), the gift product is still marked as free. Note, that if the customer applies the discount already in the cart using EliteCart's discount box, EliteCart would correctly remove the gift from the cart.
Should you be concerned about this? Automatic discounts or discounts used by apps like “Buy 3 get 2”, are always already applied at cart. Therefore, EliteCart would not add (or respectively remove) ineligible gifts. The only concern would be if customers often apply large manual discounts at checkout. In that case, you may want to consider enabling EliteCart’s Discount Box feature, so that customers can already apply the discount in the cart. This would, again, trigger the cart logic which utilizes accurate, discounted prices.
To disable the cart transform function:
Go to Cart Designer → Rewards & free shipping → Settings & design → Automatic gift application
Click Disable function in gift application section
Confirm deactivation
The function will be removed from Shopify and gift products will return to normal pricing behavior.
Function not activating:
Verify Shopify Plus subscription
Check shop permissions for function deployment
Ensure EliteCart app has required scopes
Gifts not discounting:
Confirm __eliteCartGift property present on line items
Verify quantity is exactly 1
Check threshold configuration in reward settings
Review market visibility settings
Conflicts with other discounts:
Cart transform functions operate independently
No interference with discount codes or automatic discounts
Gift discounts stack with other promotions
