Not everything in your store should be part of your loyalty programme. Gift cards, sale items, heavily discounted bundles, and charitable donations are common exceptions — and Perkie’s exclusions feature lets you handle them cleanly. When you exclude a product or category, it works in both directions: excluded items can’t earn points, and they can’t be purchased using reward coupons either.
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Why It Matters
Loyalty programmes work best when they encourage the behaviour you actually want to reward — typically full-price purchases of your regular range. Without exclusions, customers could earn points (and spend them) on items that are already priced at a loss, which quickly becomes costly.
Getting your exclusions right from the start saves you from awkward situations: a customer trying to spend their reward coupon on a gift card, or someone earning triple points on a sale item that’s already deeply discounted. A clear, consistent exclusion list keeps the programme fair for everyone and keeps your margins intact.
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The Steps
Finding the Exclusions Settings
- In your WordPress admin sidebar, go to Tracksies > Perkie
- Click the Earning tab at the top of the Perkie settings page
- Scroll down to the Product & Category Exclusions section
You’ll find two multi-select pickers here — one for individual products and one for categories.
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Excluding Products
- In the Excluded Products picker, start typing the name of a product
- Matching products will appear as suggestions — click a product to add it to the exclusion list
- Repeat for each product you want to exclude
- To remove a product from the list, click the × next to its name in the picker
- Click Save Settings when you’re done
You can add as many individual products as you need. This is useful for one-off items that don’t fit into a broader excluded category.
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Excluding Categories
- In the Excluded Categories picker, click or start typing to browse your product categories
- Select a category to add it to the exclusion list — all products in that category will be excluded
- Repeat for any other categories you want to exclude
- To remove a category, click the × next to its name
- Click Save Settings when you’re done
Category exclusions are the most efficient way to manage large groups of excluded products. If your entire “Sale” category or “Gift Cards” category should be excluded, adding the category here is much easier than listing every product individually.
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What Gets Excluded
Exclusions apply in two ways, both at once:
- Earning: Excluded products don’t generate any points, regardless of the customer’s tier, multiplier, or any other setting. They’re simply not counted.
- Redemption: Excluded products can’t be added to a cart that includes a reward coupon. Customers can’t use their loyalty discount to purchase excluded items.
There’s no way to exclude a product from earning but allow redemption (or vice versa) — exclusions are all-or-nothing. This keeps the system simple and avoids edge cases that are hard to explain to customers.
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Common Use Cases
Gift cards are the most important exclusion for most stores. Allowing customers to earn points on gift cards and then spend those points on more gift cards creates a loop that has nothing to do with real purchasing behaviour. Exclude your gift card products and/or your gift card category.
Sale and clearance items are already discounted. Letting customers earn points on top of a sale price — and then spend those points on more sale items — compounds the discount further. Excluding your Sale category keeps the loyalty programme focused on regular-priced products.
Bundles with deep discounts can feel unfair to exclude, but if the bundle is priced significantly below the sum of its parts, it often makes sense. Customers buying a deeply discounted bundle are already getting a great deal.
Charitable donations are products customers buy because they want to do good — not to accumulate points. Excluding them keeps things clear and avoids the slightly odd situation of earning loyalty rewards for a donation.
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Common Questions
What happens when an order has a mix of excluded and included products?
Only the included products earn points. Perkie calculates points on each line item individually, skips any excluded items, and adds up the rest. So if a customer buys a $50 regular product and a $30 gift card, they earn points on the $50 product only.
Does the customer know an item is excluded?
Excluded items simply don’t appear in the points tally. There’s no error message or warning during checkout — the total points earned just reflects the included items. If you want customers to know certain products don’t earn points, you can mention it in your programme terms or on the product page.
Can a reward coupon be applied if there are excluded items in the cart?
No. If the cart contains any excluded products, the reward coupon can’t be applied at all. The coupon will be rejected at checkout. Customers will need to remove the excluded items before applying their coupon, or check out separately.
If I add a product to an excluded category, is it automatically excluded?
Yes. Category exclusions apply to all current and future products in that category. You don’t need to add new products individually if they belong to an already-excluded category.
Can I exclude a product variant without excluding the whole product?
No — exclusions work at the product level, not the variation level. If you exclude a variable product, all its variations are excluded. If you only want to exclude certain variants, the cleanest approach is to separate them into their own product and exclude that.
Does excluding a product affect anything else in Perkie?
Exclusions only affect points earning and reward coupon redemption. They don’t affect loyalty discounts, tier progress calculations, or any other part of the programme.