Help for Retail Discount Calculator application

Introduction

The Retail Discount Calculator is a free web application for calculating retail sales discounts to assist in making well informed purchasing decisions.

Designed to work on any device the Retail Discount Calculator can be conveniently used on a smartphone while shopping to efficiently reveal the actual out-of-pocket cost for sales items. This allows you to remain focused on the value of the potential purchase at hand while reducing the probability of buyer's remorse, thus making for a more pleasurable overall shopping experience.

Are you a budget minded consumer?

Is shopping and finding deals more a sport than a necessity for you?

Do you find yourself frequently contemplating any of the following?

Did I find a good deal, or not?
How much of a deal?
How much is this actually costing me?
How many, if any, can I afford?
Should I get more than one?

If you answered "Yes" to one or more of these questions then you'll find the Retail Discount Calculator will be an essential tool to accompany you on your shopping adventures.

Post-decision Dissonance

Lucky you, you've just come upon a one day only unadvertised in store special on shoes! Who doesn't need shoes? Right? Alrighty, down to business, let's see, 35% Off the regular price, not too bad. Having been lured in you take stock of the sale. Lots of name brands and variety, regular prices range from 63.49 to 249.99, so you start digging for deals.

Hmmm, wait a second, are these prices overinflated? 79.99 for these shoes seems expensive, I'm sure I've seen these for 60.00 at another store across town. Did I find a good deal, or not?

Guess what just happened? Cognitive dissonance just kicked in. The mental stress of your contradicting monetary values would likely cause you to pass on the now speculative savings, possibly even the entire sale. Assuming you were right about their competitor's pricing, or even the brand similarity for that matter, it is in fact a savings.

Now had you had the Retail Discount Calculator at hand you would have realized this in seconds. Perhaps not enough to purchase this particular item, but it would have put your mind at ease and you would most likely keep looking for bargains with confidence.

WHOA! Now here's a find, I've always wanted a pair of these! Now how much are they, YES! only 89.99, I know these are well over 100.00 everywhere else!

With the Retail Discount Calculator in hand you can efficiently conclude exactly how much they'll cost and how much you could potentially save. Input the 89.99 list price, then the 35% discount and viola, that's 31.50 off the list price with a subtotal of 58.49, 15% tax is 8.77 and the grand total is 67.27, that's a Total Savings: $36.22. Now you can make a well informed purchasing decision on this item with next to no mental effort expended on the math!

Perhaps the only decision now is do you get all three colors. Too easy, just update the Qty: field to 3 and once again, viola, that's 95.49 off the combined list price for a subtotal of 175.48. The 15% tax is 26.32 and the grand total is 201.80, that's a Total Savings: $108.66. No more undue mental stress or buyer's remorse for you, just the deals!

Looking at a mattress set on sale at 700.00 off the 2,249.99 list price. Is it a good deal? Can you afford it? What's your out-of-pocket cost? ... again, too easy, enter the list price then the discounted amount. That's a 31.1112% discount with a subtotal of 1,549.99. The 15% tax is 232.50 and the grand total is 1,782.49, that's a Total Savings: $805.00.

What the? ... how is that a $805.00 total savings if it's 700.00 off?

The difference is the tax that's not charged on the discount. The 15% tax saved on 700.00 is 105.00, that's real dollars saved that remain in your pockets after the sale. So it is indeed a $805.00 savings.

Do You ...

Want to do hypothetical analysis?
Like to haggle?

Simply change the discounted dollar amount or the subtotal to play with the numbers and haggle with confidence.

You can also use the Retail Discount Calculator to quickly tabulate the tax inclusive costs of regular list price purchases too. Need to know how much seven items at 13.67 each with a 15% tax rate will cost? Simply input the list price and quantity to reveal a subtotal of 95.69, tax of 14.35 with a grand total of $110.04.

Did you know ...

that this application is free?
that there is no advertising??
that it works on any device with a modern web browser?
that all calculations are performed privately on your device?
that there is no telemetry performed by the application?
that there in no sign-up, no registration and no login required?

Convinced yet? ... Great, then let's get started!

Minimum Requirements

Internet connected general purpose computing device
Modern web browser with JavaScript support enabled

Getting Started

Accessing the Discount Calculator

Open the following URL in your web browser: http://linuxnet.ca/discount/

If your browser supports off-line browsing you can use this feature to save a local copy of this application for off-line personal use. Consult your web browser's help and or documentation for details.

Configuring Tax

The first step is to configure the tax. You can set the tax name and the tax rate by clicking or tapping on the tax label, The default is HST at 15%, to change the default click or tap on the HST 15%: label and you'll be prompted for the tax label name followed by the tax amount. A 15% tax rate is inputed as 0.15 and 7% would be entered in as 0.07 et cetera.

Only one tax is currently supported. If you have multiple taxes you can come up with a single rate by figuring out the tax inclusive total for a 10.00 subtotal in your area then use the following formula:

Formula:
Total / Subtotal - 1 = Tax Rate

Example:
11.50 / 10.00 - 1 = 0.15

If you would like to see multiple tax fields supported in future releases of the Retail Discount Calculator then contact me at the email address provided at the end of this help document requesting this feature and if I receive enough requests I'll add it in. Please provide me with the relevant taxation details of a typical retail sale in your Province, State or municipality so I'll have a better idea of what's required to implement this.

Using the Calculator

The Retail Discount Calculator was designed to be easy to use and as intuitive as possible. We'll start with the definitions of the input fields then move on to the basic and advanced features.

Field Definitions

List:: The list price of an item; also known as the regular price.
Qty:: The quantity, how many items are being considered for purchase.
Discount:: The percentage the list price is being reduced by; Ex: 35%; Below discount is another discount input in dollars; Ex: 35.00
Subtotal:: The total of the list price multiplied by the quantity minus the discounted amount.
Tax 15%:: The amount of tax applied to the subtotal.
Total:: The out-of-pocket cost.
Total Savings:: The amount of money saved off the list price plus the tax that would have been levied.

Basic Features

Coming soon ...

Advanced Features