Paypal discounts

[gerkintrigg]

So I'll tell you what I want to do and the two ways I can see of doing it and then request help in achieving either of them because neither seem to work:

 

The problem:

I want to be able to add a flat discount to the total of a transaction using PayPal - in other words, I want to be able to have maybe five or six items in my cart and for the discount to be £35 and for that to appear as a negative figure (or a discount).

 

Possible solution 1:

To add an item as a discount item with effectively a negative value. I've tried adding a minus symbol and that fails. I've tried removing the whole discount from one item in the list, but there's no guarantee that any item will cost more than the discount - especially if there are lots of individual items.

 

Possible solution number 2:

To add a percentage discount to each item that corresponds to the total discount. This isn't as slick as I'd like and it poses problems of display because the figures would look different to the current checkout which states the discount as a lump sum rather than pro-rata.

 

Suggestions welcome. I've looked through the documentation for paypal and there doesn't seem to be anything I can get to work.

[waynew]

The discount processing should be on your side, not Paypal's. A discount should be applied on a per-item basis, simply because you might want to tweak the discount on a per-item basis (change discount rates and exclude certain products etc). This sounds like more of a UX problem than a PHP one, to be honest. A final discount figure should be shown at the end. However, you could also provide discount figures beside each product so that users know what discounts apply to each product. Have a look at Amazon and other major online retailers for some ideas on how to actually display this information in the cart.

Edited February 22, 2013 by waynewex