Gift With Purchase (Customer Manually Select)

Updated 8 Sep 2026 14 min read

How It Works

You set one rule. The rule says what a cart must contain, and which products the shopper may choose from when it does.

Shopcada checks the cart every time it changes.
There is one rule set, and it offers up to 20 gifts.
When the cart qualifies, the shopper is taken to a gift selection page on their way to checkout and picks one gift.
The gift is not added on its own. Nothing appears in the bag until the shopper chooses it.
If the cart stops qualifying, the chosen gift is removed again automatically.

If you want the gift added to the bag automatically instead, that is a different module — see Gift With Purchase (Auto Add to Cart). Only one of the two may be switched on at a time.

Setting Up the Promotion

Set the promotion up in this order. Create your gift products first, unpublished and priced at 0, so they are ready to select.

Step 1: Create the gift products

Go to Dashboard > Products and create each gift as a product priced at 0.00, then unpublish it.
Keep stock on it like any other product. The gift is a real product and will run out.
You can offer up to 20 gifts.

Step 2: Criteria

Field	Description
Enable Gift With Purchase	Tick to make the promotion live. Untick to stop it without losing the settings.
Schedule Start Date	When the promotion begins. Leave empty to start immediately.
Schedule End Date	When the promotion ends. Leave empty to never end.
Minimum Cart Amount	The cart value needed to qualify. Required — the promotion cannot be switched on without it.
Products from selected categories/collections will be included in the calculation of cart amount	Limits which products count towards the amount. Leave empty to count everything.
Products from selected categories/collections will not be included in the calculation of cart amount	Leaves the selected products out of the amount.
Cart must contain items from these categories/collections	The categories or collections the cart must include, whatever it is worth. Leave empty for no requirement. See Requiring Items from a Category.
Minimum Qty from Required Categories	How many units are needed from those categories. Counts units, so two of the same product count as two. Defaults to 1.
Exclude Backorder from calculation of minimum cart amount	Leaves backordered items out of the cart amount.

If your store sells in more than one currency, Minimum Cart Amount appears once per currency group, named after it — for example Minimum Cart Amount for Singapore (SGD). You must enter an amount for your default currency group to switch the promotion on. Leave a currency group empty if you do not want to run the promotion in that currency.

If you tick Enable Gift With Purchase without an amount, saving fails with Please input minimum amount to qualify for the free gift.

The cart amount is the net amount after discounts, reward points, store credit and gift credit, excluding shipping. Gift certificate purchases never count towards it, so a shopper buying only a gift certificate cannot earn a gift.

Step 3: Free Gifts

Select your gift products in Free Product 1 to Free Product 20. Start typing to search, then select the product.
Once a product is listed here it is hidden from your listing pages, and shoppers cannot add it to the cart or wishlist from anywhere except the gift selection page.

Step 4: Free Gift Page

Field	Description
Page Title	The heading on the gift selection page. Defaults to “Free Gift”.
Content Top Page Description	Wording shown above the gifts, before the shopper chooses.
Proceed Without Gift Button Text	The wording on a button that lets the shopper skip the gift. Leave empty if you do not want them to skip it.
Redirect to gift with purchase page before checkout	Sends a qualifying shopper to the gift selection page on the way to checkout. On by default. Untick it and the shopper must reach the page themselves.

Step 5: Messages

Field	Description
Reminder Message	Shown on the cart page when the shopper is short of the minimum cart amount. Use [amount] where the shortfall should appear. Defaults to “Spend [amount] more for a gift of your choice!”
Remove Message at Review Page	Shown when the chosen gift is taken away again. Defaults to “Your free item has been removed from your bag.”

Step 6: Go live

Go back to Dashboard > Products and publish each gift product.
Return to Dashboard > Marketing > Gift With Purchase and tick Enable Gift With Purchase.

Requiring Items from a Category

Cart must contain items from these categories/collections lets you insist that certain items are in the bag, on top of the minimum cart amount. Both conditions must be met before any gift is offered.

The condition applies to all gift choices. There is no way to require different categories for different gifts.

This is the difference between the three category settings, and it is worth being clear about:

Setting	Question it answers
Products from selected categories/collections will be included in the calculation of cart amount	Which products count towards the minimum cart amount?
Products from selected categories/collections will not be included in the calculation of cart amount	Which products are left out of that amount?
Cart must contain items from these categories/collections	Which products must be in the bag, whatever the cart is worth?

Example: spend $150 and buy at least 2 items from NEW IN

Set Minimum Cart Amount to 150. Leave the two calculation category fields empty, so the whole cart counts towards the $150.
Set Cart must contain items from these categories/collections to NEW IN.
Set Minimum Qty from Required Categories to 2.
Select your gifts and click Save configuration.

A $500 cart containing one NEW IN item does not qualify. A $150 cart containing two NEW IN items does.

How the units are counted

Units are counted, not different products. Two of the same NEW IN item satisfy a required quantity of 2.
A product that sits in several of the selected categories is still counted once.
Gift certificates, your configured gift products, and any gift already in the bag are never counted.
The include and exclude calculation fields do not affect this count. Nor does Exclude Backorder — a backordered item still counts towards the required quantity even when it is left out of the cart amount.

Turning it off

Leave Cart must contain items from these categories/collections empty and the condition does nothing. A promotion set up before this feature existed behaves exactly as it always did.

If you select categories, Minimum Qty from Required Categories must be a whole number of 1 or more. Saving fails with Minimum Qty from Required Categories must be a positive integer.

What the Shopper Sees

While the cart is short of the minimum cart amount, your Reminder Message appears on the cart page with the shortfall filled in.
Once the cart qualifies, going to checkout takes the shopper to your gift selection page, where they pick one gift. If you set Proceed Without Gift Button Text, they may skip it instead.
The gift is added to the bag when they choose it, and checkout carries on as normal.
If they change the cart so it no longer qualifies, the gift is removed and your Remove Message at Review Page is shown. This happens on the cart page as well as part-way through checkout.
Only one gift can be in the bag at a time. Adding a second is refused with You can only add one free gift to your cart at a time. Please remove the current free gift from your cart before adding a new one.
The quantity on the gift line is always 1 and the shopper cannot change it. Removing the whole line still opts them out.
A gift that is out of stock is not offered. If every gift is out of stock, the shopper goes straight to checkout.

Important Notes

Both conditions must pass. The minimum cart amount and the required category condition are checked separately, and the cart has to satisfy both before any gift is offered.
The reminder message covers the amount only. When a cart is short on required categories rather than on money, no reminder is shown — a “spend $0.00 more” prompt would be misleading. Say what the shopper has to buy in your banner or campaign copy instead.
Quantities count units, not different products. Two of the same item satisfy a required quantity of 2. There is no setting for “two different styles”.
The required categories apply to every gift. One condition covers all 20 choices; gifts cannot each have their own.
Free gifts never help a cart qualify. The gift in the bag is left out of both the cart amount and the required quantity.
Gift certificates are never counted towards the minimum cart amount or the required quantity.
Exclude Backorder applies to the cart amount only. A backordered item still counts towards Minimum Qty from Required Categories.
Leaving the required categories empty changes nothing. Promotions set up before this feature existed behave exactly as they always did.
Only one Gift With Purchase module may be active. If both the manual and the automatic version are switched on, shoppers are sent back to the cart with Both GWP (Auto) and GWP (Manual) are currently activated. Please deactivate one option and keep only one active to proceed.
Gift products are hidden from the storefront. Once a product is selected as a gift it drops out of listing pages, and it cannot be added to the cart or the wishlist anywhere except the gift selection page.
Gifts stop being offered at zero stock. Keep an eye on gift inventory during a campaign.

Tips

Setting Up a Promotion

Set each gift product’s price to 0 and keep stock on it. Unpublish it while you are still setting up, and publish it just before you go live.
Use Schedule Start Date and Schedule End Date rather than remembering to switch the promotion on and off.
Test with a real cart before you announce the promotion. Add the qualifying items, check the gift selection page appears, choose a gift, then remove one item and check the gift disappears.
Where you use required categories, spell the requirement out in your campaign copy. The automatic reminder only counts money.

Choosing the Right Setting

To reward spending on particular products, use the included in the calculation of cart amount field.
To reward spending anywhere while insisting on a particular product, use Cart must contain items from these categories/collections.
To do both, set a Minimum Cart Amount with no calculation categories, and add the required category condition on top.

Reward Points: Setting, Manual Issue and Record Gift Certificate Refer A Friend Report Store Credit: Setting

Gift With Purchase (Customer Manually Select)

Overview

This document cover: