How Promotion Arbitration Works

Arbitration is how Maestra decides which promotions apply when a customer’s order is eligible for several at once. It is the set of relationships you configure between promotions so the platform knows whether to stack them, pick the best one, sum them up, or apply them one after another. You can configure arbitration at three levels:

• The entire arbitration tree (rules that apply across all promotions).
• A promotion group (rules that apply within a folder of related promotions).
• An individual promotion (incompatibilities defined directly on one promotion).

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Editing the arbitration tree

Changes to the arbitration tree are not saved automatically. After you edit the tree you must click Save changes to commit them. If you change your mind before saving, you can:

• Click Reset all changes to drop every unsaved edit.
• Use Undo (or Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z) to roll back recent steps one at a time.

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Viewing changes to the arbitration tree

Every change to the tree is recorded in the event log. To review the history:

1. Go to Settings → Security → Event log.
2. Add a filter and select Arbitration tree as the entity type.
3. Apply the filter.

For each entry the log shows the team member who made the change, their IP address, the date and time, the entity ID, the event payload, and any comment that was attached.

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The four arbitration rules

Maestra supports four rules that describe how promotions relate to each other. You attach one of these rules to the tree as a whole, to a group, or use incompatibilities on an individual promotion.

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Sequential application

Promotions apply in the order they appear in the tree, from top to bottom. Each promotion is calculated against the amount that is left after every promotion above it has already been applied. Example. Two promotions, each offering 10% off, are arranged sequentially on a $100 order:

• The first promotion takes 10% off $100, leaving$90.
• The second promotion takes 10% off $90, leaving$81.

The customer’s final price is $81, not$80.

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Incompatibility

Only one promotion from the set is allowed to apply — the one with the highest priority. The level at which the rule operates determines what “apply” means:

• Order level. If the higher-priority promotion applies to any line item in the order, the lower-priority promotion does not apply to the order at all.
• Product level. The lower-priority promotion can still apply, but only to the line items that the higher-priority promotion did not touch.

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Summation

Every discount and every bonus-point reward inside the group is added together. The customer receives the full combined benefit of all promotions in the group.

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Maximum benefit

Maestra calculates every possible combination of the promotions in the group and selects the one that gives the customer the biggest reward — the largest discount for discount promotions, or the largest number of points for bonus-point promotions.

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The order in which promotions are applied

Regardless of how the tree is organized, Maestra always processes promotions in this fixed order:

1. Discount promotions and point-deduction promotions (promotions that spend the customer’s points).
2. Rounding promotions.
3. Point-earning promotions (promotions that award points).

Rounding promotions cannot be combined with any other arbitration rule. If you try to place a rounding promotion in a group that uses summation, maximum benefit, or incompatibility, Maestra returns an error when you save.

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Arbitration at the tree level

The top of the tree carries the base rule that applies to everything beneath it. Click Configure on the tree to set it. At this level you can also set a global minimum product cost — the smallest price a line item must have before any promotion can apply to it. The minimum can be expressed as either a percentage of the original price or a fixed dollar amount.

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Arbitration at the group level

Open the menu on any group to pick the rule that governs the promotions inside it: sequential, incompatibility, summation, or maximum benefit. On the same screen you can also set:

• A maximum discount limit for the group, as a percentage of the line-item price or as a fixed dollar cap.
• A minimum product cost below which promotions in the group will not apply.

Groups can be nested as deeply as you need. Each nested group is evaluated according to its own rule first, and the result of that group is then handed up to the parent group, which applies its own rule. Example. Suppose you have a group called Maestra Discounts that contains four discount promotions and a subgroup called Personal Offers. The Personal Offers subgroup uses summation, while Maestra Discounts uses maximum benefit.

1. Maestra first sums every promotion inside Personal Offers into a single combined discount.
2. It then compares that combined discount against each of the four sibling promotions in Maestra Discounts.
3. Whichever option — the summed Personal Offers bundle or one of the four standalone promotions — gives the customer the biggest discount is the one that applies.

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Arbitration on an individual promotion

Each promotion has its own Arbitration section where you can declare other promotions that are incompatible with it, without having to restructure the tree. For every incompatibility you choose the level at which it applies:

• Order level. If this promotion applies to any line item in the order, the incompatible promotion is blocked from applying to that order entirely.
• Product level. The incompatible promotion is allowed on the order, but only on the line items where this promotion did not apply.

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Putting it together

When a customer places an order, Maestra walks the arbitration tree from the top:

1. It applies discount and point-deduction promotions in the order dictated by the tree and each group’s rule.
2. It applies any rounding promotions.
3. It awards points from point-earning promotions.

At each step the rules above govern whether promotions stack, compete, or block one another. By combining tree-level defaults, group rules, and per-promotion incompatibilities, you can express almost any policy — from “always apply every active promotion” to “give the customer the single best deal they qualify for.”