Promo Margin Governance

Promo margin governance is the subset of margin governance that focuses on promotional commerce: discount codes, automatic discounts, BFCM-style sitewide sales, BOGOs, bundle pricing, loyalty point redemptions, influencer codes, and any other lever that reduces effective per-order revenue below list price. It is broken out as its own discipline because promotional traffic concentrates margin risk: the variance in per-order margin is far wider on discounted orders than on full-price ones, and promotional periods are often celebrated internally on volume while quietly producing the store's worst orders. Promo margin governance works at two points. Inside checkout, Shopify's discount settings (combination rules, usage limits, one-per-customer) and discount Functions decide which offers can apply. After the order is placed, a per-order margin check decides whether the resulting order should ship: Agentis computes the order's true net margin, after the full discount stack, live COGS, freight, fees, and FX, within 60 seconds, and flags or automatically holds it before fulfillment if it falls below the floor. The four most common policy patterns: (1) category-specific floors: different margin floors for low-margin categories (accessories) versus high-margin categories (apparel); (2) code-level monitoring: watching margin per promo code so a code whose orders keep breaching the floor is paused or edited in Shopify early in the campaign; (3) MAP-aware floors: flagging or holding any order where a MAP-protected SKU sold below its advertised floor; (4) campaign-window floors: separate floors for BFCM or a flash sale that revert when the campaign ends. In-checkout patterns such as 'best discount only' belong in Shopify's combination settings or a discount Function; the post-order check is the backstop that catches what those settings allow but the margin cannot afford. The discipline pairs naturally with the profit firewall (the enforcement layer) and the policy engine (the rule definition layer); promo margin governance is a common entry point for merchants adopting margin governance because promotions are where per-order margin varies most.