Staff discounts in LS Central: setup, limits, and controls

Member management · 8 min read

Staff discount fails in two opposite ways: it is so loose that any till can give it to anyone, or so informal that nobody can prove what was given, to whom, or whether the yearly cap was ever reached. LS Central already has the machinery to do it properly. The vendor's own documentation builds it from three parts — a member club for staff, an offer that carries the benefit, and Discount Tracking to cap and log it. This guide assembles those parts into one controlled setup.

The model: club, offer, cap

• Club — who gets it. Member Management can handle multiple clubs, each with different rules for different types of user: LS Retail's own description gives the example of one club for member contacts and another for staff. Each club can have one or more schemes — Standard, Silver, and Gold are the documented examples — and members are linked to a scheme. Benefits vary between schemes, and discounts are among the most important benefit types. For staff discount, the club is the eligibility list: if a person is not in the staff club, there is nothing to apply.
• Offer — what they get. The benefit itself is an ordinary LS Central offer. In the Discount Tracking procedure, LS Retail uses a Total Discount Offer, and notes that most offer types can be used with Discount Tracking. Offers and coupons can be made valid for specific member clubs, schemes, and member attributes — which is how the benefit stays attached to the staff club instead of the whole customer base.
• Cap — how much, in total. Discount Tracking exists to monitor, manage, and limit discounts for members in a club for a certain period. The documented staff example is direct: staff members belong to a staff club, and they get a maximum discount amount per year. A member can also carry a discount budget that limits the discount amount earned within a given timeframe.

None of this requires a manual discount button and a manager's memory. The discount is identified by the member at the till, applied by the offer, and counted by the tracking setup — every time, the same way.

Set it up: the procedure

The steps below follow LS Retail's Discount Tracking procedure, which is written for a member-account limitation; the same pattern applies per scheme or per club.

1. Create the staff club and enrol staff. Set up the staff club in Member Management with the scheme (or schemes) you actually need. Every eligible staff member gets a member account in that club. Keep enrolment tied to employment: the club list is the control, so leavers come out of the club, promptly.
2. Create the offer. Search for Total Discount Offer, choose New, and fill in the General and Line FastTabs. On the Benefits FastTab, select Discount in the Type column, % in Value Type, and the staff percentage in Value — the documentation's example uses 25. Restrict the offer to the staff club or scheme the way your offer setup requires, so it cannot fire for the general public.
3. Configure the Discount Tracking setup. Search for Discount Tracking and create a new entry. On the General FastTab: Description (the documentation suggests the name of your staff club), Limitation Type Discount Amount, the Starting Date, a Period Calculation (the documented example uses a three-month period, 3M — a staff yearly cap follows the same pattern with the period you choose), the Recurring check box selected, and Limited by set to Account for a per-person cap. On the Lines FastTab, set Discount Type to Total Discount and Discount No. to the offer number created in step 2.
4. Connect the offer to the tracking setup. Open the Total Discount Offer card and, in the Discount Tracking No. field, select the number generated by the tracking setup.
5. Set the limitation value. Go to Member Accounts, open the member, and choose Related → Account → Discount Limitation. Select the Discount Tracking No. and enter the Limitation Value — the maximum discount amount for the period. Repeat per account, or apply the limitation at scheme or club level, where the Discount Limitation action sits on the Action menu.
6. Enable, in order. Enable the offer from its action menu, and enable the Discount Tracking setup the same way. Only Enabled offers are triggered on the POS, so enabling is the go-live step — do it once the cap is in place, not before.

What success looks like: a staff member identified at the POS receives the staff percentage automatically; a non-staff customer on the same items receives none; and the sale appears in Discount Tracking Entries with its discount amount counting toward the member's limitation value.

Choose the cap: amount, count, or both layers

Pick the style that matches the written policy, not the one that is easiest to type. If the policy says “up to a set amount per year,” an amount limitation per account is the faithful build. A trigger count cannot enforce a dollar policy, and an amount cap cannot enforce a “twice only” policy.

Controls and the audit trail

• Everything is logged. The system logs all POS transactions triggered by the Discount Tracking card. The Discount Tracking Entries view shows the date of the transaction, the document number, a tracking number, the discount amount, the club code, and the transaction number. Review it the way you would review any controlled discount: by person, by period, against the limitation.
• Status is a control. Offer settings can only be changed while an offer is Disabled, and only Enabled offers trigger at the POS. Disabling the staff offer is a clean off-switch for the whole benefit — for a policy change, a seasonal pause, or an incident — without touching member accounts.
• Any change creates a new object. For a different percentage or a new cap period, build and enable the corrected setup rather than quietly editing the live one, so the entries history stays readable. (The same discipline applies to markdown offers — see markdown management in LS Central.)
• Triggers define the audience. On offers generally, trigger fields limit the group of customers who can benefit; with no trigger fields filled in, an offer is valid for all customers. For a staff offer, an empty trigger is a defect, not a default.

Common failure modes

• Discount with no cap: the offer exists but was never connected to a Discount Tracking setup (step 4 above), so nothing limits or logs it as staff usage.
• Cap with no discount: the tracking setup is enabled but the offer was never enabled, so staff get nothing and the help desk hears about it first.
• Former staff still discounted: the member account stayed in the staff club after the person left. The fix is process, not configuration: club membership reviewed on every leaver.
• Everyone gets it: the offer was not restricted to the staff club or scheme, or its triggers were left empty. Test with a non-staff customer before calling the setup done — that test is part of the success check above.

FAQ

Can different staff tiers get different discounts? The structure supports it: a club can hold multiple schemes with different benefits per scheme, and limitations can be set per scheme as well as per account or club.

Does the cap have to be yearly? No. The tracking setup takes a starting date and a period calculation and can recur; the documentation's examples include a maximum amount per month for a sports club and per year for staff.

Can staff discount be a fixed amount off instead of a percentage? The offer in the procedure is set up with a percentage value in the Benefits FastTab, and most offer types can be used with Discount Tracking — build the benefit as the offer type that matches your policy, then attach the same tracking and limitation.

Where is usage reviewed? In Discount Tracking Entries, reached from the Discount Tracking setup via Related → Discount → Tracking Entries.

General information only, based on LS Retail's published LS Central documentation as accessed in October 2026. Staff discount is also an employment-policy decision — set the percentage and the cap with whoever owns that policy, and verify the setup in your own system before go-live.