The three event types
Every event is one of three types. Pick the one that matches how you want the promotion to appear at checkout.
Percentage discount
Takes a percentage off every shipping rate that comes from Zonos at checkout. If UPS Ground shows as $12 and DHL Express as $30, a 25% off event will show them as $9 and $22.50.
Any carriers you've set up directly in Shopify — UPS, FedEx, etc. — aren't touched.
Best for site-wide promotions where you want every shipping option to still show up, just at a discount.
Free shipping
Replaces your usual Zonos shipping options with a single free shipping line at checkout. You choose the label the customer sees.
Best for targeted promotions like "free standard shipping to NZ during June". For shoppers in that country, free shipping becomes the only Zonos-provided option they see. Any carriers you've set up directly in Shopify — UPS, FedEx, etc. — continue to show as normal.
Flat rate
Replaces your usual Zonos shipping options with a single flat-rate line in the currency of your choice. Examples: $5 Boxing Day express to AU + NZ, £2 next-day to the UK for a week.
Create an event
If this is your first event, click Create your first event in the middle of the Discount events tab. Otherwise, click New event in the top-right (also available in the Upcoming section once you have events scheduled).
Name the event
Give it something you'll recognise later — "Black Friday US flash" beats "Discount 3" when you're editing three months from now.
Select a discount type
Choose the discount type at the top of the modal — Free shipping, Percentage discount, or Flat rate. Selecting one changes the fields shown below to match.
- Percentage discount — enter a percentage between 1 and 99.
- Free shipping — pick which shipping option to offer for free, and what label the customer sees.
- Flat rate — enter the price, currency, which shipping option it applies to, and the label the customer sees.
Choose where it applies
Two options: Every destination applies the discount everywhere; Specific countries limits it to countries you pick.
Switching to Specific countries for the first time opens a country picker automatically. The countries you select appear as tags below the Specific countries option; click Edit in the top-right to change them later.
Set the dates
Pick a start and end date/time.
The timezone defaults to your Shopify store's timezone. Leave it as-is if that's the clock you're running the promo on. Change it only when the event needs to follow a different region's local time — for example, if you want Black Friday to start at midnight in New York, pick a New York timezone here even if your store is set to London.
For recurring events, the event stays locked to whichever timezone you pick. A 9am event in New York time is always 9am in New York — even after daylight savings shifts the clocks.
Optional — set a recurrence
Check Repeats automatically to turn a one-off event into a recurring one. Three patterns:
- Yearly — same dates every year (Black Friday, EOFY).
- Monthly — same day of the month every month.
- Weekly — same day of the week every week.
The dates and times you entered above become the pattern. Every future run uses those same dates and times, in the timezone you chose.
Schedule it
Click Schedule event. The app checks that this event doesn't overlap another one covering the same countries during the same dates before saving. If there's a clash, you'll see a message showing which event conflicts — either change your dates, choose different countries, or edit the older event first.
Active, Upcoming, Expired
Once you have at least one event scheduled, the Discount events tab splits into three sections.
| Section↕ | What lives here↕ |
|---|---|
| Active | Events running right now — the current date and time falls between the start and end. |
| Upcoming | Events that will start in the future. |
| Expired | One-off events that have finished, and any event you've manually deactivated. |
The page updates every 60 seconds while it's open, so an event crossing its start or end while you're viewing the list moves to the correct section automatically.
Edit, deactivate, delete
Every scheduled event has three actions:
- Edit — opens the same modal you used to create the event, with all the current values pre-filled. All fields are editable, including the event type.
- Deactivate / Reactivate — a toggle. Deactivating stops the event applying at checkout without deleting it. Reactivating turns it back on immediately.
- Delete — permanently removes the event. Only available on Upcoming and Expired events. Active events must be deactivated first, so a running promo can't be deleted by accident.
Good to know
A few things the app enforces automatically:
Two events can't cover the same countries at the same time. If you try to save an event whose dates overlap another event covering the same countries (or both are set to Every destination), the save is blocked with a message showing which event conflicts. For recurring events, the check looks up to 2 years ahead.
Events that touch at the same moment don't both apply. If one event ends at 9:00am and another starts at 9:00am, the later event takes over at 9:00 — no double discount.
Inactive events are deleted after 6 months. Once an event has been inactive — either finished as a one-off, or manually deactivated — for six months, it's permanently removed.
A note on recurring dates
Two situations to keep in mind:
- Yearly events set to February 29 won't run in non-leap years — that date doesn't exist.
- Monthly events set to the 29th, 30th, or 31st skip months without that day. A monthly event on the 31st will only run in January, March, May, July, August, October, and December.
If you want a promo to run on "the last day of every month," set it to the 28th so it runs every month, or create a separate yearly event for each specific date.
Schedule shipping discount events
Schedule shipping promotions from your Shopify admin — percentage off, flat rate, or free shipping — without changing your carrier setup.
The Zonos Duty & Tax app lets you schedule shipping promotions that apply automatically at checkout. Pick a type, set the dates, choose where it applies, and the app handles the rest. Great for Black Friday flash sales, end-of-financial-year (EOFY) free-shipping runs, or yearly promos you set once and forget.
Where to find it: open the Zonos Duty & Tax app in your Shopify admin and go to Shipping → Discount events.