Six Ways to Earn Loyalty Points (and Why One Formula Isn't Enough)
CareSuite's loyalty engine supports several concurrent ways to earn points — flat awards, multipliers, and tier-based bonuses — instead of forcing every program into a single 'one point per dollar' rule.
"One point per dollar spent" is the loyalty formula most businesses default to because it's the simplest one to explain, not because it's the one that best fits how they actually want to reward customers. CareSuite's loyalty rules (care_loyalty_rules) support several accrual mechanisms at once, so a program can reflect more than a single flat ratio.
The rule types
A loyalty rule has a type, and depending on that type, different fields come into play:
- Flat points — a rule that awards a fixed
pointsvalue for a qualifying action, independent of order size. - Multiplier — a rule that scales points earned by a
multiplier, useful for time-boxed promotions ("double points this week") layered on top of your base earning rate. - Tier-based bonus — a rule keyed to a customer's
tier(the same lead/bronze/silver/gold/vip ladder CareSuite uses elsewhere) that adds abonus_percenton top of what they'd otherwise earn, rewarding your best customers with a better rate rather than the same rate as everyone else. - Points per order — the straightforward "earn points when an order is placed" mechanic, applied automatically through the order-completion flow rather than requiring a separate step.
Each rule also carries active, starts_at, and ends_at, so a promotional rule — double points for a launch week, a bonus tied to a seasonal campaign — can run for a defined window without you having to remember to manually turn it off afterward.
Why more than one rule matters
A single flat formula treats every customer and every moment identically, which is exactly what most loyalty programs eventually want to move away from once they mature. Multiple concurrent rule types let a program reflect real business priorities: reward loyalty itself (the tier-based bonus), reward specific behavior you want more of (a promotional multiplier), and still have a reliable baseline (points per order) that doesn't depend on anything else being configured.
Because rules can be active simultaneously, a gold-tier customer buying during a promotional multiplier window can legitimately earn from more than one applicable rule at once — the baseline order points, boosted by the active multiplier, on top of their tier bonus. That's a richer, more realistic model of how loyalty programs actually work in practice than a single number ever captures.
The ledger behind it
Every point awarded is recorded in care_loyalty_ledger — a customer, a point amount, a reason, and (when relevant) the order that triggered it. That ledger is what makes the program auditable: a customer disputing their balance, or your team investigating why points look off, has a real trail to check rather than a single running total with no history behind it.
Setting up a program
Start with your baseline: a points-per-order rule that reflects your standard earning rate. Add a tier-based bonus if you want your best customers earning faster than new ones — a natural fit given CareSuite already tracks tier throughout the rest of the app. Layer in multiplier rules only when you have a specific, time-boxed reason to boost earning — a launch, a slow season you want to drive traffic into, an anniversary promotion — and give them a defined start and end date so they don't quietly outlive their purpose.