Understanding How to Use the Order Totals in OpenCart 2.x

The Order Totals in OpenCart are one of the most important features in your store. They are found within the extensions and their purpose is to calculate the total price of your customers’ orders.

Simple as that. Let’s see how they are used and give a few examples of how they work in the storefront.

First, you need to find them in the admin panel. Go to Extensions > Extensions and click the dropdown with all the modules. You’ll find the Order Totals at the bottom.

This is the Order Totals list. You can choose which ones you want to use and configure them using their own settings.

Our test store had the Sub-Total and Total enabled, but we disabled them to show you how this looks like in the storefront.

We added an iPhone to the cart. As you see, there are no totals apart from the Eco Tax and VAT. The price of the product is shown, but it’s nowhere to be seen among the total costs.

Let’s go back to the admin panel and do some tweaks to see how this will change.

We’ll add the Sub-Total. Simply click edit in the Order Totals list and enable the extension. Click Save and go back to the storefront.

As you see, this has put the Sub-Total in our cart and we can see the product’s cost appearing in the totals.

Let’s do the same with the Total. Edit, enable and click Save.

We now see a more complete look of the order totals in our shopping cart. We see the product cost, the taxes and the entire total of our order.

So, we saw how the Order Totals work and how to set them up.

However, what can you do with the other extensions? Well, you can add additional costs, add taxes, give discounts, offer free shipping and so on.

Let’s give another example. We will set up a fee for orders that have a low cost.

Go back to the Order Totals list and Edit the Low Order Fee.

What we’ve done here is set an Order Total of 100 and a Fee of 25. This means that if a customer makes an order that is below the value of 100, this extension will automatically add a fee of 25 to their cart.

Enable the extension, click Save and go back to the storefront.

In our case with the iPhone, its cost is below $100, so a $25 fee is added to the cart, making its total at $111.00. This is useful for setting a minimum order value for your customers.

Conclusion

However, remember that adding a lot of additional fees, taxes and other costs might severely hurt your conversion rates. Baymard Institute point this out to be the #1 reason for customers to abandon their carts.

So, the information in this tutorial is meant to show you how the Order Totals in your OpenCart store, what they are used for and how to configure them. If you still have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below!