What It Is
This tier type is ideal for brands that want to reward customers for purchasing across their product catalog rather than rewarding total spend or order volume.
How It Works
Setting Up Qualifying Products
Each VIP tier has a list of qualifying product IDs. These are the Shopify product IDs that count toward tier progression. You enter them as a comma-separated list in the tier configuration.
All tiers in your program typically share the same qualifying product list, but each tier has its own threshold (the number of qualifying products a customer needs to reach that tier).
Example:
Tier | Threshold | Meaning |
Green | 0 | All customers start here |
Yellow | 3 | Customer has purchased 3+ qualifying products |
Red | 10 | Customer has purchased 10+ qualifying products |
How Products Are Counted
The system counts the total quantity of qualifying items purchased, across all of a customer's orders. If a customer buys 3 units of the same qualifying product in a single order, that counts as 3 toward their threshold.
Example: A customer places an order containing 2x Product A and 1x Product B. Both products are on the qualifying list. That order contributes 3 to the customer's total count.
This is important to understand if your products have multiple components that ship as separate line items. If each component has its own Shopify product ID and each of those IDs is on the qualifying list, every component counts individually. A single order with 8 qualifying line items adds 8 to the customer's count.
Which Orders Count
The system includes orders with most financial statuses, including paid, pending, authorized, and partially paid. The following statuses are excluded:
Refunded
Partially refunded
Voided
When an order is refunded or voided, the qualifying products from that order are removed from the customer's count, and a tier recalculation runs. This can result in a demotion if the customer no longer meets the threshold for their current tier.
Program Start Date
Only orders placed on or after your Program Start Date count toward tier qualification. If you set your start date to January 1, 2025, any purchases before that date are ignored regardless of what was bought. Changing the program start date triggers a full recalculation of all customer tiers.
Time Period Settings
Your VIP program's period setting determines the window of orders that count:
Lifetime: All orders from the program start date onward count. Qualifying products accumulate indefinitely.
Calendar Year: Only orders within the current calendar year count. Counts reset at the start of each new year.
Rolling Year: Orders within the trailing 12-month window count. The window moves forward each day, so older orders age out.
For calendar year and rolling year periods, a customer's count can decrease over time as older orders fall outside the window, which may trigger a tier demotion.
When Tiers Are Recalculated
Tier recalculations happen automatically in these scenarios:
A new order is placed (checked a few seconds after order creation to allow line items to sync)
An order's financial status changes (e.g., payment captured, refund issued)
A merchant changes VIP program settings (entry method, start date, expiry settings)
A manual recalculation is triggered from the admin
Recalculations after program setting changes run across all customers and can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours depending on customer count. The VIP program is temporarily paused during this process.
Manual Tier Assignments
You can manually assign a customer to a specific tier from the admin. Manually assigned tiers have special protections:
The system will never automatically downgrade a manually assigned tier
The system can still upgrade a manually assigned tier if the customer's qualifying product count exceeds a higher tier's threshold
A full shop-wide recalculation will skip customers with manually assigned tiers entirely
This means if you manually place a customer into Gold tier, they'll stay there even if their product count technically qualifies them for a lower tier. Manual assignments are useful for resolving edge cases or honoring customers who qualify through non-standard means.
Important Things to Know
Product IDs vs. Variant IDs
The system tracks purchases by Shopify product ID, not variant ID. If you have a product with multiple variants (sizes, colors, etc.), all variants of that product count the same way since they share the same product ID.
However, if you delete and recreate a product (or rebuild its variants through a third-party system like a PIM), the new product gets a new Shopify product ID. Historical orders still reference the old product ID. This means:
Past purchases of the old product ID will no longer count (unless the old ID is still on your qualifying list)
You'll need to add the new product ID to your qualifying list for future purchases to count
Customers who qualified based on the old product may see their count drop
If your workflow involves regularly rebuilding products or variants through external systems, be aware that this can break the linkage between historical orders and qualifying product IDs.
Multi-Component Products
If a single customer purchase generates multiple line items (e.g., a customizable product where each component is a separate Shopify product), each line item with a qualifying product ID counts individually.
Review your qualifying product list carefully to make sure you're only including the product IDs you actually want to count. If you only want the parent/bundle product to count, exclude the individual component product IDs from your list.
Adding or Removing Products from the Qualifying List
Changing the qualifying product list may trigger a recalculation. This means:
Adding a new product ID can promote customers who previously bought that product
Removing a product ID can demote customers who were relying on that product to meet their threshold
Viewing Customer Progress
In the Rivo admin, you can see each customer's progress toward the next tier. For the Products Purchased tier type, this displays as "[current count] of [threshold] products" so you can quickly see where a customer stands.