Setting up Tips & Donations

Updated Jul 7, 2026 Extensions

The Tips & Donations extension adds an optional tip at checkout — or, relabelled, a charitable donation. Customers can round up to the next dollar, choose a preset amount, or (if you allow it) enter their own. You can run a fundraising goal with a live progress bar, and review every tip from an admin report. Tips are collected by TitanCart’s own checkout, so there’s no third party to configure. This guide takes about ten minutes.

1. Activate and enable the extension

Go to TitanCart → Extensions → Installed Extensions and enter your Tips & Donations license key to activate it.
Open Growth → Tips & Donations and switch the master Enabled toggle on.

Note: the Enabled toggle stays locked until a valid license is active — that’s expected. Activate your license first, then enable. Until this master toggle is on, no tip widget appears at checkout.

2. Set the wording (tip or donation)

The same widget works for tipping and for charitable giving — the difference is wording. On the Settings tab:

Label — the word used on the cart/invoice line. Leave it as Tip, or change it to Donation to run the extension as charitable giving.
Heading — the widget’s headline at checkout (default “Add a tip”).
Blurb — an optional supporting line under the heading.
Cause — an optional cause name shown in the widget (useful for donations, e.g. “Supports the local food bank”).
Thank-you — an optional line shown once a customer has chosen a tip.

3. Choose how customers give

Pick which amount options the widget offers. You can enable any combination:

Round up — offer “round up to the next dollar.” This is the default model. Whether the box is pre-checked is a separate option that is off by default — a tip is always the shopper’s explicit choice, never a pre-selected charge.
Preset amounts — offer fixed buttons (default 2, 5, 10). Enter your own comma-separated amounts; up to six are shown, smallest first.
Custom amount — let the customer type any amount. Off by default.
Maximum amount — an optional ceiling. Leave it at 0 to use TitanCart’s built-in safety cap (the greater of a sensible fixed limit or a multiple of the order total).

Note: keeping round-up’s pre-checked option off (the default) is the honest choice — the customer opts in on purpose. Pre-selecting a charge tends to cause chargebacks and complaints.

4. (Optional) Run a fundraising goal

To run a campaign with a target and a progress bar, on the Settings tab:

Turn on Goal.
Set a Goal title (e.g. “Help us reach $5,000 for the shelter”) and a Target amount.
Optionally set a Start date — only tips on or after that date count toward the goal. Leave it blank to count every tip you’ve ever collected.

Progress is calculated live from real orders. You can also show the progress bar inside the checkout widget with the Show goal in widget option.

Note: to start a fresh campaign, change the Start date to today and save — the bar then counts only tips from that date forward, so you don’t have to reset anything.

5. (Optional) Show the progress bar on any page

You can place the fundraising progress bar outside checkout — on a homepage, a landing page, or a campaign page — with a shortcode:

[titancart_donation_progress]

It renders your goal title, the raised-of-target amount, and a percentage bar. Two optional attributes:

title="Our winter drive" — override the configured campaign title for this placement.
show_amounts="0" — hide the “$X of $Y” caption and show just the bar and percentage.

Note: the shortcode shows nothing unless the extension is enabled and a goal with a positive target is configured — so a leftover shortcode never renders as broken text.

6. Review what’s been collected

The extension’s report shows your tips at a glance: total collected, this month’s total, number of tipped orders, and average and largest tip. It also lists your donors — grouped by email, with how many times each gave and how much in total — and your most recent tipped orders. If you’re running a goal, the campaign’s progress appears here too.

Troubleshooting

The Enabled toggle won’t switch on — activate your license first under TitanCart → Extensions → Installed Extensions.
No tip widget at checkout — confirm the master Enabled toggle is on, and that at least one giving option (round-up, presets, or custom) is enabled.
My preset amounts aren’t all showing — presets must be positive numbers, and only the first six (smallest first) are displayed; duplicates and blanks are dropped.
The progress bar isn’t appearing — the goal must be turned on and have a target greater than zero; the shortcode and widget both stay hidden otherwise.
The line says “Tip” but I’m running a donation — change the Label on the Settings tab to “Donation”; it updates the wording on the widget and the invoice line.