Setting up Tips & Donations

Updated Oct 14, 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, leave a percentage of their order, or (if you allow it) enter their own figure. 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.
Percentages of the order — offer percentage buttons such as 10%, 15% and 20%. Off by default; see the next section.
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) Offer a percentage of the order

Percentage tipping is the familiar restaurant-style model: the customer picks 15% and the amount is worked out for them. Turn on Offer percentages of the order on the Settings tab, then:

Percentages — a comma-separated list (default 10,15,20). Up to six are shown, smallest first. Values must be above 0 and no more than 100; duplicates and blanks are dropped, and if you type a % sign it’s simply ignored.
Show percentages as — choose whether each button reads just “15%”, or “15%” with the worked-out figure “≈ $4.35” underneath it. Showing the amount is the default, and it’s usually the kinder option — the customer can see what they’re agreeing to.

The percentage is taken from the order total before the tip is added — which includes shipping and tax, the same figure the customer sees as their total. So 15% on a $108.00 order is $16.20.

Note: percentages are worked out on the server, not in the browser. Checkout will only accept a percentage you actually offered, and recalculates the amount from its own total — so a tampered or stale figure can’t produce a tip you didn’t configure.

Percentage mode needs TitanCart 0.2.31 or newer. On an older core the percentage buttons are deliberately not shown at all, even with the setting switched on — that’s a safety measure, because an older core would record a $0 tip while the customer believed they’d left 15%. If you’ve turned percentages on and no buttons appear, update TitanCart first.

5. (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.

6. (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.

7. 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. Where a customer chose a percentage, the report shows it alongside the amount, like $16.20 (15%), so you can see which model your shoppers actually use. 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, percentages, 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.
My percentage buttons aren’t showing — check that Offer percentages of the order is on, that your list holds valid values above 0 and no more than 100, and that you’re running TitanCart 0.2.31 or newer. An older core hides the buttons on purpose.
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.