A serial discount refers to which pricing practice?

• A. Discounts applied to a single invoice only.
• B. Multiple discounts are applied at the same time.
• C. Discounts for orders placed monthly.
• D. Seasonal discounts.

Answer: (B)

Serial discounts involve applying more than one discount to the same purchase, typically in sequence, so the total price is reduced by multiple factors rather than just a single reduction. In practice, a supplier might offer several discounts that stack on the same invoice, such as a quantity discount combined with a prompt-pay discount, meaning the final price reflects multiple savings. This is why the description that multiple discounts are applied to the same invoice at once best captures the idea: the price is reduced by several discounts together, not just one. The other scenarios describe discounts tied to timing (monthly or seasonal) or a single discount on one invoice, which don’t convey the concept of stacking discounts. For example, two percentage discounts of 10% and 5% would yield a final price of original × 0.90 × 0.95 = 0.855 of the original.