Cart Item
A Cart Item in Salesforce (CartItem in the API) is a standard Commerce Cloud object that represents a single line in a buyer's shopping Cart on a Lightning B2B or B2B2C Commerce storefront — one Product, a Quantity, and the resolved pricing for that line.
Definition
A Cart Item in Salesforce (CartItem in the API) is a standard Commerce Cloud object that represents a single line in a buyer's shopping Cart on a Lightning B2B or B2B2C Commerce storefront — one Product, a Quantity, and the resolved pricing for that line. Each Cart Item record holds a parent CartId, a Product2Id, the Quantity, the ListPrice (snapshot from the entitled Price Book), the SalesPrice (after promotion and entitlement adjustments), TotalListPrice, TotalAmount, AdjustmentAmount (cumulative discounts), and a Type field distinguishing Product Cart Items from Charge Cart Items (shipping, tax, fees layered onto the Cart). Cart Items are added when a buyer clicks Add to Cart, updated as they change quantities, and ultimately copied into the resulting Order as Order Products when the Cart is checked out. Like all Commerce pricing, Cart Item totals are recalculated server-side through the Pricing Procedure pipeline whenever the Cart contents, buyer entitlements, or active promotions change — making Cart Items the canonical record of what the buyer will pay if they check out right now.
In plain English
“A Cart Item is one row in a Salesforce shopping cart — like one item in your Amazon basket. It captures which Product the buyer added, how many they want, and what they would pay (after discounts and promotions) at this exact moment. When the cart is checked out, each Cart Item becomes an Order Product on the resulting Order.”
Worked example
A buyer at a B2B distributor adds three different products to their Salesforce Lightning B2B Commerce cart: 50 units of Product A, 12 of Product B, and 200 of Product C. The storefront creates three Cart Item records linked to the buyer's active Cart. Product A's Cart Item shows ListPrice $10, SalesPrice $9 (after a 10% volume promotion), Quantity 50, TotalAmount $450. The buyer then increases Product B's Quantity from 12 to 24 — the Cart Item updates and a server-side pricing recalculation runs across all three lines, applying any tier-pricing thresholds that may have been crossed. When the buyer checks out, the three Cart Items are copied to the new Order as three Order Products with the snapshotted prices preserved.
Why Cart Item matters
Cart Items have a Type field that distinguishes Product items from Charge items. Product Cart Items represent goods or services the buyer has added; Charge Cart Items represent computed line-level adjustments — shipping fees, taxes, surcharges — that the Pricing Procedure has appended to the Cart. The total of all Product Cart Items equals the SubtotalAmount on the parent Cart; adding the Charge Cart Items reaches the GrandTotalAmount.
Pricing on Cart Items is fully recomputed server-side whenever the Cart's contents change. The Pricing Procedure pipeline resolves the buyer's entitled Price Book through BuyerGroup, applies any active Promotions, layers tax (through Avalara, Vertex, or native tax tables), and writes back the AdjustmentAmount and SalesPrice. Direct field updates to SalesPrice through API or Apex are typically overwritten on the next pricing recalculation — overrides should flow through the Promotion or PriceAdjustment frameworks instead.
Cart Item visibility and editability are tightly governed. Buyers can see and edit Cart Items only on Carts they own (or, in B2B scenarios, Carts within their BuyerAccount group). Service agents and sales reps assisting a buyer have separate access patterns through the AssistedShopping APIs. Direct Apex updates to Cart Items in code outside these patterns frequently fail validation — Commerce extends the standard sObject access model with its own additional checks.
How organizations use Cart Item
Configures volume-based promotions that adjust Cart Item SalesPrice as Quantity crosses thresholds (1-99 units, 100-499, 500+). Buyers see prices update in real-time as they change quantities, encouraging larger orders that hit better tier breaks.
Uses Charge Cart Items to surface shipping and tax as transparent line entries in the buyer's cart, rather than hiding them in a single GrandTotalAmount. This transparency reduces checkout abandonment by eliminating last-second cost surprises.
Models recurring product subscriptions as Cart Items with a custom RecurringTerm field. The checkout flow generates not just a one-time Order but also a recurring Order template, with the Cart Item's snapshotted price serving as the baseline for each recurring billing period.
Trust & references
Straight from the source — Salesforce's reference material on Cart Item.
- CartItem in Object Reference for the Salesforce PlatformSalesforce Developer Documentation
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