A coupon is a certificate given to a customer that is redeemable for a gift or discount. By giving out coupons, you allow the coupon holder to take advantage of a special offer. Most online coupons are sent through email campaigns and are redeemable during checkout. Americommerce allows you to set up an wide variety of coupons and other such discounts. Before looking into activating coupons, you should read our topic on how AmeriCommerce applies discount methods.

Changing Store Settings to accept Coupon Codes

To enable coupon codes functionality on your store please browse to Store Settings.

Enable the Accept Coupons checkbox to accept coupon codes on your store.

Click the Save button in the top-right corner. Your store is now ready to accept coupons.

Setting up Discounts with Coupon Codes

Browse to Global Settings > Discounts and Pricing > Discount Rules

Click the Newbutton to create a new discount method.

Enter the various details on the discount method and click the Savebutton at the top.

Note: You must save a new discount method before you can enter the discount rules that apply to it.

The various discount method parameters are as follows:

• Method Name
  A reference for store admin's and also displayed on pages that show the discount. Enter information that is meaninful to you as well as your customers.
• Method is Active
  Enable this only when all other parameters have been set up and you are ready for testing.
• Method is Strict
  All rules must hold true if this discount method is to work. Logically, this follows the and operator. If a single criteria is not fulfilled the discount method does not apply.
• Use Only Once Per Customer
  Enable this if you want each of your customers to be able to use this discount method once only.
• Expires
  In case the discount method is limited by time you can use this option.
  
  Not selecting this option will leave the discount method available to your customers till you disable the Method is Active option or delete the discount method.
• Expires on Date
  If you select the Expires option listed above you can click the icon to select an expiry date.
• Discount Action
  This can be of two types:
  • Subtract
    Enter value and select dollars or percent and select the subtract it from total, shipping, or matched items
    
    You can apply the discount to the total (total here does not include taxes, shipping, etc.) or to the shipping.
    
    For example: You can subtract 100% from shipping to create a free shipping discount on products that may not normally qualify for shipping discounts.
  • Add Item to Cart
    Allows you to add items to the customer's shopping cart. This is great for creating "buy 1 get 1 free" types of discounts.

Creating Discount Rules for a Discount Method

Once you Save a discount method you can add discount rules to it.

Creating rules:

• Rule Type
  For coupon codes, select the coupon code from the drop down list.
• Operator
  Will be equal to
• Target
  The string of the coupon code.
  
  Note: coupon codes are case sensitive so make sure you enter them (and inform your customers) exactly as intended or they may not work.

You can follow the same three steps for other options.

Click the icon to the left of the row to add a discount rule to a method. Keep repeating the steps to create as many rules as required.

Remember that if you enable Method is Strict for the discount rule then all rules must be met in order for the discount to apply.

Click the Save button at the top when you are done.

Testing the Coupon Codes

Take a look at the following discount method and rule.

The discount method is set to Subtract, 10%, from total, when the coupon code is TEST.

Switching to the shopping cart and entering the coupon code results in the following:

As you can see, a 10% discount was applied to the Subtotal resulting in a Total value of $90.

You can follow the same steps to create multiple coupon code based discounts applied in different ways.