Discounts

Discounts live under Catalog → Discounts, and one form covers all three methods.

Every redemption is written down with the amount it took off. That is what makes the limits trustworthy: they are counted against real use rather than against a running total that could drift.

The records behind a discount are Coupon and CouponUsage — the discount itself, and one row for each time it was redeemed.

The three methods

A code is what customers type at checkout.

An automatic discount has no code at all. You pick what triggers it instead:

first purchase
cart abandonment
returning customer
high intent

A gift card is created with a stored value, and customers redeem it against that balance.

What the discount takes off

There are two offer types: a percentage off, or a fixed amount off.

You then pick what it applies to:

• the whole cart
• a specific collection's products

A fixed amount is stored against the currency it was created in, and is refused in a cart of any other currency. "$10 off" cannot be redeemed as 10 units of a stronger currency.

Percentage discounts have no currency, so the question does not arise for them.

Limits

You can set:

• a total usage limit
• a per-customer limit
• a minimum order amount
• a maximum discount
• a start and end date

The per-customer limit is counted from the redemptions on record, not from a stored counter — the count comes from what actually happened.

Public and private codes

A discount marked not public never appears among the codes suggested at checkout.

That is what keeps a welcome-email or recovery code from being found by someone it was not sent to.

Generated codes avoid lookalikes

The code generator uses A–Z without I or O, and digits 2–9, formatted as two groups of four.

A code read aloud down a phone or copied off a printed card is therefore not misheard as a similar-looking character.

Capitalisation does not matter

Codes are upper-cased as you type them, when they are saved, and when they are matched at checkout, and uniqueness is enforced on that upper-cased form.

SUMMER20 and summer20 can't both exist, and a customer typing either one gets the same discount.

What a discount can be attached to

A discount does not have to stand alone. It can be attached to:

• a campaign
• a collection
• a collab

Setting one up

1. Choose the method, set the value, and pick whether it applies cart-wide or to a collection.
2. Set the dates and the usage limits, and decide whether it is public.
3. Activate it.
4. Watch redemptions and discounted revenue in reporting; the worklist flags a discount whose end date is approaching.

Activation is a gate, not a formality. The store refuses to activate a discount with:

• no code
• a value of zero
• a percentage over 100
• an end date before the start
• an end date in the past
• products that are no longer available

Which method to use

Use a code when the customer needs something to type or to pass on — that is the only method that produces one.

Use an automatic discount when the offer should follow a behaviour rather than a hand-out, and pick the trigger that matches it.

Use a gift card when the customer is spending a balance rather than taking a percentage or an amount off.

Whichever you pick, the limits behave the same way:

Every limit on a discount is counted from the redemptions on record, so what the discount has actually cost you is always the same number the limit is measured against.

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