Understanding Coupon Settings

This article is related to managing the Coupons in your Advanced Billing account. Are you looking to offer current or potential customers a discount? Advanced Billing handles all of your coupon codes, discounts, and promotions with ease.

Related article: Coupons Overview.

Coupon Details

Internal Name

Give your coupon a descriptive internal name that helps your team quickly identify its purpose. While not a system requirement, a clear name makes it easier for others to understand which Plans or services the coupon is intended to discount.

Coupon Code

This is the code that your subscribers will use to receive a discount for Plans or services.

• The code cannot contain spaces
• Coupons must be comprised of uppercase letters, numbers and/or these special characters
• The permitted special characters for coupons are: %, @, +, -, \, _ and .

Because only uppercase letters, numbers, and the listed special characters are permitted, an email-style code may be used only if the characters meet these requirements (for example, uppercase only and no unsupported symbols). You can add additional codes to the coupon once the coupon has been created.

Description

A description of the coupon that can be displayed to customers in transactions and on statements.

Discount Configuration

Discount

You may specify the discount amount in one of two ways:

• As a percentage with up to four decimal places
• As a flat amount in your site’s default currency

Note that additional currencies will be configurable after the coupon is created.

In the case of percentage-based discounts, the final calculated discount will be rounded to the nearest cent based on the cost of the Plan.

Flat amount coupons apply in a specific order: first to any initial or setup fees, then to Plan charges, and finally to Product charges. This order ensures the discount is fully consumed before moving to the next type of charge.

Limit Discount

• Limit discount
  Allows you to configure whether a coupon can exceed the amount due.

• Do not limit discount
  Will leave a negative balance on the subscription if the coupon amount is greater than the amount owing.

For example, if you apply a $100 coupon to a $30 Plan, with the ‘Do not limit discount’ option selected, you will have a -$70 balance on the Subscription. Otherwise, your balance would be $0.

Advanced Options

Stackable Coupons

• This coupon is not stackable
  A coupon that is not stackable cannot be combined with any other coupons on a subscription.

• This coupon is stackable
  A stackable coupon can be combined with other stackable coupons on a subscription.

If you change a coupon from stackable to non-stackable, existing subscriptions that already applied the coupon will keep it as-is. The change only affects new coupon applications going forward—previously applied coupons remain valid and unchanged.

However, for all new applications, you will no longer be able to stack this coupon with other coupons on subscriptions during the time the coupon is set to ‘Not Stackable’.

Ordering and Compounding

These options will appear if the coupon is configured as stackable.

• Compound this coupon after all other discounts
  Percentage-based discounts will be calculated against the remaining price, after prior discounts have been calculated.

• Apply to the full price before other discounts
  Percentage-based discounts will always be calculated against the original item price, before other discounts are applied.

Recurring Discount

As you begin to set up a coupon, the default behaviour will be “Apply the discount only at signup.” You can change this by selecting one of the other radio button options for recurring discount behaviour.

• Apply the discount only once
  This option will allow the discount to be applied during the signup process. This coupon can also be applied to a subscription after it’s been created. The coupon will be applied a total of one time.

• Apply the discount indefinitely
  This option will allow the discount to be applied during the signup process and each renewal afterwards. This coupon can also be applied to a subscription after it’s been created. The coupon will then be applied for each renewal.

• Apply the discount initially and for the next X renewal periods
  This option will allow the discount to be applied during the signup process and for a set amount of renewal periods. You can enter any postive integer value for the renewal period.
  For example, if you specify a renewal period of 12 months, the coupon will apply 13 times. The coupon will be applied at one renewal, plus the specified renewal periods.

This coupon can also be applied to a subscription after it’s been created. The coupon will be applied for each renewal period up until the set limit of renewal periods.

Other usage examples for the third option to specify renewal periods:

• Consider you have a monthly Plan and a yearly Plan, and a coupon that recurs for two 1-month renewal periods.
• If that coupon gets applied to an annual subscription, it will apply once then “expire” 2 months later, meaning it won’t actually apply to 3 annual renewals (which is probably not what you wanted anyway).

The bottom line is that we allow you to specify the period length for count-limited recurring coupons to prevent coupons from applying for too long in the case of multiple Plans with varying intervals.

Mid-Period Allocation Discount Behavior

When a subscriber changes Plans or Products mid-period, you can control how discounts are applied.

• Apply discount on mid period allocations
  Selecting this option ensures the discount is applied to any prorated amounts generated by mid-period Plan or Product changes.

• Exclude discount on mid period allocations
  With this setting, no discount will be applied to mid-period allocation charges. This can help preserve revenue integrity during off-cycle billing adjustments.

Cancel at the End of Period Discount Behavior

You can define how the discount behaves during the final billing period for cancellations set to occur at the end of a billing period.

• Apply discount at the end of period cancellation
  The coupon discount will still apply during the final billing period, even if the subscription has been scheduled for cancellation.

• Don't apply discount at the end of period cancellation
  The discount will not be applied to the final billing period if the subscription has a scheduled cancellation

Expired Subscription Final Period Usage Discount Behavior

In cases where a subscription is marked as expired but usage is billed for the final period, you can control whether the discount applies.

• Apply discount to final period usage
  The discount will be applied to the usage-based charges during the final billing period before expiration.

• Don't apply discount to final period usage
  The discount will not be applied to final usage charges on expired subscriptions.

Setup Fee Behavior

Decide whether your coupon should apply to setup fees charged at the beginning of a subscription.

• Apply discount to Setup Fees
  The discount will apply to any initial setup or onboarding fees associated with the subscription.

• Don't apply discount to Setup Fees
  The discount will apply only to Plan and Product charges, not to setup fees.

Trial Behavior

Determine if the coupon should apply during the trial period of a subscription.

• Apply discount to trials
  The discount will reduce applicable charges during the trial period, such as usage fees or partially billed Products.

• Don't apply discount to trials
  The coupon will not affect trial period charges and will only take effect once the trial has ended.

Expiration Date

If you set an expiration date, the coupon can no longer be added to subscriptions after the end of that day in your time zone. However, recurring discounts will continue to apply even after the expiration date.

Conversion Limit

Use the conversion limit field to limit the number of times a coupon code can be used. Note that if you add additional codes to the coupon, this number will apply to each code separately.

For example:

• If you set the conversion limit to be blank, the coupon can be used as many times as you’d like across your entire site. This is the most frequently used conversion setting in Advanced Billing.
• If you set a conversion limit to 1, that coupon can be used exactly 1 time across your entire site.

Plan/Product Restrictions

If you would like to limit a coupon to only apply to a specific Plan or Product, you can restrict the coupon by selecting only the Plans/Products that it should apply to. When nothing is selected, the coupon will be unrestricted and will apply to all current and future Plans / Products.

Multi-Currency Pricing Conversion

This option becomes available if a flat amount discount is chosen and the site has more than one currency defined. By default, a coupon will use the site level exchange rate to determine how much of a discount to apply. In order for a subscription to add a particular coupon, that coupon must have a price defined that matches the subscription’s currency.

This coupon relies on the exchange rates defined in the currency settings to determine the converted prices

The “Use Definitive Pricing” toggle will allow you to set explicit prices that should be used for a specific currency. For example, here $5 AUD would translate to €2,98. If rounded numbers were desired, their definitive pricing could be configured as in the screenshot below:

Specify unique pricing for a particular currency on this coupon

For more information on the difference between definitive pricing and using the site level currency definition, please see the article on multi-currency.