Coupons

Are you looking to offer current or potential customers a discount? Chargify handles all of your coupon codes, discounts, and promotions with ease. Simply name the coupon, set your desired code for subscribers to use & configure the discount options. You even the power to control the expiration date and how long the promotion runs for in conjunction with your products. Chargify allows you to create both one-time and recurring coupons to give customers a discount.

Coupon Details

Coupons are applied whenever a recurring charge is assessed at any point in the subscription lifecycle.
Coupons can either be defined as a dollar amount subtracted from the total, or a percentage subtracted from the total. These rules apply unless there are restrictions present on the coupon, in which case the amount will only subtract from discountable items (see Product / Component Restrictions).
If no restrictions exist, coupons will apply to the total of all charges, instead of just the base fee. This means that any setup fees and component charges will also be discounted by a valid coupon.
If a free trial exists, the coupon will not be applied until an amount is due at the end of the free trial.
Coupons that are applied for the subscriptions next renewal are also applied to mid-period component allocations, however this does not count as a usage for coupons with a limit. (Please note that if the coupon is out of usages or the usage time expires before the next renewal the discounts will not be applied to mid-period allocations).

For amount-based coupons, this can result in applying more credit than was intended. In this situation, the leftover amount will be treated as a Pending Discount. To avoid this, you may wish to manually calculate any mid-period component allocations and use a one time charge to avoid an additional discount being applied.

To check current amount for subscription’s pending discounts:

use API call - visit our developer reference at: Read Account Balances
navigate to subscription’s Invoices (shown below)

Creating a Coupon

Coupons are added to a product family from the setup tab.

To create a new coupon, click the “Create New Coupon” button.
Once a coupon has been created, it can be shared across all products in the family.

Editing Coupons

Once you have created a coupon, it will appear under the product family on the products section. You can make changes to the coupon by clicking the ‘Edit’ button to the right of the coupon.

If you alter the amount or percentage of a coupon, it will immediately affect existing Subscriptions to which the coupon has been previously applied in Chargify.

If the coupon is set to “Apply the discount at signup and for a certain number of renewal periods,” then changing the number of renewal periods will NOT affect existing Subscriptions to which the coupon has been applied.

The edit screen contains a summary of all the current coupon settings separated into sections. To edit a particular bit of information, simply click “Edit” on that section. This page is also where definitive pricing for other currencies may be configured, under the “Discount Configuration” section.

When editing the coupon, each section will be minimized initially to provide an overview.

Deleting a Coupon

Deleting coupons isn’t supported, but what is supported is archiving coupons. Chargify gives the merchant the option to archive coupons that are no longer active in your account.

Archiving a Coupon

By archiving coupons, you’re still allowed access to view older coupons. However, archived coupons can not be able to be applied to current subscriptions.

You may archive a coupon, which will disallow new subscribers from using the coupon. However, the coupon will still honor remaining uses for customers who have already applied the coupon.

Locate the coupon you wish to archive
Select Archive
You’ll be presented with a simple warning to ensure you understand the implications of archival

Searching for a coupon

If you have more than 10 coupons in a product family, only the first 10 coupons will be displayed in the product family view. You can locate a specific coupon, or a specific coupon codes by selecting View All Coupons.

On the Setup tab of your site, locate the coupon section. Select View All Coupons. Enter the coupon code, subcode or name of coupon to locate a coupon.

Enter the search criteria for your coupon

Basic Coupon Fields

Internal Name

Give your coupon a good descriptive internal name. This should be a name that is recognizable by all persons that will have access to Chargify. It will also be somewhat descriptive to what products or services this coupon will discount at a glance.

Coupon Code

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

The code that customers will enter to redeem the coupon

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 .

With these characters, a capitalized email address may be used as the coupon code. 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 Amount

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

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

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 product.

A flat amount coupon will be applied first to any initial/setup fees for the subscription, and then to the cost of the product and components.

Discount Limit

The Limit Discount option allows you to configure whether a coupon can exceed the amount due. Selecting the ‘Do not limit discount’ option will leave a negative balance on the subscription if the coupon amount is greater than the amount due.

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

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 this stackable coupon to non-stackable, no changes will be made to existing subscriptions in any places where this coupon has already been applied.

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 Options

As you begin to set up a coupon, the default behaviour for the coupon will be set to “Apply the discount only at signup.” You can change 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 result will be that the coupon will be applied a total of 1 (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 result will be that the coupon will be applied for each renewal afterwards.
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.
- 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 renewal periods you specify.
- This coupon can also be applied to a subscription after it’s been created. The result will be that 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 products with varying intervals. We advise you to pick the interval of the subscriptions that you expect the coupon to apply to most of the time.

Option to Apply Recurring Coupons to Mid-Period Component Allocations

This option specifies whether or not the coupon should apply to component allocations that are generated mid period. Increasing component allocations in the middle of a billing period may generate a mid-period invoice. Generally, merchants will want percentage based recurring coupons to apply to mid-period invoices and want flat dollar amount recurring coupons to not apply to mid-period invoices.

Apply discount at the end of period cancellation

When this option is enabled coupons will be applied to all usage captured in the current billing cycle when an end-of-period cancellation occurs.

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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. Recurring discounts, however, will continue to apply even after the expiration date.

Note that if you change the time zone for your site, coupons will continue to expire at midnight in the original time zone.

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 Chargify.
If you set a conversion limit to 1, that coupon can be used exactly 1 time across your entire site.

Product / Component Restrictions

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

Select what products and components you'd like the coupon to apply to

Coupons may be added to any subscription within the same product family, regardless of the coupon's restrictions. Restrictions only control whether the coupon will actually apply to the subscription's next charge.

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.

Here, this coupon is relying 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 our article on multi-currency.

Coupon Codes

Once a coupon has been created you can add additional codes to the coupon in order to make the code unique. These codes behave exactly like the main coupon code. However, they are generally un-guessable combinations of letters and numbers that you can distribute to customers to make your coupons more secure.

As an example, you can have a master coupon of 50OFF. Create a unique subcode for that particular customer by combining the master code with their internal reference ID, resulting in 50OFFMM9280. But the subcode can be completely different than the master code; regardless, the subcode value is what you will distribute to customers.

To add more coupon codes, click the ‘Manage Codes’ button for the coupon of your choice.

Next, click ‘Import Codes,’ then enter the additional codes into the text box, with one coupon per line.

Once you have manually entered your codes, hit save and Chargify will confirm the codes that have been successfully added.

Confirmation that subcodes have been added

Deleting Codes

You can delete a code as soon as it is created by selecting ‘Delete’ under the options column while viewing the ‘Manage Codes’ page. This will immediately remove it from the your account. There is no way to undo this process.

Newer subscriptions will not be able to apply this code. Subscriptions created before the code was deleted will still retain the discount applied.