Coupons

[Headpinz]

Hey Team,

I’ve been digging into the Square Community and found a lot of users facing similar challenges as us when it comes to coupons.

There seem to be quite a few limitations here, and it feels like this is more than just an idea on a message board. I’d love to get your thoughts on it.

Automatic discounts in Square are pretty robust. Let’s look at how the initial setup of an automatic discount or "discount rule" works:

• You have extensive customization options: customer groups, quantity, item, or even category.
• You can set specific time ranges and dates.
• These rules can be applied as BOGOs, percent-off discounts for specific customer groups, and more.
• If you work with the API, you can even unlock functionality not available in the GUI.

Now, imagine if this same functionality was available for coupons. Sure, Square offers basic options like specific amounts, free items, or percentage discounts, but what if we could take it further and apply the customization available in discounts to specific coupon codes?

Here’s an example:

Our Square Text database is growing fast—it’s already crossed the 10,000 mark in just a few weeks. We’d love to create a weekly or bi-weekly BOGO program exclusively for those customers. The discount module has the restrictions we need, but it can only be applied automatically.

What if we could send out a unique coupon code via Square Marketing, tied to the same restrictions in the discount setup?

Another scenario: a limited-time happy hour special—buy any meal and get a free draft beer. We could technically set this up through automatic discounts, but we’d rather reserve it for our most loyal customers.

Other users have posted similar ideas, like customers earning a coupon for purchasing four items on their website. Automatic discounts can handle part of this, but there’s no way to tie it to a specific coupon code.

It’s also odd that Square’s API has some coupon functionality, but it’s not fully accessible. Coupons show up on customer accounts, but there’s no way to add or modify them easily.

It feels like the teams at Square could collaborate to bridge the gap between these features. Discounts and coupons should work more seamlessly together.

I’d love to hear your ideas on how we might better utilize coupons to mimic the functionality of discounts—just with the added flexibility of codes. Let me know your thoughts!

Eric

[Headpinz]

Also posted in Champions— https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Square-Champions-Lounge/Let-s-Talk-Coupons/m-p/771519#M16541 

[namastewatford]

I really wish that Square gives some more priority to Coupons / Discounts features.

We are using Square for Restaurant and few of the basic couponing, we are not able to implement.

1. If some customer book table via certain App, we need to give them discount only on food tems, not on drinks.

-- I gave up implementing this via discounts or coupons.

-- In discounting, if I put the automatic rule, then it applies to all customers. There is no way to chose this only when booking is coming via certain channel

-- In coupon system, when I chose the coupon to give 20% discount on certain categories, then it gives this discount for just one item, and not to all the items of that category. Support had confirmed and I had to leave this option as well

2. I would like to implement, BOGOF on all food categories, again only when customer is showing certain loyalty card like TasteCard or so. Yet to find a way to implement.

I hope that this forum will help review discounts/coupons options and help make Square a better platform.

[Headpinz]

Hey @namastewatford thank you so much for adding to the request.   

I did find a way to give an automatic discount on certain categories to a certain customer base.  It’s not available in dashboard but in the API, which does apply to Square for Restaurants.   

If you could manage to get those customers into a smart group this might work for you.   

Let me know if you’d like more details.  

[namastewatford]

Hi @Headpinz ,

Indeed, any working solution would be great. Please do pass on the info on how to implement such.

TIA

Manish

[JJ_]

Hi @Headpinz, thank you for your excellent feature request. We value your insight on how this would benefit your business. If you know other Seller Community members who might also find this valuable, please tag them so they can share their feedback. More voices can help bring this to our product team's attention.

[doc_choc]

@Headpinz liking your ideas (but don't mention auto-discounts and coupons I wished they worked without discount stacking lol). Coupons are always difficult in my opinion, always so many scenarios that users are looking to use. For example we wanted to offer a 20% off products in a category which had 4 items each at £25 in the category. So using the coupon would take £5 off if you purchased one item, buy two items for £50 and it still just took of £5 not £10 just applied to one item. Its all very complex.

Every time I use coupons I come across an 'if only it could do that' moment and I rarely get a coupon that does what I want. However we always dial it back to something that we can worth with though.

It would be interesting to know how other service provider tackle this, is just very complex logic or is the Square system making it complex? 🤔

[Headpinz]

@doc_choc I've been able to turn off stacking for certain discounts via the API.  Does that help you?

[doc_choc]

@Headpinz Certainly worth a look at, stacking is a real pain for our business. Thanks for the heads up on this! 👍