How to auto apply coupons

Smart Coupons provide a powerful, “all-in-one” solution for gift cards, store credits, discount coupons and vouchers extending the core functionality of WooCommerce coupons.

This documentation explains how to set up ‘auto-apply coupons’ using the Smart Coupons plugin, eliminating the need for users to enter or copy-paste coupon codes!

You can auto-apply or forcefully apply a coupon on numerous occasions:

• Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Christmas sales
• New year, Valentine’s Day, your store anniversary or any special occasion
• New product launches, events, stock clearance sales
• For loyal customers to encourage repeat purchases

Steps to create/set auto-apply coupons

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1. Go to your WordPress admin panel. Under Marketing > Coupons, click on Add coupon. You can also modify your existing coupon.
2. Set the discount type, coupon amount, expiry date and time and other details.
3. Look for the ‘Auto apply?’ option. Enable it. 
4. Set usage limits and other restrictions as per your requirements. You can also set advanced restrictions based on payment methods, product quantity, user roles and more for your auto-apply coupon.
5. Publish/Update the coupon.

That’s it.

Important notes for auto-apply coupons

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1. The auto-apply feature will trigger only when there’s a product in the cart.
2. Smart Coupons will check the validity and all the restrictions and limits set for the coupons before auto-applying them.
   For example – If you restrict a coupon to “Customer” user role and “Stripe” payment gateway, the plugin will first verify whether these restrictions are met and then apply the coupon.
3. Up to five coupons can be auto-applied by default even if you’ve enabled the ‘Auto apply?’ option for more coupons. If required, you can extend this limit using the following steps:
   1. Open your website’s database.
   2. Go to table ‘{prefix}options‘ (e.g. wp_options).
   3. Search for a record having option_name like ‘wc_sc_max_auto_apply_coupons_limit‘
   4. If you find it, set its corresponding option_value as the number of auto-apply coupons allowed to be applied.
   5. If you don’t find it, insert a record in the same table with option_name as ‘wc_sc_max_auto_apply_coupons_limit‘ and option_value as the number of auto-apply coupons allowed to be applied. That’s it.
4. Your users can remove any auto-applied coupon if they wish to. But if you don’t want them to remove the auto-applied coupons, follow these steps:
   1. Open your website’s database.
   2. Go to table ‘{prefix}options‘ (e.g. wp_options).
   3. Search for a record having option_name like ‘wc_sc_auto_apply_coupon_removable‘
   4. If you find it, set its corresponding option_value as ‘no‘.
   5. If you don’t find it, insert a record in the same table with option_name as ‘wc_sc_auto_apply_coupon_removable‘ and option_value as ‘no‘. That’s it.
5. You can bulk generate coupons with the auto-apply feature.
6. Auto-apply feature works with subscription coupons as well.
7. Users can’t auto-apply gift cards/store credits.
8. Auto-apply will not be enabled for coupons that are linked to a product. This means that when you issue any coupon with a product purchase, that coupon will need to be manually applied by the users on their next purchase.