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Product filtering is one of the most fundamental concepts of Coupons+. Sometimes product filters can be misunderstood, especially when trying to use them as conditionals for your offers in some scenarios. The good news is that you don’t have to memorize these cases! You will be warned by Coupons+ if you try to set up a potentially wrong offer. This document explains why you cannot use your filters as conditions in very specific scenarios.

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A quick refresh on product filters

As we have mentioned before, product filters are that, filters. They are not cart conditions. They take the cart and apply your filters to it, and the result (if anything was successfully filtered) is passed to your offers.

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When to use product filters as conditions

Product filters have been designed to work as conditionals for these offers:
  • BOGOs: Same Products Different Products Your selected filters act as the “buy” part of a BOGO deal. They act as a condition because the customer needs to have the selected product types in the cart for your BOGO deal to apply. There is one exception where trying to use them as conditionals that may not work as you expect. Please read the following section bellow
  • Product/Item Discounts: Discount Your selected filters act both as the condition and as the target for the discounts. The discount will only apply to the products when the customer has them in the cart.
  • Bulk Discounts: Discount Very similar to the Product/Item Discounts. Your selected filters act both as the condition and as the target for the discounts. The discount will only apply when the customer has the minimum required amount of the selected filters in the cart.
  • Bundles: Bundle Price & Multi-buy The customer needs to buy the specified items in the specified quantities for the bundle discount to apply.
  • Cart Discounts: Discount Partial Support. Now this is where it may get confusing. Your product filters work great as conditionals for a cart discount when you are targeting products that the customer must buy, for example: Buy 1 of Product A and get a $10 discount on the whole cart. Read bellow for the cases where using them as conditionals is not supported and may trigger your offers in cases you don’t want.
  • Shipping Discounts: Shipping Discount Partial Support. This is the exact same case as with Cart Discounts. Your product filters work great as conditionals for a shipping discount when you are targeting products that the customer must buy, for example: Buy 1 of Product A and get free shipping. Read bellow for the cases where using them as conditionals is not supported and may trigger your offers in cases you don’t want.

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When NOT to use product filters as cart conditions

Here are the use cases that may trigger your offers when you don’t want to, when trying to use product filters as conditionals.

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Case 1: Trying to apply an offer like a Cart Discount, a Shipping Discount or a BOGO gift when the customer does NOT have specific products in their cart

Scenario: You want to apply a $10 discount to the cart when the customer does not have Product A in their cart. So you try to add the following filters: image shows tree with negating product filters and a cart discount This will not work as you expect when the customer has other products in the cart, because the selected filter will try to filter any items that are not a T-shirt. If the customer adds a pair of shoes, the filter will select them since they are not t-shirts, and because the filter matched valid items, the discount will be applied to the cart. This applies to all filters that have an exclude mode, including:
  • Products: exclude
  • Categories: exclude
  • Brands: exclude
  • Tags: exclude
  • On Sale?

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Case 2: Trying to apply an offer like a Cart or a Shipping Discount when the customer only has a max. quantity in the cart

This is another common case for confusion. Let’s say you want to apply a $10 discount to the cart when the customer buys 1 of Product A and only 1. If the customer buys 2 or more, you do not want that discount to apply. This will not work as expected because the Quantity filter will select the specified amount from the cart. For example, let’s say the customer has 3 of Product A in their cart. Your selected filters will take 1 from Product A from the cart, and since we can take 1 from the 3 in the cart, the offer will be applied. This works great when you want to apply a discount when a quantity is in the cart, but not when you only want that quantity in the cart and nothing more. This applies to all types of quantity modes that have an upper limit:
  • Fixed
  • Maximum
  • In Range
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