I had a client who really needed the possibility of excluding some products from the coupon discount system. After some thinking we came up with a way to exclude whole categories from being discounted. I’ll illustrate with a simple example;
Category Coffee is excluded from discounts.
Category Tea is NOT excluded.
We are using a 50% coupon, and the buyers buys;
Coffee Beans @ $50 per pack and Tea Bags @ $50 per pack
So, the shopping cart looks like this (exactly as normal):
I then insert the 50% coupon code, and the view changes to this:
As you can see the coupon has deducted 50% of the allowed item, and nothing from the disallowed item! In addition, you can see that the shopping cart infobox also shows the correct deduction!
Carry on through the checkout:
You can see that the order_totals are correct; $100 (subtotal) LESS $25 (50% of the allowed product) PLUS $5 (shipping) == $80 to pay
And if we now look at the Admin area for the order:
We can see the correct order_totals here too.
This is an extensive overhaul of the coupons system and is in Beta Testing right now.