What coupons do
Coupons are discount codes you create for your workspace. Each code lowers the price someone pays at checkout, whether that person is signing up for an asset or plan membership, booking a resource, buying a pass, or registering for an event. Every coupon belongs to a single workspace, and codes only work inside the workspace that created them.
You manage coupons from the Coupons page in your admin area. Each coupon has a code (the text a person types in), a name, an optional description for your own reference, and a set of rules that decide how the discount is calculated, where it can be used, how long it lasts, and who qualifies. The sections below cover each of those rules.
Coupon codes
The code is what people enter at checkout. Codes are automatically uppercased and stripped of anything that is not a letter or number, so a code is always plain uppercase letters and digits. A code must be between 2 and 20 characters. Codes are matched without regard to the case a person types, so entering it in lowercase still works. Within a single workspace, each code must be unique, so you cannot create two coupons with the same code.
Discount types
Every coupon uses one of two discount types.
- Percentage: takes a percent off the price. The percentage value can be anything from just above 0 up to 100. A 100% coupon makes the item free.
- Fixed amount: takes a set amount off the price.
In both cases the discount can never exceed the price of the item. A fixed-amount coupon larger than the price simply brings the total to zero rather than producing a negative amount, and a percentage is always applied to the item's own price. Discounts are rounded to two decimal places.
Coupons cannot be applied to free items. If the price is already zero, the coupon field reports that a coupon cannot be applied to free items.
Minimum purchase amount
You can optionally set a minimum purchase amount on a coupon. When set, the coupon only applies if the item's price meets or exceeds that minimum. If the amount is below the minimum, the person is told the required minimum and the coupon is not applied.
Scope: where a coupon can be used
Scope controls which kinds of items a coupon works on. You select one or more of the following scopes when creating a coupon:
- All: the coupon works on every kind of item below.
- Resource: resource bookings.
- Event: event ticket purchases.
- Pass: passes.
- Plan: flex plans and memberships.
- Asset: assets (everything that is not a flex plan).
At least one scope must be selected. If a person tries a code on an item type the coupon does not cover, they are told the coupon does not apply to that item.
Limiting to specific items
Beyond choosing item types, you can narrow a coupon to specific items. When you build a coupon, you can pick individual plans, assets, resources, events, or passes from your workspace. If you select specific items, the coupon only works on those exact items. If you leave the item selection empty, the coupon works on any item that matches its scope.
Duration: how long the discount lasts
Duration matters for recurring billing, such as a flex plan membership or an asset assignment that bills every cycle. Every coupon has one of three duration types.
- Once: the discount applies only to the first charge. On recurring items, later billing cycles are charged the full price.
- Repeating: the discount applies for a set number of months, which you specify. Each billing cycle uses up one month until the count runs out, after which the full price is charged. A month count is required when you choose repeating.
- Forever: the discount applies to every billing cycle for as long as the assignment or membership continues.
For one-time purchases such as an event ticket, a resource booking, or a pass, the discount simply applies to that single purchase. The duration setting is most meaningful for recurring charges, where Deskie automatically re-applies repeating and forever discounts on each invoice and stops applying a once discount after the first invoice. The discount type and value are recorded at the moment a coupon is redeemed, so changing a coupon later does not alter discounts already in effect on existing recurring memberships.
Audience: who can use a coupon
Audience controls who is allowed to redeem the coupon. There are three options.
- All: anyone can use the coupon, including members and people who are not yet members.
- Members only: only people who already belong to your workspace can use it. A signed-in visitor who is not a member is told the coupon is for members only.
- Non-members only: only people who are not members can use it. This is useful for new-customer or sign-up promotions. A signed-in member is told the coupon is for non-members only.
Whether someone counts as a member is determined by their membership in your workspace at the time they apply the code.
Limits and availability windows
Several optional settings control how often and when a coupon can be used.
- Total redemption limit: the maximum number of times the coupon can be redeemed across everyone. Once the limit is reached, the coupon stops working. Deskie enforces this limit at the moment of redemption, so a coupon cannot be redeemed beyond its cap. If you leave this blank, there is no total limit.
- Per-person limit: how many times a single person can redeem the coupon. This defaults to one redemption per person. For a signed-in person, Deskie checks how many times they have already used the coupon before applying it again.
- Start date: the coupon is not active before this date. People are told it is not yet active.
- Expiration date: the coupon stops working after this date. People are told it has expired. If both dates are set, the start date must come before the expiration date.
A coupon must also be active to be used. Deactivating a coupon turns it off without deleting it or its history. Inactive coupons, and coupons past their expiration date, are also skipped on recurring invoices, so a recurring discount stops once its coupon expires or is deactivated.
Where people enter and redeem coupons
People apply coupons at checkout. A coupon field appears on the checkout flows for resource bookings, events, passes, assets, and flex plans, on both your public website sign-up and checkout pages and when an admin sets up a paid asset assignment. The person enters the code, and Deskie validates it against all the rules above, then shows the discount and the new total before they pay.
The discount is recorded once checkout completes. At that point Deskie writes a redemption record that captures who used the code, what they bought, the original amount, the discount taken, and the final amount paid. This is what powers the redemption count, the per-person limit, and the automatic re-application of repeating and forever discounts on future invoices.
A note on guest checkout and per-person limits
For public checkouts where the buyer is not signed in, Deskie cannot check a per-person history before showing the discount, so the per-person limit is not previewed for guests. The overall total redemption limit is still enforced at the moment of redemption regardless of who is checking out.
Reviewing coupon usage
Each coupon's detail page lists its recent redemptions, showing who redeemed it, what they applied it to, and the original, discount, and final amounts. This gives you a running view of how a promotion is performing and how much discount you have given out. Coupons connect to your broader billing through invoices and payments, where the discounted totals are reflected on the charges people actually pay.