Knowledgebase
How to add shopping cart price promotions in Magento
In addition to catalog price discounts in Magento you can also add shopping cart price discounts. They are applied only to a product or products in the shopping cart of the customer provided the product(s) matches the conditions of any of the shopping cart price rules that you've added. To add and configure shopping cart price rules in the admin panel of your Magento go to Promotions menu>Shopping Cart Price Rules. The existing price rules are shown in a table on the page that opens. To edit a rule click on its row in the table; to add a new one click on the Add New Rule button in the top right corner of the page.
On the add/edit page that opens there are a few buttons on the left: Rule Information, Conditions, Actions and Labels. If you're adding a new rule a button labeled Manage Coupon Codes will appear after you save the rule. Click on the Rule Information button to configure the general settings of the price rule. Type a name and optionally a description in the respective fields. Select a website(s) and a customer group(s) to which the rule should apply from the Websites and Customer Groups options respectively. If you don't want this price rule to be a specific coupon, leave the Coupon drop-down menu to No Coupon. In case you want to limit the number of times the promotion can be used by a customer, type the number in the field for Uses per Customer (blank or 0 is for no limit). If you want the discount to be valid only for a particular period of time, specify that period using the From Date and To Date options. You can also set the priority of the price rule in relation to other shopping cart price rules by typing a number in the field for Priority; lower numbers (e.g. 0) have a higher priority.
If you want the promotion to be a specific coupon that's applied by the customer with a coupon code, set the drop-down menu Coupon to Specific Coupon. The options Coupon Code and Uses per Coupon will automatically appear. You can use them to restrict the number of times the coupon can be used and to specify a coupon code. If you want to generate coupon codes automatically, mark the Use Auto Generation checkbox. After you save the price rule you can generate coupon codes from the Manage Coupon Codes section (a button will appear on the left).
Click on the Conditions button on the left to manage the shopping cart price rule conditions. They are configured in the same way as those for catalog price rules. You can set whether all or any of the added conditions should be true or false in order for the rule to be applied; click on ALL and TRUE respectively and use the drop-down menus that appear. To add a rule click on the small green plus button and select the condition from the drop-down menu that appears (it can be a product attribute, an attribute set, a shopping cart attribute, etc.). Then configure the conditional statement by clicking on is and selecting an option from the drop-down menu that appears. To select a value (e.g. a particular attribute) click on the three dots.
Click on the Actions button on the left to configure the shopping cart price rule actions. You can select how the discount should be calculated from the Apply drop-down menu. It can be a percentage of the original price of the product that's subtracted from the price, it can be a fixed amount that's subtracted from the price of the product, it can be a fixed amount that's subtracted from the subtotal of the cart or you can offer a free product(s) if the customer buys a particular number of units from a product. Set the actual discount in the field for Discount Amount. From the rest of the options you can set a maximum number of items per product to which the discount will be applied, you can set a discount quantity step (the discount will be applied only when the customer orders at least as many items as the specified quantity). You can also select whether the discount should be applied to the shipping amount and whether free shipping should be offered to matching items or to all items in the cart.
Click on the Labels button on the left if you want to specify how the discount should be labeled on the frontend. You can set a different label for each store view.
After you're done don't forget to click on the Save or on the Save and Continue Edit button.
For more details and screenshots you can also check out the tutorial on managing shopping cart price rules in Magento.