Knowledgebase
How to issue discount coupons in Magento
In Magento you can make all sorts of discounts with the help of catalog and/or shopping cart price rules. If you want to issue specific discount coupons which customers can apply by providing a code associated with the coupon, you can do that by adding a shopping cart price rule. The price rule has to be configured to be a specific coupon.
To do this in the admin panel go to Promotions menu>Shopping Cart Price Rules and click on the Add New Rule button. On the page that opens configure the settings and make sure that you set the Coupon drop-down menu to Specific Coupon. You can then type a code for the coupon in the field underneath, or you can use the auto-generation function. Then click on the Actions tab on the left to set the actual discount amount, and if needed set some conditions which have to be fulfilled so that the coupon can be applied. After you save the shopping cart price rule you only need to send the coupon code to the customer(s) that you want to be able to use and apply that discount coupon.
For a detailed description of how to add and manage shopping cart price rules read the tutorial on managing shopping cart price rules in Magento.