When Rhythm prices an order that includes an application fee, it recalculates any coupon discount from the coupon’s rules at that moment. This article explains how Rhythm decides which application fees a coupon reduces.
A Fee's Price Comes from Its Own Settings
An application fee gets its price from the settings on that fee. A coupon does not change the fee’s price before the discount; it only reduces the price those settings already created.
What a Coupon's Discount Looks At
When Rhythm prices an order, it checks only the application-fee lines on that order. All other order lines are ignored for this discount. For each application-fee line, the coupon’s award list and award-type list determine whether the line qualifies:
- If the coupon lists specific awards, only fee lines for those awards qualify.
- If the coupon lists specific award types, only fee lines whose award is one of those types qualify.
- If the coupon lists neither an award nor an award type, every application fee line on the order qualifies, no matter which award it belongs to.
If a line does not qualify through either list, it stays at full price because the coupon does not apply to it.
The Coupon's Own Award Does Not Matter
You can save a coupon under a particular award, such as when you create a coupon code while setting up that award. That association does not decide which fees the coupon discounts. A fee line qualifies only through the coupon’s award list and award-type list, described above, not through the award where the coupon is saved. For example, a coupon saved under Award A can still discount an application fee for Award B when the coupon has no award list or award-type list, because every award qualifies in that case.
Tip
If you want a coupon to discount only one award's application fee, add that award to the coupon's award list (or its type to the award-type list) rather than relying on where the coupon itself is saved.
What Happens When the Order Cannot Be Fully Priced
Some missing information prevents Rhythm from pricing the order at all, instead of simply leaving a fee undiscounted:
- A fee line whose product was not supplied to the pricing calculation causes the whole pricing attempt to fail instead of being skipped.
- A fee whose award, or whose application process, can no longer be found — for example, because the award or process was deleted — also causes the pricing attempt to fail instead of being ignored.
In both cases, the order cannot be priced until the missing information is available again.
Related Reading
Rhythm decides separately whether an applicant is offered a fee-charging application process in the first place. See How Application Eligibility Is Decided. If your association tracks extra details about an award or fee through custom fields, see Custom Fields for how those work across Rhythm.