If a coupon won't apply at your store's checkout — whether it's a referred friend's offer coupon or an advocate's reward coupon — here are the steps to troubleshoot it.
Important platform note: ReferralCandy auto-generates coupon codes — both friend offer and advocate reward codes — only for Shopify and BigCommerce merchants. On other platforms, you create and manage the codes in your own system, and ReferralCandy distributes the codes you upload.
Step 1: Check your account and campaign status
Make sure your account state is Active and your campaign state is Live (not paused or stopped).
If your account is suspended, or your campaign is paused or stopped, referral links and reward distribution are paused, and campaign experiences like widgets, pages, and emails may be disabled.
Note about existing codes: ReferralCandy doesn't automatically disable or delete coupon codes that already exist in your eCommerce platform. A code that's already in your store admin (for example, in Shopify Discounts) may still work at checkout, depending on your store's discount settings, unless you disable or delete it yourself. What stops during a suspension is ReferralCandy's ability to keep the campaign running and to generate or distribute new codes.
Step 2: Confirm the coupon code exists in your store admin
Check your eCommerce platform's discount or coupon section and confirm the code exists. If it doesn't exist, it can't be applied at checkout — and on a non-Shopify or non-BigCommerce platform, you'll need to create and upload the code first.
Shopify: ReferralCandy-generated codes (a FRIEND- code for a friend offer, or a THANKS- code for an advocate reward) are often created inside Shopify discount groups, so searching the exact code in Shopify Discounts may not find it. To confirm a code was generated, or to identify who it belongs to, see [Shopify] Find who a ReferralCandy discount code belongs to.
Step 3: Check whether the code has expired
An expired coupon won't apply at checkout. Check the code's expiry date in your store admin, along with any campaign or offer end date you've configured. Note: when a friend offer expires, the campaign automatically stops.
Step 4: Check the coupon's conditions and store restrictions
If the code exists and isn't expired, the most common cause is a discount rule in your store admin. Check whether any of these are blocking it:
A minimum purchase requirement isn't met.
Product or collection restrictions — the cart doesn't include eligible items.
Customer eligibility rules — for example, new-customers-only, specific customer segments, or one-per-customer limits.
Usage limits reached — total uses, or per-customer uses.
The code isn't multi-use, or was set up in a way that makes it invalid after one use.
Discount stacking rules — some stores don't allow combining certain discount types.
Step 5: Check the rule specific to that coupon
A couple of checks depend on whether it's a friend offer coupon or an advocate reward coupon:
Friend offer coupon (Shopify): the friend must be a new customer
If the referred friend already exists in your Shopify Customers list and has made at least one purchase, they won't be able to apply the friend offer coupon — ReferralCandy restricts friend offer coupons to new customers on Shopify, since the goal is to help you acquire new customers. To test, try the referral link and coupon with a brand-new email address that has never purchased from your store.
Advocate reward coupon: confirm the reward was earned
An advocate's reward coupon is only created once they've actually earned the reward — that is, once their referred friend's purchase meets your reward conditions and clears your purchase review period. If those conditions haven't been met yet, the reward, and its coupon, won't have been issued. See When will referral rewards be sent to an advocate.
Still not working?
If you've checked all of the above and the coupon still won't apply, the issue may be on your store platform's side — your platform provider can help you check your discount settings. If everything looks correct there, let us know and we can look into your campaign and the code on our side.