How to Use Discounts and Discount Codes on Cart Drawer
Discounts & the Discount Code Field
The cart drawer can show discounts two ways: a code entry field where customers type a Shopify discount code, and automatic discounts from your spend tiers and upsells that apply on their own. This article explains how the field works, what it can show, and the "Essential Cart – Automatic Discount" entry you may have spotted in your Shopify admin.
Where discount codes come from
The discount field in the cart drawer accepts the discount codes you create in Shopify (Shopify admin → Discounts). You do not create codes inside our app — the field simply lets customers apply your existing Shopify codes without leaving the drawer.
So the flow is:
- Create a code in Shopify's Discounts section.
- Customers type it into the cart drawer's discount field.
- It applies to the cart and carries through to checkout.
Turning on the discount row
- Open the Discounts section in the editor.
- Toggle the discount row on.
Then choose what the row displays (each is a checkbox):
- Discount tags — badges for applied discounts.
- Discount codes & automatic discounts — show applied codes and automatic discounts.
- Compare-at price savings — show savings from compare-at pricing.
- Selling plan discounts — discounts from preorders / subscriptions.
You can relabel the discounts row label, and under the add-discounts action set the link text, field label, the invalid code and can't apply messages (the latter supports {discount} ), and the apply button text.
Why is there a discount called "Essential Cart – Automatic Discount" in my admin?
This is normal and expected. When you configure a spend tier or an upsell discount, the app registers a Shopify automatic discount (powered by a Shopify Function) so the reward can apply at checkout without the customer typing anything.
- Don't delete it — removing it stops your spend-tier and upsell rewards from applying.
- It only does something when a customer actually qualifies for one of your configured rewards.
- If you turn off all your tiers/upsell discounts and no longer want it, contact support to remove it cleanly.
Manual codes + automatic discounts together
Shopify allows one discount to win in most cases — a customer's manually entered code and your app's automatic discount can't both stack on the same order unless your Shopify discount settings explicitly allow combining.
To reduce conflicts, the app detects when a customer enters a manual code and steps back from applying its own order-level spend-tier discount, so the customer's code isn't displaced. Free-gift and upsell line-item discounts are not affected.
If you want manual + automatic to combine, set the discounts to be combinable in Shopify's Discounts settings (Shopify controls this, not the app).
A code works at checkout but not in the drawer
A few codes can't be validated from inside the drawer even though they work on Shopify's checkout page — gift card / gift voucher codes are the most common example. Customers can still apply these at checkout. If a regular discount code is rejected in the drawer, double-check it's active and its conditions are met; if it still fails, send us the code and store URL.
Third-party discount apps
Codes from some third-party apps (e.g. Klaviyo Spin-to-Win) can conflict with the automatic discount Function. If a third-party code stops applying, make sure the relevant discounts are set to combine in Shopify, and contact us with details so we can check the interaction.