Some coupons are worded poorly, confusing or just plain weird.  There have been several instances where I’ve found it helpful to know what all those numbers at the bottom of the coupon mean and how they will act when I get to the register. My intention with this post is to help you use the coupon properly.  I’ve heard it said that the coupon is your contract with the  manufacturer so please heed the coupon wording carefully.

Anatomy of a Coupon

Barcode Example

A coupon typically consists of 4 basic parts: A text description, an expiration date, a basic barcode and an advanced barcode. The advance barcode (right) contains information about the expiration date and other criteria from the manufacturer. The registers at most stores are not programmed to understand this info, but they may be in the future. For now, you can ignore it.

For the most part, the standard barcode (above) contains all the relevant information.

The coupon barcode usually looks like this: A-BBBBB-CCC-DD-E
(5-44000-250-33-6  in the cracker coupon example)

Each piece of the barcode represents something about its use and the coupon will beep at the register if any part of the barcode does not match the product(s) you are purchasing.

A: On a manufacturer coupon this is always a 5 or a 9. Coupons coded with a 5 can be doubled automatically if your store does coupon doubling.  Those with a 9 will not double automatically. In the example of our cracker coupon, it starts with a 5 and would double automatically if the register is programmed to do so. (At Publix this only applies at stores outside of Florida and for coupons less than or equal to 50¢).

BBBBB: This number corresponds to the manufacturer’s code and matches the first digits of the UPC for the product. For example, 44000 is the manufacturer code for all Nabisco products.

CCC: This set of numbers is the most difficult to understand and the most important.  It describes the family or “brand” of product the coupon is valid for.  If it is for any product from that manufacturer it will contain all zeros. Each digit that is not zero represents a more specific product within the family so that if they are all numbers (non zero) it is for a very specific product.  Unfortunately, the family code does not match the UPC codes on the package and can only be matched up by trial and error or by searching on coupon decoding websites.

For our example above: if the family code was 000, the coupon would work on any Nabisco product. The actual family code for the coupon above is 250 which means it will work on any of the Nabisco “cracker” family (not cakes, cheese etc.)  If the code was  251 it would only work on Triscuit Crackers. Some products are not coded by family and are given the generic code 992. A 992 coupon will either never beep, even if you didn’t buy the product, or it will always beep even with the proper purchase,  requiring cashier intervention. In the past, these 992 coupons were abused by people who using them on items they were not intended for.  Because of this, most registers are programmed to beep and will require the cashier to check that the coupons and items match.

DD: This is the “value/quantity” code which tells the register how many items you have to buy and how much to take off.  A list of these codes is published below.  On our cracker coupon, the value code is 33, which according to the table is buy 2, get $1.oo off,  which matches the text description on the coupon. In some cases there may be differences in the wording and the code, but please remember that the wording is your contract.

E: This last digit is random and doesn’t appear to have any relevance to the couponer.

Coupon Value Codes:

00 Beep for manual input
01 Free Item – Beep to enter value