What are the coupon category apply/deny rules?

I am working with an ethical store. All their products can be in one or more of 4 "groups" (1) all products (2) gluten free (3) organic and (4) fairtrade.

It is fairtrade fortnight soon and they want to offer a coupon for discount of all their fairtrade products except wine.

Logically I should create a coupon denying "All", permitting "Fairtrade" and denying "Wine" (all rules to be applied in that order).

The rules get created as Allow Fairtrade/Deny All/Deny Wine and they seem to be applied in that order.

Is there a solution to this at all please? I cannot expect anyone to select about 100 products as individual 'allows' although this would work.

What version of Zen Cart are you running?

Are your Wines all in a specific Category or number of Categories?

Set the Discount Coupon up for:

If the Wine is in particular Categories, then pick a Category and set to DENY then continue to set the additional Categories to DENY ...

Or, depending on your version, you can select Add All Category Products and select DENY ... then, if all were needed, leave them on deny, and if there are a few to remove from the deny list, you can do so ...

Some how, you do need to identify the 100 some odd Products that are Wine and mark them not to be used on the Discount Coupon ...

NOTE: the other way is to mark ...

TOP Category DENY

then go through and mark what is allowed on the Discount Coupon by Categories and/or Products ...

We are still stuck on 1.3.8a because there is a lot of small customisation and insufficient hours in the day.

There are 2 categories involved "Fairtrade" and ">Wine" All the products in "Fairtrade" exist in other categories as well and they are "copied" to "Fairtrade". ">Wine" is a sub category of "Fairtrade". If I Allow "Fairtrade" and deny ">Wine" it appears to work except that ALL products (Including those that aren't Fairtrade) are included in the coupon. If I then deny "Top" then nothing is included.

Your best method then is to do the:
Top DENY

and set the ALLOW on the individual Products ...

There isn't a simple way to do this except 1 by 1 on the Products in that version ...

I have tried that on one or two and it works fine - but with so many.... I am considering a little SQL but....

Would 1.3.9h work without this? I need to find time to do 1.3.9h and wonder if it would be the solution to this problem?

Would v1.3.9h work without what?

If you mean can you pick a Category and say grab all Products regardless of master_categories_id to add to this Discount Coupon ... yes, in v1.3.9h that is what the dropdown choices for:
Add All Category Products
Remove All Category Products

then select ALLOW or DENY does ... this does not care about the master_categories_id of the Products, but rather cares if the Product is Linked to the categories_id ...

Many thanks. Time to build a test site and start testing and customising again.

Having finally built an upgraded test site, there is no discernible difference in the results. I am getting the same lack of results from both SaleMaker and Coupons.