Discount Coupons - problem solved but clarification needed?

I have been having an issue with discount coupons not working properly on my Client's installation - I think I have found the answer but a bit of clarification would be greatly appreciated!
I have put this down to my Client using an import tool to upload products to the site, and I eventually figured that this was not populating the categories_master_id field - they were all set to 0.
I have written a small SQL update routine that my Client now runs through the SQL patches utility to update this field to the categories_id value after their upload.
This seems to work fine - is this an appropriate approach?

Thank you

Hmmm, is this a one time fix or something she will use a lot? How many master categories does she have? What tool is she using to import the data? What version of zen Art?

Linda

Thanks for the reply.

This will be used a couple of times a week, and they have a total of about 10 top level categories containing a total between them of about 80 categories at second level.
(They use an importer called Web Datalink {http://www.datalinkuk.com/) to import their products from Sage Accounts into Zencart 1.5.1

Hello - any answers anybody?
All I am really asking for is a bit of confirmation that the master_categories_id needs to be populated for the Discount Coupon to work as expected - this field being the value that the coupon recognises.

Thanks

The master_categories_id is used by many things, the Discount Coupons included, and should always be filled in to work properly on your site ...

I'm sorry I didn't get back to you, glad that you got your answer.

Thanks everyone - looks like this is indeed a fix when you use a products import function that doesn't populate the master_categories_id field - this took me some time to figure out and it may be useful for anyone else with a similar issue.

Do you use Linked Products on the site?