The Anatomy of a Coupon

I have been going on and on about how to use them, but what exactly is a coupon, and how does it work? A coupon provides a discount off of your purchase, and can be issued by the store where you are buying the item(s), or by the manufacturer. Each coupon will have an offer (i.e. $1 off, or 20% off, or B1G1), expiration date, set of terms (rules of the game), and a remit address (in the case of a manufacturer's coupon), where the store will get FULLY reimbursed for your use of their coupon. People believe couponing is complicated because they usually do not understand how it works, or how to explain it to another person. I have found that since I began understanding exactly what a coupon means and how it works, I have almost entirely stopped having any issues at the register, so I find it very important for any couponer to know how to understand and explain a coupon.

Anatomy of a Coupon

The Basics
Coupons all have an offer for some kind of discount off of your purchased item, items, or total order. This could mean $1 off of the purchase of one item (often written as $1/1), or if you purchase one item, you will get one free (B1G1), or in the case of store coupons, even 15% off of an item or purchase total. Basically, as long as you abide by the rules of the coupon game, the manufacturer and/or the store will be purchasing your items for you! After your discount amount, the next most important item to look at on your coupon is the expiration date. There must be an expiration date (or the rarely seen phrase "no expiration") in order for your coupon to be valid. This expiration date will be valid until 11:59PM on the date of expiration, as the coupon is good through the entirety of that date.

Some coupons are "save later" coupons, which refer to mail in rebates, and can be found along "instant savings" coupons,
which are regular coupons (Note the lack of barcodes on the left, helping to identify it as a rebate).

Although this says "Available at Walgreens", it can be used anywhere, and Walgreens has paid for this bit of advertisement.
If the coupon states "Only Available/redeemable at Walgreens", it can only be used there.

The Fine Print
The words at the bottom of the coupon will contain a remit address (where the manufacturer will need to send the redeemed coupon to get reimbursed), and a variety of terms and conditions. When a coupon is used according to the manufacturer's terms, the manufacturer will reimburse the store for the amount of the coupon, as well as a small handling charge for processing the coupon. This always made me feel great about using coupons, as it is not the store that is giving me some great deal, but the manufacturer who is discounting my purchase. This is helpful to remember whenever you get a bad cashier who frowns on coupon use, or compares coupon use to getting things unethically (believe me; this actually happens!). The other fine print that you will find on a coupon is a unique serial number on printed coupons. Although there are exceptions depending on the software that the company uses, 95% of printed coupons will have an individualized serial number to prevent people from copying coupons. Some coupons even have a QR code that the store could scan to make sure that the coupon has not been redeemed before.

Store coupon, states that you can "stack" with a manufacturer coupon (GREEN),
and you can only use 4 of these per household, per day (BLUE)

Printable coupons will have unique numbers on them to prevent photocopying.

UPC
It is important to know how a UPC bar code works to make sure that you know what items are supposed to be allowed in your redemption of the coupon. I have also found this information very useful if I have pulled the coupon off of the product, and it does not indicate what product it should be used for, what the dollar savings amount is, etc. Bar codes are divided into 2 main sections: the manufacturer information, and the product information. A bar code consists of 12 digits, where the last is a "check" digit, and is meaningless for our purposes.
If your bar code reads: A-12345-67890-X, then A will almost always be a 5 or a 9. This means that at stores which double, all coupons which begin with a 5 will double. All coupons with a 9 as the first digit will not automatically double. 12345 will be the specific manufacturer, i.e.coca-cola, or fisher price. 678 will indicate the specific group of products which are to be included within this coupon. Finally, 90 will dictate the discounted amount off of the product. There are different codes to indicate $1/1, $0.50/2, etc, so the computer will know how much to take off of your purchase.
There are also newer coupons called GS1 Databar coupons, which have started to show up over the past couple of years to reduce the amount of coupon fraud. These coupons consist of two sections as well; the manufacturer code, and the exact offer that the manufacturer is presenting. This will help eliminate the use of coupons on sizes that are not intended to be included, the use of expired coupons, and especially for larger companies with many different brands (i.e. Procter & Gamble), the use of coupons intended for use on one product (i.e. Tide detergent) being used on another, cheaper product (i.e. Crest).

Coupon Limits
Coupon limits are also included on every coupon to indicate the number of coupons that each person is allowed to use in a specified time period. Almost all coupons will include the phrase: one per purchase. This means that only one coupon will be applied to the purchase the specific item. This means that not more than one manufacturer's coupon can be applied to one item. There are many different ways that manufacturers will word this, "one per purchase", "one per purchase of specified products", "one coupon per item", etc. All of these only mean that you can use one coupon per item.
The second type of coupon restriction will state one coupon per transaction. This means that if you buy 4 of the same items, that you can only use one coupon within the transaction. You can break up your transaction to 4 transactions, in order to use all four coupons for all four items. Make sure to be courteous if you are using multiple transactions. If I plan to have more than 2 transactions, I will usually get back in line to do further transactions, so that I don't hold up the register.
One per person means just that, only one coupon can be used per person in a shopping trip. I usually find that this one is up to the store's discretion, but if I leave the store, drop off my groceries in the car, and then return, I find that I have used the one coupon for my shopping trip, and now I am initiating a secondary shopping trip. Another way around this is to have multiple people for your trip. If you have your kids or husband with you, then you can use more than one in one trip.
The final coupon restriction is one per household per day. This means that one coupon can be used per household per day, and that if you would like to use multiple coupons, you must do so with a friend, or over a few days. The reason for restrictions like this is to limit people from clearing the shelves at stores, especially with high value coupons. Technically, you could also get around this one by going to multiple stores in your area.

Coupon limits. Note that the bottom two specify a difference between per purchase, and per transaction, which can be helpful to reference with a
difficult cashier that does not understand the difference between purchase and transaction.

The reason that I think that it is still ethical to find ways around coupon restrictions like going to multiple stores, or bringing a friend along with you to go shopping is that the reason that manufacturers distribute these coupons is to increase the amount of people who are purchasing the product. If you are willing to go to three stores to get three products, then you are only taking one from each store, which will allow other shoppers the opportunity to have products left to try. Additionally, if you are taking friends shopping, they are now trying a product because of you and/or the coupon, which they otherwise would not have purchased. Manufacturers spend billions of dollars every year to get coupons into the hands of customers as ways to get customers hooked on new products. If the catalina machines (those little slips of paper that you receive with your receipt) print $6 BILLION annually, that means that every person receives an average of $20,000 in coupons that normally end up in the trash.Why would manufacturers give away that huge amount of money? Because, apparently, it makes sense. For coupon junkies like us, however, it makes dollars!