18 May

How to Organise your Online Coupons

One of the key things that frequent coupon users will learn how to do is to keep their coupons clearly organized. There are many different systems available for doing this including file systems, coupon binders and simple envelope systems organized by expiration date. These organizational systems allow coupon users to make the most of their coupons because they can easily see which coupons they have, what the best coupon is for any particular item, whether there are multiple coupons that can be stacked together and when each coupon is set to expire. While these systems are great, it may be time for coupon users to get more up-to-date with their coupon organization. That’s because many people are making the switch to using online discount codes rather than printed coupons. Technology has caught up with coupon distribution; now our organizational systems need to catch up to that technology. Following you’ll find some of the methods available to you for organizing your online coupons.

Simple Spreadsheet System

The best method for most people to start organizing their online coupons is to use a simple spreadsheet system. The columns in this spreadsheet would include:

• Category of coupon. Make a list of the different categories of coupons that you will be using. This list may include such items as Produce, Packaged Goods, Beauty Products, and Travel.
• Product. This is the name of the specific product that the coupon is for including the brand. Enter the product first and then the brand so that you can easily see if you have coupons for multiple brands of the same item. For example, you may have a coupon for Budget Car Rental. The category is travel; the product is Rental Car – Budget.
• Store. Some coupons are specific to the store where they will be purchased; list stores here.
• Savings. Include a short note about what the coupon offers whether that’s a buy one get one free or 10% off of the total or whatever.
• Expiration Date. You need to know when the coupon expires so that you can use it before that date.
• Direct Link to Code. Since you are using online coupons, the coupons are going to be available on a specific website. This column is a link to the URL of the page that the coupon is on.
• Coupon Code. You may want to also include the coupon code so that you don’t have to go directly to the URL.

To use the simple spreadsheet system, you would keep it available on your computer at all times. (If you use multiple computers, you may want to store this spreadsheet in a system like Google Spreadsheets so that you can access and update it from any computer.) Each time that you see a coupon online that you might use, you would head to your spreadsheet and enter that information.

Before shopping, you would refer to this spreadsheet. The great thing about the spreadsheet system is that you can easily sort the information by any of the criteria that you choose. Let’s say that you only want to order a set of business cards; you could sort by product and find all of the coupons that you have for online business cards. Or what if you want to make sure that you use coupons before they expire? Sort by expiration date so that you can clearly see what must be used.

Simple Bookmark System

If you don’t do a lot of online shopping yet then you may find that the spreadsheet system is too time-consuming for you. Instead, you might want to use a bookmark system for the items that you frequently purchase online. To do that you would do the following:

• Make a list of all of the items that you frequently purchase online (or the online stores that you shop at). For example, I always buy my contacts online and I frequently shop online at Amazon.com and Walgreens.
• Create a folder in your Favorites for each item on the list. My “Favorites” has a folder labeled “online coupons” which contains 3 subfolders: contacts, Amazon and Walgreens.
• Whenever you see a promotional code for one of these items, bookmark the page and add it to the correct folder. Rename it so you can see what it is and when it expires. For example, if I saw a coupon for 20% off of a Walgreens photo order and it expired on June 1, 2009 then I might rename that file something like “20 percent photos 6.1.09″ and I would stick it in the Walgreens folder.

This system works best for people who don’t shop online often and is a great starting point for people looking to learn how to organize online discount codes for the first time.

Online Calendar System

There are some people who always do their shopping on the same days. For example, they might order all of their groceries online on the same days that they get paid (such as the 1st and 15th of the month). These people may want to use an online calendar system for organizing their promo codes. To do this, they would do the following:

• Choose an online calendar to use. I like Google Calendars.
• Pick the dates that you’ll be doing your shopping. For example, the 1st and 15th might be labeled “groceries” or you may choose to do other shopping (such as household goods or book orders) on a specific day like the first Sunday of every month. Also remember to mark out shopping for special occasions; you may mark four or five days in the fall to get your Christmas shopping done.
• As you see promo codes online, enter the URL for them into the calendar on the appropriate date. Let’s say that you see a discount code for a grocery product that expires on the 20th of the month. That URL could be entered into both the 1st and the 15th on the calendar. Alternatively, if it expired on the 14th then it would only be entered on the 1st. Make a notation about what the coupon is so that you can easily see if you need it while shopping.
• When you get ready to do your shopping, open up your calendar and choose the correct date. Follow the URLs and utilize those coupons when shopping.

This is a great system for people who like to be very organized with their shopping. It sets up clear dates to get all shopping done and allows you to forget about your shopping the rest of the month. At the same time, it keeps your online coupons organized for use when you do shop.

The Old-Fashioned Way

Some people who use discount codes still don’t feel comfortable with using online organizational systems. These people may find that they’d prefer to print out paper versions of the coupons and organize them in one of the more traditional coupon organization formats (such as coupon binders or file systems). This isn’t recommended since you’re spending money on the paper and ink for printing but it’s certainly another option for people to consider.

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