What should I do if a buyer forgets to apply an Etsy site-wide coupon?

Hi! Congrats on your first Etsy sale — and yes, this situation happens a lot. In general, you can’t “apply” a coupon to an order after checkout on Etsy, so your clean, low-risk options are either (1) do a partial refund for the amount they would’ve saved, or (2) cancel + full refund and have them repurchase (only if you haven’t shipped yet and the coupon is still valid).

If you want the simplest solution (and the least chance of payment/fee/order headaches):

• Do a partial refund through Etsy (Shop Manager → order → Refund → enter partial amount).
  Etsy will automatically adjust/refund the related transaction/processing fees for the refunded portion when you do the refund inside Etsy, which is exactly what you want for clean bookkeeping and fewer issues later.

When to choose each option

• Partial refund (recommended most of the time):
  Best when you’re ready to ship, the buyer seems trustworthy, and you just want to make it right quickly. It keeps the original order intact (address, shipping profile, timelines, etc.).
• Cancel + repurchase:
  Only do this if you haven’t shipped and the buyer can realistically repurchase before the coupon expires. It’s more moving parts (and if they don’t rebuy, you’ve lost the sale), but it’s a good option if the discount is large and you don’t want to eat the difference.

A key detail for your specific case (Etsy-funded site-wide coupon)

• If it’s truly an Etsy-funded coupon, you wouldn’t have earned less if they’d applied it at checkout — Etsy funds it.
• But since it wasn’t applied, any partial refund you choose to give now comes out of your funds, not Etsy’s. So it’s totally reasonable to decide whether you want to honor it as a one-time courtesy.

Two quick “safe” ways to reply to the buyer

• If you’ll honor it: “No worries — Etsy can’t apply coupons after checkout, but I can refund the difference. I’ll issue a partial refund today and you’ll see it on your original payment method soon.”
• If you won’t: “Thanks for reaching out! Etsy doesn’t allow coupons to be applied after checkout, and since it’s already processed I’m not able to adjust the price on this order.”

One thing to avoid

• Don’t send money “off Etsy” (PayPal/Venmo/etc.) to fix the missed coupon. Keeping the adjustment inside Etsy’s refund system is the cleanest approach for fees, records, and protection.

If you tell me roughly how big the missed discount is (like $5 vs $50) and whether you’ve already bought the shipping label/shipped, I can tell you which option is smartest for this exact order.