Discounts for items in multiple categories

Site URL: https://www.cottonwool.com.au

I'm trying to create a discount code for my site and choose categories that can and can't use the code. If I have an item that sits in multiple categories, eg both Shirts and New Arrivals, I want customers to be able to use the discount on some shirts, but not  the shirts that are also New Arrivals. I have not checked New Arrivals in the discount "products by category" section when setting up the discount code, however anything that is in fact a  New Arrival is being overridden by the fact it is also in the shirt category and the discount is being applied. Any ideas on how I navigate this?

I had this same problem recently, it's a bit annoying. The only way I could think to solve it is quite a manual process: create another category, e.g. SaleItems, and add all of the shirts you want the code to work on to that. You can then select the SaleItems category for your discount code. You can set the category to hidden so that it won't show up on your website but you can still use it on the back end. 

This should work, but it's an annoying manual process if you have lots of items and you'll need to maintain it for any future sales you want to run. It does give you 100% control of which specific items you want in a sale though.

Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure how you set the category to hidden? I've done a similar thing before in categories adding a 'Sale' category but I can't seem to make this work for a blanket Discount code application at checkout without any items that are also checked as "New Arrivals" being able to use the code.