Cart Timer is a different kind of timer: it counts one shopper's own cart rather than a date, and starts when the first item goes in.

Set how long it runs, where it shows — the cart, the checkout, or a bar across the top of every other page — and whether to show it to everyone or to guests only. Guests only means signed-in customers get neither the countdown nor its discount, so a guest who signs in part-way loses both.

The cart timer has its own switch. Enable countdown timers under Settings pauses every campaign and leaves the cart timer, and its bar, running.

Discount can apply a real WooCommerce coupon while the timer runs. It is applied by WooCommerce, so the total on screen is the total that will be charged. A coupon with its own rules, such as a minimum spend, goes on as soon as the cart meets them. The coupon when the timer ends decides whether it comes off or stays. If no coupon has the code you typed, or coupons are switched off in WooCommerce, the screen and the dashboard say so.

The timer never pushes a shopper's own coupon aside. If they have entered a code marked Individual use only, the timer's coupon waits until that code is removed; and if the timer's coupon is itself individual use, it is not applied over codes the shopper has already entered.

When the clock reaches zero the page reloads once, but only if the timer is set to take its coupon off, so the new total is the real one. Otherwise the ending message simply replaces the countdown where it stands, and nobody half-way through the checkout loses what they were typing.

A shopper can empty their cart without a page load — on the block Cart, from the mini-cart drawer, or from a mini-cart widget. The countdown then hides, rather than counting on above an empty cart, and comes back where it was if something is put in again.

Nothing is reserved. No stock is held for the shopper, and the plugin will not empty somebody's cart — clearing it to prove a point loses the sale, and they rarely build it again. That is why the default wording asks the shopper to finish rather than telling them their cart is being kept: with no coupon attached, nothing actually happens when the clock reaches zero.