Charging on a specific day of the week or month

You can set up your subscription rulesets to charge orders on a specific day. For example, you could charge your customers on the 15th of every month or weekly every Wednesday. Customers will always be billed immediately at the time of checkout, but subsequent orders will charge on the day you have set. This guide provides an overview of the functionality and how to set specific charge days on your rulesets.

Before you start

• Checkouts made on the same day as your set charge date will not skip the next interval charge.
• This feature is based in Eastern Standard Time, ET. Any orders made by midnight 00:00 ET (UTC -4) of the specific charge day will not skip.

Understanding specific charge days

Customers will always be charged when they first sign-up. The second order will always skip the next billing cycle to prevent customers from being double-charged.

If you would like to turn off the skip cycle feature, please reach out to our team. Note that even when turning off this feature, the Recharge billing system will not bill a customer twice in a single billing period. If you'd like to do this, you would need to set up a cutoff window.

The table below highlights different schedules depending on when the customer placed their checkout order.

Set a specific charge day in a ruleset

1. In the Recharge Dashboard, select Rulesets or Products, depending on how you create subscription products.
2. Click on the pencil icon next to the ruleset or product you would like to edit.
3. Under Order schedule, set the frequency for how often the customer will be charged.
   
   
   Note: For the purpose of specific charge dates, you can only select weeks or months.
   
4. Under Charge customer on this day, select the specific charge day you would like to bill your customers.
5. Once finished, click Save.

Use a cut-off window

When an order is placed at checkout, it is considered to be part of the upcoming specified order date. For example, if a customer places an order on October 10th and you bill your recurring customers on the 15th, the October 10th order would be fulfilled alongside the orders that process on October 15th.

Depending on your specified charge day, you may find customer are waiting a while for their next order. You may also want to fulfill an order for a customer, even though your specified charge day for that week or month has passed.

In this scenario, you will want to also create a cut-off window. This creates a window of time where a customer can place an order and have it fulfilled within that billing cycle. To build a cut-off window in your rulesets, visit Cut-off Windows.

Update specific charge day for existing customers

For individual customers:

1. In the Recharge Dashboard, click the Customers tab and search for the customer's account. Click the customer's name to open up their account details.
2. Click See details under the address of the customer to advance to the orders page.
3. Select Edit Recurring Properties next to the subscription item and set either the Charge on Day of Month or Charge on Day of Week.
   
   
4. Once entered, click Save changes. This will also auto-update the upcoming charge date to reflect this change.

For customers in bulk:

Reach out to our support team who can help facilitate a bulk update. This type of bulk update will require two separate CSVs, one for the new charge day and one to adjust the pre-existing upcoming charge dates. To learn more, visit Bulk Updates.