Troubleshooting Workflows by Recharge

Below are some troubleshooting situations you may encounter when using Recharge's legacy Workflows tool. The troubleshooting solutions in this article do not apply to Recharge's new Workflows tools. Be sure to review our guide on Workflows, as this guide covers the basic setup process. You can also review our Workflow FAQ and Common Workflows use cases.

Sections

• Workflows are not triggering on orders processed through Carthook
• The workflow is not working with prepaid subscriptions
• My workflows are canceling each other out
• Recurring workflows are not triggered on the right charge

• Variant ID title is being updated, but it wasn't specified in the workflow

• Troubleshooting Free trial subscriptions

Workflows are not triggering on orders processed through Carthook

Workflows will not work if your site uses apps that disrupt our checkout (such as Carthook or One Click Upsell - Zipify OCU).

The workflow is not working with prepaid subscriptions

At this time, the Workflow tool does not work with prepaid subscription products, only subscription only, or one-time and subscription products.

My workflows are canceling each other out

When the actions of one workflow or the end results of one active workflow match the search conditions of a different active workflow, the second workflow is triggered and will perform the second change immediately.

Be sure that workflows that are triggered at the same processing points (for example, at checkout) do not have matching actions and conditions as this can cause them to be both applied on the same subscription product. 

Recurring workflows are not triggered on the right charge

The recurring order set in your Recharge admin is the trigger for the workflow, meaning that the recurring order specified must be processed for the workflow to apply to the remaining recurring orders. If the workflow should apply to the customer's fifth-order, then their fourth charge needs to be processed to trigger the workflow on the fifth order. 

Recurring orders are separate from checkout orders, and the checkout order should not be accounted for when setting a recurring order trigger. 

For example, a customer's fourth recurring order is their fifth charge overall, as they have had one checkout order and four recurring orders. 

If your workflow should apply to all recurring orders you can select the All trigger option. 

Contact our support team for additional support regarding recurring orders.

Variant ID title is being updated, but it wasn't specified in the workflow.

If the action for changing the “Original variant id” is set, but there isn't another action to change the Variant title, the workflow will set the variant title to the title of the updated ID.

If you wish for there to be no variant title set create an action for the Variant Title and leave the value blank.

Workflow adjusted multiple items on an order

If multiple items in a order match the search terms laid out for the workflow they will all be altered. Conditions are used to determine whether the workflow should run for an order (if any items in the order match the conditions), then any items that match the search criteria from the workflow will be altered.

In this case, if both items should not be adjusted you should adjust your Workflow to make the conditions and search more specific.

For example, the workflow condition is product_title includes Subscription and the search criteria is variant_title = 1 Bottle. If the customer orders two products with Subscription in the title and the 1 bottle variant selected, the workflow will change both products in the order.

Troubleshooting Free trial subscriptions

Refer to Creating a 14-day free trial for an example workflow.

Customers are able to add free trial items through their customer portal

You can disable the ability to add or swap a product from the customer portal. These permissions can be adjusted via the customer portal settings (click Storefront and select Customer Portal). 

However, if you still want customers to be able to add or swap other products, you’ll need to use the duplicate auto-renew product as the Workflow trial product. This product is not displayed in the product list in the customer portal, only used at checkout.

Customers are abusing the free trial

You may have instances where customers keep buying the free trial and canceling before getting charged.

There’s no way to stop customers from signing up for multiple free trial products, especially since they could just create new email accounts to create more orders.

The best way to avoid customers exploiting the free trial is to adjust your cancellation permissions via the customer portal settings (click Storefront and select Customer Portal). You can eliminate the ability to cancel via the customer portal, or require a set number of charges to occur before cancellation is possible. In both scenarios, customers are presented with an email address if they wish to cancel.

The product image isn't changing once the free trial is over

You may have it set up that the customer receives a different product once the free trial is finished. In some cases, you may find the image for the new product is not appearing and the customer still sees the free trial product image in their customer portal.

In order to change the product image, the Workflow actions must include the new product-ID and variant-ID for the recurring orders.