You may want to provide the option for customers to purchase gift subscriptions for friends and family. Normally, prepaid gift subscriptions are very similar to the standard set-up for prepaids. However, you will want to set an expiration to ensure that the original gift purchaser is not charged repeatedly for the gift subscription after the prepaid cycle is complete. This guide provides a walkthrough on how to configure a ruleset for a prepaid gift subscription.
Step 1 - Create your product in Shopify
To create a product in Shopify, visit Create new products.
For your prepaid gift product, the price of the product should be multiplied by the number of prepaid months you plan to offer. For example, if it is a 3-month prepaid and the product is normally priced at $20, you would want to set the price to be $60. This will ensure that the customer is charged the amount upfront to cover the future prepaid shipments.
For example, the three frequency options offered on this store represent three different products in Shopify:
Step 2 - Create and name a new ruleset
- In the ReCharge Dashboard, click Rulesets.
- Select Rulesets and click Create ruleset.
- Name your Ruleset. This is only visible to Merchants so feel free to give the ruleset a descriptive name, especially if you have multiple rulesets.
Step 3 - Add your prepaid gift product to ruleset
- Click Add products.
- Search and select the prepaid gift product you created in Shopify.
- Click Add products once you have selected your products.
Step 4 - Configure ruleset frequency
- Choose pre-paid subscriptions only as your subscription type.
- Under Order schedule, enter how often you will charge and ship your customers. For example, if you are offering a 3-month gift option, you will want to select 1 month for your ship frequency. For charge frequency, select 3 months.
Optionally, you can choose when the subscription is submitted for shipment. By default, the product will be sent on the same day the initial checkout occurred, but you can also select a specific date.
Step 5 - Set the expiration
As you are setting up a gift product, you will want to set an expiration. Enable the Set the subscription to expire after a set number of charges checkbox and enter 1 in the textbox. This indicates that the customer will be charged once for the entirety of the order and the prepaid cycle will not repeat.
Click Save when finished.
Shipping charges for prepaid gift orders
To ensure that accurate shipping is charged you may want to set the weight of this product to equal the weight of the individual product multiplied by the number of shipments that will be sent.
| Let's say it costs $5/month: | The rates would need to be structured as: | The products would then need weights: |
| 1-month: $5 | x lbs - x lbs: $5 | 1-month: x lbs |
| 3-month pre-paid: $15 | y lbs - y lbs: $15 | 3-month pre-paid: y lbs |
| 6-month pre-paid: $30 | z lbs - z lbs: $30 | 6-month pre-paid: z lbs |