Creating prepaid gift subscriptions

The benefit of prepaid gift subscriptions is to offer your customers the option of gifting a subscription to a recipient of their choice. The process starts at the initial checkout, the customer pays a full amount upfront and the shipments that follow are sent to the gift recipient's address by the set order schedule. The recipient is receiving shipments of the prepaid subscription until the subscription is set to expire.

This guide explains how to configure prepaid gift subscriptions in Recharge.

Before you start

• Be sure to review the managing prepaid subscriptions guide for further details and considerations for prepaid subscriptions.

Step 1 - Add the product in your ecommerce platform

Begin by creating a new product on your ecommerce platform. These steps vary depending on the ecommerce platform you are using:

• Add a product in BigCommerce
• Add a product in Shopify

Step 2 - Add a Product Subscription Plan to the product

1. In the merchant portal, click the Products tab.
2. Search and select the product you wish to create a prepaid subscription plan for.
3. Select Create plans.
4. Select Add another plan.

Step 3 - Configure the prepaid subscription rules for the product

Under Plan type, define the subscription type, as well as any order schedules that should apply to the subscription.

Step 1 - Select the subscription type

Select prepaid/gift under Plan type.  

Step 2 - Set the order schedule in Plan details

Configure the order schedule to reflect when you would like to charge customers upfront for their scheduled shipments, and when you would like to ship those orders to your customers. 

For example, you would use the following settings if you wanted customers to receive a product monthly, and pay once every three months:

• Ship product every: 1 month. This ensures that customers receive one order every month.
• Charge customer every: 3 months. This ensures that customers are charged for their monthly shipment once every three months.

Step 3 - (Optional) Charge customers on a specific day of the month

Optionally, you can choose when the subscription is submitted for shipment in Advanced settings. By default, the product will be sent on the same day the initial checkout occurred, but you can also select a specific date.

Step 4 - Set the subscription to expire after a set number of charges

This is necessary for setting up a prepaid gift subscription. Set an expiration for the prepaid subscription to expire after a certain number of charges.

1. Click the checkbox for Expire after a certain amount of charges.  
2. 
3. Enter 1 in the box. This indicates that the customer will be charged once for the entirety of the order and the prepaid cycle does not repeat.
4. Review your settings and click Update.