Setting up a prepaid subscription product

In ReCharge, you can set up prepaid products which will allow your customers to purchase a subscription and pay upfront for multiple shipments. This is useful if you would like to provide deeper discounts for paying upfront or if you would like to offer gift subscriptions to your customers. This guide provides instructions on setting up prepaid subscription products in ReCharge and other useful tips.

Before you start

• For your prepaid product, the price of the product in Shopify should be multiplied by the number of prepaid months you plan to offer. For example, if it is a 6-month prepaid and the product is normally priced at $15, you would want to set the price to be $90. This will ensure that the customer is charged the amount upfront to cover the cost of the future prepaid shipments.

• Products can only be added to one ruleset at a time. If you have multiple prepaid options of different frequencies and prices, you will want to create multiple products in Shopify.

Step 1 - Create your product in Shopify

To create a product in Shopify, visit Create new products.

When setting the price of the product, be sure to set the price to reflect the number of months your subscription will cover.

In addition, if you are offering multiple prepaid products at different frequencies, you will need to create a product to represent each price/frequency and a separate ruleset. For example, the three frequency options offered on this store represent three different products in Shopify:

You will want to create one product per offered frequency:

Step 2 - Create and name a new ruleset

1. In the ReCharge Dashboard, click Rulesets.
2. Select Rulesets and click Create ruleset.
3. 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 product to the ruleset

1. Click Add products.
   
2. Search and select the prepaid product you created in Shopify.
3. Click Add products once you have selected your products.

Step 4 - Configure ruleset frequency

1. Choose prepaid subscriptions only as your subscription type.
2. Under Order schedule, enter how often you will charge and ship your customers. For example, if you are offering a 3-month prepaid option, you will want to select 1 month for your ship frequency. For charge frequency, select 3 months.
   
3. 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.
   
4. You may also choose to set an expiration. By setting a charge expiration, you will limit the number of times a customer will be charged. If you choose not to add an expiration, the prepaid cycle will repeat. For example, if a customer purchases a 3-month prepaid, they will receive 3 shipments. After the 3rd shipment, they will be charged again and the cycle will repeat.
5. Click Save when finished.

Display prepaid products in a collection

Once you have created your products and added the products to rulesets, you may want to create a Collection in Shopify to house all of your subscription products. For more information, visit Collections.

Shipping charges for prepaid orders

To ensure that accurate shipping is charged, you may want to set the weight of the product to equal the weight of the individual product multiplied by the number of shipments that will be sent.

For more information, visit Shipping by Weight.

Prepaid orders in Shopify

When a customer purchases a prepaid subscription, they will be charged the amount of the prepaid subscription upfront. Subsequent orders in the subscription will be submitted to Shopify at $0.

If you also sell one-time products and recurring subscription products, you may also want to adjust your Shopify notifications so as to not confuse customers when they receive an invoice for a $0 shipment order. For information on how to adjust your notification, visit Adjust Shopify notification for $0 prepaid orders.

Customer changes to prepaid subscriptions

If a customer makes a change to their prepaid subscription, it will only affect the next charge and not the scheduled shipments of their current prepaid cycle. You will need to manually update the remaining orders in the already processed set of shipments by referencing this guide. For more information, visit Changing variants or products for prepaid subscriptions