Auto-renew products overview

When you create a subscription rule on the Recharge Checkout on Shopify, Recharge creates a hidden auto-renew product in your store to work alongside the corresponding one-time product. The auto-renew product is a duplicate of the one-time product that manages the subscription discount and defaults to hidden as they are only used by Recharge. This guide provides an overview of how auto-renew products work and tips on organizing auto-renew products in Shopify.

Background

Merchants often provide a discount for subscription products to incentivize customers. In this scenario, the price of the subscription product differs from the one-time purchase price. Before Shopify was able to support subscriptions on the Shopify Checkout Integration, this type of configuration required a unique variant and product ID for each price. This requires the Recharge Checkout on Shopify to use hidden auto-renew products to set the subscription price at checkout.

Original products vs. auto-renew products

The original product is the standard, one-time product you offer. This is the product that is visible on your Shopify product page and when selecting products from the customer portal.

The auto-renew product acts as a copy of the original product. Auto-renew products have their own product ID and, when applicable, a different price than one-time purchase products. Auto-renew products retain most of the original product data, including inventory and weight settings. The only product data that is not retained are product tags.

This product remains hidden on all sales channels and is only used by Recharge to process the first order. To differentiate the auto-renew product from the original product, it includes auto-renew in the title and has asubscription tag in Shopify.

When a customer makes a subscription purchase at checkout, Recharge reduces the inventory from the original product even though the auto-renew product is used for this initial order.

If making changes to your products, update the original product and sync your subscription product in Recharge.

Rename the product title

For products at checkout

Change the name of the auto-renew product, as it appears at checkout, directly in Shopify.

Note: When syncing your products, the auto-renew product must be renamed again.

For current subscribers

To change the title of an auto-renew product for current subscribers, use the Bulk managing subscriptions tools in the merchant portal.

Remove auto-renew products

Use the following steps to delete all auto-renew products and resync your products:

1. In the Shopify Admin, go to Products, search for 'auto renew', and delete all the products.
   
2. In the Recharge merchant portal, select Products.
3. Next to the subscription product, select the Actions drop-down and click Sync.

Troubleshooting

For more help, visit Troubleshooting auto-renew products.