Creating subscription rulesets for the Recharge Checkout on Shopify
This guide will walk you through creating your first subscription ruleset and detail the general functionality of recurring subscription products with Recharge.
- Recharge Checkout on Shopify
Refer to Creating subscription rules for the Shopify Checkout Integration, or Creating subscription rules if you are using subscription rules with the Recharge Checkout on Shopify or the Recharge Checkout with BigCommerce.
What are Rulesets?
Subscription rulesets control everything about how a subscription functions, such as:
- The products you want to offer for subscription.
- How often the customer will be charged.
- How often the product will be shipped.
- Discounts for subscribing.
- Specific days for charges.
- Cut-off windows when subscribing.
- Automatic expiration after a set amount of time.
Create a ruleset
To add a subscription option to your existing Shopify products, you will need to create a subscription Ruleset in Recharge. These Rulesets will control the frequency and functionality of your subscription plan. In your Recharge Dashboard go to Rulesets at the top and click Create ruleset.
Note: You will need to create at least one product in Shopify before you can create a subscription.
Start by giving your Ruleset a name. Your customers will not see this name, it's intended to help you keep organized if you offer multiple subscriptions.
Add products
Now we're going to add the products that we want to offer on subscription.
Note: You can add multiple products to a Ruleset, but a product can only be in one Ruleset at a time. If you want to list the product under two separate Rulesets, like offering a monthly subscription and a prepaid subscription, you will need to create a separate product to do so.
To select your product(s), click on the Add products button.
Click on the "+" sign next to the product(s) you wish to add to the Ruleset.
Once you have finished adding all of the products that you would like to this Ruleset, click on the "X" in the top right-hand corner to close out the Product window.
Select subscription type
Now we are going to set the type of subscription that we want these products to be.
Choose one of the three options:
- One-time & subscription: This option is used for products where you want the customer to have a choice between purchasing the item on a one-off basis or subscribing to it on a recurring basis.
- Subscription Only: This option only allows customers to subscribe to the product without being given a choice to purchase it as a one-off.
- Pre-paid subscription only: Prepaid products allow your customers to purchase a subscription and pay upfront for multiple shipments later. These are most commonly used as gift subscriptions. For more information see Setting up a prepaid subscription product.
Optional - Adding a discount
To add a discount for subscribers, tick the box and then specify the percentage discount that you would like to offer. This discount will only apply to subscription products.
Note: This is only an option for products that are available for both one-time purchase and subscription.
Order schedule
The Order Schedule is where you can specify how often you charge and ship your subscription products. You can include multiple frequencies to choose from by clicking the "Add a frequency" button.
Note: You can switch the frequencies between days, weeks, and months as needed. However, all the frequencies must be the same setting. For example, you can have 2 weeks and 4 weeks, but you cannot have 2 weeks and 1 month.
Recharge will charge your customer and then automatically ping Shopify to communicate the shipment order for the fulfillment process to be carried out on your store’s end.
Note: If you selected "Pre-paid subscription" as your subscription type, this area will look different. You will not be able to enter multiple frequency options, but you will be able to set how often the product is shipped. For more information on prepaid or gift subscriptions, see Setting up a prepaid subscription product.
Charge customer on a particular day
If you selected your renewal interval to be in weeks, you will see a box that sets what day of the week you want to charge your customers.
Leaving it as When they sign up means they will be charged on the same day of the week they originally signed up. If you set a specific day of the week, the customer will be charged on that particular day on every subsequent charge.
If you selected your renewal intervals to be in months, you'll see a box that sets what day of the month you want to charge your customers.
Similar to the weekly interval, by clicking on the dropdown, leaving it as When they sign up means customers will be charged on the same day of the month they originally signed up. If you set a specific day of the month, the customer will be charged on that particular day on every subsequent charge.
Optional - Set subscription to expire
If your product is a gift subscription, you can set it to expire after one charge. Since gift subscriptions are only purchased once, they will show up in your Recharge Dashboard as being canceled/expired automatically. We will continue to send you 'reminder' orders of $0 into your Shopify each week/month for the duration of the subscription for fulfillment.
Check your work
Now let's make sure that our Ruleset is going to function the way we want it to. In order to review what we've done, scroll to the very top right of the Rulesets page and you will see a little overview of the settings that you've put in place.
If everything looks correct, all you need to do now is scroll back down to the very bottom again and click on the Save button.
Note: If you modify any of your products in Shopify, you need to resync the product under the Subscription Rulesets in order for the changes to reflect in Recharge. On the Ruleset page beside your product, click on the cog icon, then Sync Products or open up the ruleset and Save it again. If you change the product price, please take a look at our article on price changes.
Storefront changes
Once you hit Save at the bottom, Recharge will sync the products you have chosen to your store. This will result in a hidden product for each of the products selected. These are not visible to your customers and are only used to process recurring orders.
If you selected a subscription type of one-time and subscription, your product page will have a subscription widget.
If your subscription type is prepaid or subscription only, you won't see a widget but there will be a Subscription details pop-up above your Add to Cart button.
Troubleshooting the product page
Subscriptions won't show up on the live product page while your Recharge app is in Test Mode. If you don't see the subscription widget on your product page, add "?recharge=true" to the end of the product URL and refresh the page.
Once you go live by going into My Account then clicking Enable next to Account Status. The URL will be changed automatically.
If the Subscription details popup still isn't present, this could be related to your theme not displaying it properly. Contact the Recharge team and we'll help you get it to display properly.
Test your subscription setup
Before you start marketing your new subscription products, we strongly suggest going through the test order process to ensure everything works as expected.
If you run into any issues or have any questions, please reach out to our support team and we'll be happy to help.
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