This guide will walk you through creating your first subscription and the general functionality of recurring subscription products with ReCharge.
What are Rulesets?
Note: We advise you to ensure that you are on the Launch List by clicking Explore ReCharge at the top of your dashboard. This unlocks the settings shown in this guide.
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.
Getting started
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 have created at least one product in Shopify to create a subscription.
Ruleset name
First, start by giving your Ruleset a name! Naming your subscription Ruleset will help you in keeping you organized. Your customers will not see this name.
Add products
Now we're going to add the products that we want to be affected by this Ruleset. ( Note: You can add as many products to a Ruleset as you like - but a product can only be in one Ruleset at a time. So if you want to list the product under two separate Rulesets (perhaps a monthly subscription and a gift/prepaid subscription) you will need to create a separate product to do so. Example: "Coffee of the Month - Monthly Subscription" & "Coffee of the Month - 3 Month PrePaid Subscription").
To add your product(s), just click on the "Add Product" 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 wish for the customer to have a choice between purchasing the item only once or subscribing to it. This could be something like a specific blend of coffee or a specific scented lotion or a certain bag of dog treats. Something where you want the customer to be able to choose between just receiving the product once or entering into a subscription (perhaps with an additional discount incentive, if you choose).
- Subscription Only: This is the option you will want to use if you're doing something like a box of items each month (for example, Chocolates of the Month Box). For this Ruleset, you would only want people to have the option to subscribe to the product without being given a choice to only purchase it once.
- Pre-paid subscription only: This is good for things like gift subscriptions or offering the customer to pay for X amount of months upfront (again, perhaps with a discount incentive for people that pay for more months upfront in cost). (Example: "Coffee of the Month - 3 Month PrePaid" would be a great idea as a gift for any coffee connoisseur! The giver pays upfront for 3 months' worth of coffee - and the recipient receives a new shipment each month for those 3 months.)
For more information on the differences, check out this article.
Adding a discount
To add a discount for subscribers, you would tick the box and then specify the percentage discount that you would like to offer. In the above example, it would be a 5% discount on subscriptions.
Note: This is only an option for products that are available for both one-time purchase and subscription, since you would just set the price of a Subscription Only product at the product-level.
Order schedule
The Order Schedule is where you will 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 & 4 weeks. But you cannot have 2 weeks & 1 month.)
We 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. As you can see in the image below, customers here will have the option to choose between a monthly subscription, every 3 months or every 6 months.
Note: If you selected "Pre-paid subscription" as your subscription type, this area may look slightly different! You will not be able to enter multiple frequency options. But you will be able to set how you wish for this product to be shipped. (Example: you would not be able to enter 1, 2, or 3 months as an option - but you can set it to ship every 1 month.)
Start by setting the frequency you wish for this gift subscription to be shipped. (Example: 1 month)
Then set how often the customer will be charged. If they are pre-paying for 3 months of the product upfront, then you would set it to charge the customer every "3 months" (see example below).
Beneath these settings you will find a little blue box that gives a quite overview of how you have your product set. Read over this overview to make sure that it matches up with how you wish this product to function.
Charge customer on this day of the week/month
If you selected your renewal intervals to be in weeks, you will see a box that looks like this:
By clicking on the dropdown, you will be able to specify the specific day of the week that you wish your customers to be charged on. (For example, if you want all your customers to be charged on a Monday, you would select "Monday".)
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 selected your renewal intervals to be in months, you will see a box that looks like this:
By clicking on the dropdown, you will be able to specify the specific date that you wish your customers to be charged on. (For example, if you want all your customers to be charged on the 15th of the month, you would select "15".)
Leaving it as "When they sign up" means they will be charged on the same day of the month they originally signed up.
Set subscription to expire after a set number of charges
If your product is a gift subscription, you can simply 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. This is normal. But don't worry! We will continue to send you 'reminder' orders of $0 into your Shopify each week/month for the duration of the subscription.
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:
Does everything sound correct? Fantastic! All you need to do now is scroll back down to the very bottom again and click on the "Save" button!
Does something still not seem to be correct in the overview? Go back and review your settings again. And if you get stuck, reach out to our Customer Success Team at support@rechargeapps.com. We would be happy to assist you!
What happens now
Once you hit Save at the bottom, ReCharge will then 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.
The product page may look something like the image below. ( Note: This is for a product set as "One Time & Subscription". If your product is "subscription only" or a "prepaid subscription" then you will not see the radio buttons. You will only see the ReCharge logo and the "subscription details" box.)
By default, the radio button would say 'Subscribe & Save' but you can change this text by going to Settings (the wrench icon in the top right of your screen) and then select Subscription widget to edit this text. As you can see in the image above, the shop decided to change this text to "Schedule Autoship & Save 10%"). Again, this will only appear on products that are set as "One Time & Subscription".
Help! I don't see ReCharge activated on my product!
Subscriptions won't show up on the live product page while your ReCharge app is in Test Mode. Instead, if you would like to test your subscription setup, you will need to change the URL. If ReCharge isn't live, then the only way to view subscription products is to add "?recharge=true" to the end of the product URL.
Once you go live (by going into "My Account" then click Enable next to Account Status), the URL will be changed automatically.
If this subscription option does not appear for you, this could be related to your theme not displaying it properly, which can occasionally happen. Contact the ReCharge team and we'll help you with your code to get it to display properly right away!
Note: If you modify any of your products in Shopify you will need to resync the product under the Subscription Rulesets. On the Ruleset page beside your product, click on the cog icon, then Sync Products - alternatively, you can also re-Save your Ruleset, which will resync all the products in it. However, if you're changing something such as price, please take a look at our article on price changes.
Final Step! Test your subscription setup!
We suggest going through the Test Order Process to ensure everything works on your side before going live.