Common use cases for Recharge Workflows

This guide covers some examples of common Workflow use-cases. These use-cases are only examples, but you can follow the instructions to modify your own workflows.

Before you start

If you are unfamiliar with the Recharge Workflows tool, we recommend checking out the following guides:

• Recharge Workflows
• Troubleshooting Recharge Workflows
• Recharge Workflows FAQ

Swap products

The Recharge Workflows tool is useful for swapping a subscription product between the initial checkout charge and the subsequent recurring charge. To accomplish a product swap, you will primarily rely on the variant ID of the new product.

1. Set the Conditions. These are the parameters that must be met by a product to trigger the workflow.
2. Set the Search parameter. In this example, the workflow is set to search for all subscriptions with the product title Free trial.
3. Set the actions(s) that should be taken following the trigger. In the case of a product swap, you would want to swap the original Shopify variant ID. This will ensure that the subscription will use this product when the next order is created in Shopify.

To locate the shopify_variant_id, visit Finding and exporting Shopify variant IDs.

All the additional parameters of the swapped product (product title, SKU) would need to be added as Workflow actions. If the price of the swapped product is different than the original product then the price action must be used so that the new price can be implemented.

15-day free trial 

This use-case demonstrates how to create a 15-day free trial on your store. A prerequisite for this set-up is that the product needs to be set to $0 in Shopify.

Since the Recharge app uses the auto-renew products to create the initial subscription at checkout, you can set the auto-renew product to be $0 in Shopify which will display the full price on the product page. Alternatively, if you want the product page to reflect the trial price, you would change the price of the original product and the auto-renew product to be $0.

The actions used in this workflow are charge_delay and recurring_price. Charge_delay sets the number of days from the initial charge at checkout and the second recurring charge. Following the second charge, the charge frequency will reflect the settings in your Recharge ruleset. This action will only apply to the first recurring order after the customer checks out.

The recurring_price action will change the price of the product. In this example, it recurring_price will change the price of the subscription from $0 to $10. This price will then remain at $10 for subsequent charges.

Offer free shipping on recurring orders

Create a recurring checkout workflow using the following Actions. 

• shipping_rate_price – This is how much you will charge for shipping on the recurring subscriptions. In this example, it is set to 0 for free shipping.
• shipping_rate_title – This will be the title of your shipping rate. In this example, it is titled Free.
• shipping_rate_code – This is used internally and not seen by the customer. It can normally be set to the same text as your shipping_rate_title.

Recurring workflows

Multiple workflows can be stacked to implement a gradual decrease or increase in price or any other workflow parameter. For example, you would like to offer a discount on the 3rd and 4th charge of your subscription. You could set up two workflows that can be then triggered for these specific charge sequences. 

In this example, we will be creating two workflows where the first workflow will change the price of the product on the initial checkout, and then we will add a second workflow that will revert this price change. You would set the price of the original product to $5, then we would change the price to $10 and finally, with the second workflow, we will revert the price back to $5. 

The first workflow will have its trigger set to the initial checkout which is the default setting. You will then set the workflow to find the product by its title "Product" and also you would add the action subscription recurring_price to change the price of the product to $10.

For the second workflow you would set the action subscription recurring_price to $5 to revert the price of the product and then you would set the condition and search&actions to match the values from the first workflow. After that you will click on the Edit button in the trigger selection. 

You would change the trigger to be on the 1st recurring charge. This will ensure that this product will get triggered after the first recurring charge is processed (second charge in total). 

After these changes have been made you would turn on both workflows and the stacked workflow set up is complete.