Setting up a subscription product

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Step 1 - Add a product to Recharge

Add your products to Recharge once they exist in Shopify or BigCommerce:

1. Select Products from the merchant portal.
2. Select Add products to get started.
3. Click the checkbox next to the product(s) you want to offer as a subscription and select Add products. 

Selecting multiple products at once adds all products as inactive to Recharge. You must add subscription rules to activate your products: 

• To add different subscription rules for each product, continue to Step 2.
• To bulk apply the same subscriptions rules, visit Updating product rules in bulk.

Step 2 - Select subscription type

Select one of the following subscription-type options. This determines how customers can purchase a specific product. 

Optional - Add a discount 

The option to Set up a discount is available if you set the product's subscription type to one-time and subscription.

While optional, you may consider offering a discount as an incentive for customers to subscribe and save. This gives your customers the option on the product page to purchase products as a one-time order or subscribe with a discount incentive. 

1. Under Set up a discount, check Yes, I'd like to offer a discount. 
2. Add a percentage amount in the % off box.

Step 3 - Set your order schedule

The order schedule is used to select how often you charge for and ship your subscription products. Recharge charges your customers based on the frequency set. If a charge is successful, Recharge sends the shipment order to your ecommerce platform for the fulfillment process.

1. Click the Add frequency button to include multiple frequencies.
2. Select the frequency type from the drop-down menu. You can set your subscription to ship on a daily, weekly, or monthly frequency. 

Optional - Charge customer on a specific day of the week or month

Use the Charge customer on this day drop-down to specify a specific day of the week or month your customers should be charged. For example, if you have your frequencies set to weeks, you can charge your customers every Monday. If you have your frequencies set to months, you could select the option to charge your customers on the 15th of every month. 

Customers are charged on the same day of the week or month they originally signed up for if you keep the default When they sign up option.

Optional - Set subscription to expire after a set number of charges

You can set your subscription to expire after a set number of charges. This automatically cancels a customer's subscription when they've been charged the set number of times.

This feature is typically used with prepaid gift subscriptions. 

Step 4 - Save your subscription rule

Select Save to save the subscription properties to your product.

Recharge will then sync the subscription properties to the product in your store. The subscription widget should appear on the product page, providing customers with the option of purchasing the product as a subscription:

The subscription widget appears a bit differently for the Recharge Checkout on BigCommerce, but has identical functionality: 

Place a test order once you have configured your subscription rules to experience the customer flow.

• Follow Recharge's instructions on Running a test transaction if you are using the Recharge Checkout on BigCommerce or Shopify.
• Follow Shopify's instructions to place a test order if you are using the Shopify Checkout Integration. 

Contact the Recharge Support team if you run into any issues or have any questions.

Shopify Product page 

You can also configure subscription rules for a product directly in the Shopify admin. Shopify has released a feature that integrates Recharge directly into the Product page for a specific product. If you are using Recharge with your Shopify store, a Subscriptions card is available on the Product page of each product.

This feature only works when adding or editing products that are available as one-time and subscription, or subscription-only. This feature is not available for prepaid products at this time.

Add option

You can add a product to Recharge from the Shopify Product page.

1. Select Add option.
2. Select Add new option.
3. Configure your subscription settings.
   • Subscription type: Choose between offering the product as both one-time and subscription, or as a subscription only.
   • Set order schedule: Confirm the amount of time between orders using the Delivery Frequency dropdown. Confirm if orders should be sent on a daily, weekly, or monthly frequency using the Period option.
     • If you are offering a one-time and subscription product you can use the Discount option to set an incentive discount for customers to purchase the product on subscription at a lower cost.
4. Use the Add frequency button if you’d like to create additional subscription frequency options for the product.
5. Select Create plan once you are ready to publish the product as a subscription.

Edit

Select Edit beside a specific subscription frequency option to update the subscription order schedule for the product.

Edit the subscription to add additional subscription frequencies to the product at any time.

Remove

Select Remove to delete the subscription option for a product. If all subscription delivery options are removed, the product is deleted from Recharge.

Only allow the purchase of this product as a subscription option

The option to “Only allow the purchase of this product as a subscription” can be toggled on or off. When enabled, the product will only be available for purchase on the Shopify storefront as a subscription.

By default, this setting is automatically enabled if you configure a product as Subscription only in Recharge. When enabled, customers are only able to purchase the product as a subscription.

If the subscription widget is disabled, and this setting is enabled, customers trying to check out with this product will be met with an error message saying "Variant can only be purchased with a selling plan error". This error message will prevent customers from completing their orders. 

If you disable this option on the product page in Shopify, the subscription type for the product automatically swaps to One-time & subscription in Recharge.

Manage products

View and manage your subscriptions products directly in Recharge:

1. Select Products in the merchant portal. A list of your products saved in Recharge should appear. Each heading in the list provides additional information about your subscription products. 
   

   Heading	Purpose
   Product	Lists the title of the product. Clicking the product will take you to the product summary page.
   Collections	Lists the current collection. If the product has been imported into Recharge and rules applied directly to the product, then it will list No collections.
   Subscription type	Reflects the subscription rules on the product.
   Order schedule	The shipping and charge date frequency for products. Note that this column is not sortable.
   Last synced	The date and time that the product was last synced to the database.
   Actions	Menu that allows merchants to perform a number of tasks to the product: Sync - Pulls in product data from their ecommerce platform. This option is only available to merchants using the Recharge Checkout on Shopify. BigCommerce automatically sends all product changes to Recharge without you needing to sync those changes. Remove from Recharge - The button will delete the product from Recharge and it will no longer display in Products or Collections. It will not impact existing customers who are subscribed to the product.

2. Click on a product's name to open the subscription rules for that product. 
3. Update any of the subscription properties. Press Save to update the subscription rules for that product.

The updated subscription properties only apply to new subscriptions created after your changes were saved. Manually adjust existing subscriptions to match the new properties, or you can submit a bulk update request to the Recharge team.