Fixed-price customizable bundles

Customizable bundles allow merchants to offer a "build-a-box" experience on their storefronts. Customizable bundles work by using a single subscription product to bundle multiple Shopify products. This allows customers to select a group of products they wish to include in their bundle. Merchants can also customize the bundle's subscription settings to offer bundles as one-time products or subscriptions, and include add-ons or extra products.

This guide provides an overview of how customizable bundles work and how to configure a customizable bundle. 

Before you start

• Bundles are only available on the Recharge Pro plan. 
• Bundles have a fixed-price. The price of the bundle does not change based on the contents selected. 
• The Bundles customer portal widget is only compatible with customer portals that are embedded in the storefront. See Understanding the customer portal for more information.
• Customizable bundles cannot be added to the customer's cart using any quick-add methods from another page of your storefront or cart abandonment emails.

How Bundles work

In Recharge, a bundle consists of a parent bundle product/SKU, as well as separate products/SKUs for each item that can be added to a bundle. Bundles are fixed-price, so the price of the parent product represents the total bundle price regardless of the contents chosen.

When purchased, only the bundle product will appear in the cart. The selections in the bundle are not shown at the cart level as individual products.

Once the order is processed, Recharge edits the Shopify order and adds each selected bundle item at a 100% discount. The inventory of each individual product is decremented and the discounted price of each additional bundle item is $0.

Limitations

There are a few limitations when using Bundles: 

• • Shipping - The shipping rate is based on the parent product, not the individual items selected. It is recommended to create a specific rate for the product that covers the cost of shipping regardless of the contents included.

  • Fulfillment - Bundles orders are edited after they are placed using Shopify official APIs which are not compatible with some Order Management Systems and fulfillment processes.

  • Multi-currency - Bundles is not compatible with multi-currency orders because Shopify does not allow order editing for orders placed in a non-local currency.
  • Local delivery/pickup - Bundles is not compatible with local delivery/pickup orders because Shopify does not allow order editing for local delivery/pickup orders.
  • Customer portal location: Hosted by Recharge - The Bundles customer portal widget is only compatible with customer portals that are embedded in the storefront. See Understanding the customer portal for more information.
  • Draft orders - Draft orders and any other orders placed outside of Shopify's Online Store sales channel are not supported.
  • Third-party applications - Most third-party applications are compatible with Bundles if the app doesn’t modify the add-to-cart behavior or impact fulfillment. We recommend running a test bundle order to ensure the third-party app is compatible.

Customer experience

The customer interacts with a customizable bundle in two places, the product details page, and the customer portal. 

Product details page

Products in a customizable bundle use a custom bundle product template called recharge-bundle. This template contains the Recharge bundles widget and is set as the product template for the parent bundle product after the bundle is published.

Customizable bundles must be purchased via the bundle widget or a custom bundle widget built with Recharge's JavaScript SDK. Customizable bundles cannot be added to the customer's cart using any quick-add methods from another page of your storefront or cart abandonment emails.

If the customizable bundle is purchased using the correct widget, the Shopify order will include a _rb_id line item property. If the Shopify order doesn’t contain this line item property, the bundle was purchased with an unsupported method.

Customers can do the following on the product details page:

• Select products to include in their bundle.
• Choose the subscription type.
• Add any available add-ons or extra products. 

There are several bundle widget layout options and the bundling widget can be customized using the Shopify theme editor. For more information on the bundle widget layout options and customizations, see Bundles layout overview.

Customer portal

Customers can manage their bundle contents and update their selections for upcoming orders from the customer portal.

The customer portal bundles widget automatically displays on bundle subscriptions on the following customer portal themes: 

• Novum, Prima, or Affinity
• Multiple Payment Method Novum Theme Engine theme v4.2.0 or above
• Single Payment Method Novum Theme Engine theme v5.0 or above

If you are using an older version of the Recharge Theme Engine, you must add the bundle code manually. For more information, see Option 2 in Customer is unable to customize bundle contents in their customer portal.

Merchant experience

To learn about the bundle product structure and see an overview of how bundles look in Shopify, see Bundles.

Creating a customizable bundle

Step 1 - Set up collections in Shopify

Before creating a bundle in Recharge, you must create Shopify collections that contain the desired bundle products. For example, if you offer a meal box, you can create collections for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner products. When customers build their bundles on the storefront, they can add meals from each collection. 

For instructions on creating Shopify collections, see Create a collection. If you track inventory on products in a collection, configure the collection as an automated collection in Shopify. Set a condition on the collection that inventory must be greater than zero. With the inventory condition set for the collection, out of stock products are automatically removed from the bundle selection options.  Additionally, customers will be prompted to update their selections when they log into the customer portal if products go out of stock. However, if a selection in a subscriber’s bundle is out of stock it will still be processed and added to the order. To prevent this from happening, we recommend exporting your bundle contents to assist with inventory planning and using the bulk swap function to swap out the out-of-stock product for all active subscribers.

Note the following when creating collections: 

• Bundles ignores the individual price of the product(s) in your collection(s) and uses the parent bundle price.
• You can sell any product in a bundle collection separately as a subscription in Recharge, but the product cannot be a subscription-only product due to a Shopify limitation. 
• Products in a collection must be active on the Online Store sales channel in Shopify. 
• If a product in a collection has multiple product variants in Shopify, note the following:
  • You cannot split product variants into multiple collections. For example, if a food product has multiple size options, you cannot separate the 12 oz variant into one collection and the 20 oz variant into another. If you want to add two variants into different collections, you must create the variants as separate products in Shopify. 
  • You can choose whether you want the first product variant to automatically get added to the bundle or you can allow customers to choose their variant option. For more information on this setting, see Products with multiple variants.
  • Bundles are fixed-price. Multi-variant products should have similar price points. For example, product variants representing different flavors should have a similar price point. 

Step 2 - Create your bundle in Recharge

After configuring your collection(s) in Shopify, you must create the parent bundle product in Recharge. Alternatively, you can select a pre-configured parent bundle product to import from Shopify. We recommend creating the parent bundle product directly in Recharge. 

The following instructions take you through setting up and configuring a customizable bundle in Recharge:

1. In the merchant portal, click Products and select Bundles.
2. Click Create a new bundle.
3. Name the bundle and select Customizable as your bundle type. If you want customers to receive preset products on their first order and only make selections on recurring orders, choose Customizable (subscribers-only).  
   • If you are importing a pre-configured parent bundle product from Shopify, click Already have a product you want to use? Select it here. If you use this method, you cannot change or update the bundle price in Recharge. You must edit the product price directly in Shopify. 
4. Select Save and continue.
   
5. Select the collection(s) to include in your bundle and click Save and continue. 
6. Optional - Check the box for Customers can choose between different bundle size or options if you would like to offer different versions of the bundle. 
   • Add the Option Name and Option Value to create different options for a bundle product. For example, you may to assign size as the option name and four meals and eight meals as the option values. This configuration would create a bundle with four and eight-meal options.
     
7. For each option, input the number of products in the How many products can be added to this bundle? field. 
8. Set the total bundle price in the How much should this bundle cost? field.
9. Optional - Drag and drop the collection options to adjust the order of the collections, add additional collections for more product selections, or set limits on how many products can be added from each collection.
10. Ensure the Visibility toggle is on and select Done.
11. Repeat steps 7-10 for each bundle option and click Save and continue once finished.  

Step 3 - Set your subscription type

You must set a subscription type for your bundle. The available subscription types are one-time purchase only, one-time and subscription, subscription only, or prepaid subscription only. Refer to the following instructions to set your subscription type:

1. Use the radio button to select a subscription type for your bundle. If you are configuring a prepaid bundle, see Prepaid bundles.
2. Configure the subscription settings based on the subscription type you choose. For more information on subscription settings, see Creating subscription rules.
3. Click Save and continue.

Prepaid bundles

If you are configuring a prepaid bundle, note the following: 

• Prepaid bundle parent products cannot have product variants. 
• You cannot configure prepaid bundle product options to expire after a number of charges. 
• Prepaid bundles are not compatible with automatic reset. Automatic reset bundles are triggered by recurring charge processing. Prepaid subscriptions process charges only when the prepaid cycle renews. Therefore, prepaid shipment orders cannot reset contents. 

Step 4 - RECOMMENDED - Configure fallback contents

Fallback contents are recommended for all customizable bundles. Fallback contents are default selections that are added to a bundle in the event that bundle selections are empty when the charge processes. Bundle selections can be empty for the following reasons: 

• The customer purchases a bundle through the customer portal instead of checkout.
• The customer swaps to a bundle through the customer portal and fails to make bundle selections.

Configuring fallback contents ensures all bundle customers receive products in their bundle even if they don't make a selection prior to their charge date. Refer to the following instructions to enable fallback contents:

1. On the Review your bundle page, locate Fallback contents and click Add.
   
2. Click + Add fallback contents to configure fallback contents for each bundle option.
   
3. Click + Add products to launch a list of your bundle products. 
4. Adjust the quantities for the products you want to use as fallback contents. 
5. Click Add product to confirm the selection.
6. Click Continue and save. 
7. Optional - Repeat steps 2-6 for other bundle options. 
8. Click Done.

Step 5 - OPTIONAL - Update widget layout, add cross-sells, or configure an automatic reset

You can edit the bundle widget layout to control the customer experience, add cross-sells to the bundle flow, or configure an automatic reset to offer bundles with rotating product selections.

For more information on these settings, see Bundles layout overview, Configuring Add-ons and Extras for Bundles, and Automatic reset with customizable bundles. 

Step 6 - Publish the bundle

After configuring the bundle, click Publish bundle. Once the bundle is published, customers can purchase the bundle from your storefront. 

You can preview the bundle product details page by clicking Preview your bundle on the bundle's settings page. 

Note the following when publishing a bundle: 

• Bundle content products must be active on the Online Store sales channel in Shopify. 
• We recommend using a test product when testing bundling functionality. Publishing a bundle product that is active on Shopify will fully enable the bundle for customers on the storefront and customer portal.
• Recharge only adds bundle contents to Shopify orders if the bundle is published. If you unpublish a bundle and the bundle content products are still active in Shopify, Recharge will not add the bundle contents to Shopify orders. Customers can still purchase the products separately. 
• To update product images or make adjustments to product settings (inventory, taxes, etc.), make updates directly in Shopify. 
• To update the Shopify product (price, variants, etc.) after the initial bundle configuration, update the product directly in Shopify.