Prepaid Subscriptions

Prepaid subscriptions allow customers to pay for a set number of orders upfront. This provides predictable revenue for your store while giving your customers the convenience of paying one time while still receiving their orders on a recurring basis.

Many customers prefer to prepay instead of each time an order is generated. Prepaying offers a simplified experience and allows customers to take advantage of increased discounts. Prepaid subscriptions are typically offered with higher discounts for longer subscription lengths. This encourages your customers to prepay for more orders.

Alert: Prepaid subscriptions work with Online Store 2.0 themes using the app block and app embed. For instructions on how to install Bold Subscriptions to your theme, please visit our Installation Guide for Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

This article describes how prepaid subscription work, outlines some important considerations, and walks you through the setup.

Functionality

When prepaid subscriptions are enabled along with standard subscriptions, the option to prepay appears under your delivery frequency options. Your customers can check the Prepay for subscription box to view all the prepaid options, along with the discounts for each option.

If your subscription is set to prepaid only, the prepaid options are displayed by default.

Customers can add a prepaid subscription to the cart and continue shopping. This means they can buy more products from your store, including another prepaid or standard subscription.

Prepaid order lengths

You can offer multiple prepaid options with varying levels of discounts. For example, you can offer a 5% discount for prepaying for three orders, a 10% discount for prepaying for six orders, and 15% off for prepaying for 12 orders.

The number of orders in a prepaid subscription include your customer’s initial purchase. For example, if a customer prepays for three orders, the first order is the initial purchase, and the second and third orders are recurring orders.

Renewal methods

In the subscription group settings, you can choose what happens at the end of the prepaid term once all the orders have been fulfilled. You can set the subscription to expire, renew as a prepaid subscription, or renew as a regular subscription (non-prepaid).

The default renewal method you select is displayed to your customers in the subscription widget on the storefront, in the cart, and on the checkout page.

You can give your customers the ability to change the renewal method in the customer portal. For more information, please visit Subscription Management: Customer Perspective. 

Shopify order tags

Both of your customers' initial and recurring prepaid subscription orders are tagged with prepaid subscription. 

Customer portal view

When your customer purchases a prepaid subscription, a message is displayed at the top of the subscription in the customer portal. This message outlines the number of prepaid orders that have been fulfilled and the renewal method. This is visible when managing your customer's prepaid subscription from the Bold Subscriptions' admin as well. 

Both you and your customer can see the upcoming order dates and charges in the Manage upcoming orders section of the customer portal.  To see how this looks, expand the example below. 

Important considerations

Shipping address changes

Both admins and customers can update the shipping address for prepaid subscriptions.

It's important to note that when updating the shipping address on a prepaid subscription, the customer is not automatically billed or refunded any differences in the shipping costs for the orders that they’ve already paid for. Any costs associated with shipping updates are applied to the next prepaid order if it is set to continue.

Free shipping rules

If you have defined free shipping rules for purchases over a certain amount, please consider the following:

• The initial order of a prepaid subscription is processed by Shopify. Since Shopify does not consider the individual shipments required in an order, the order is processed in a lump sum which can lead to the order becoming eligible for free shipping. 

• When a prepaid subscription renews, the order is processed through Bold and is charged the correct rates for each individual shipment.

With this in mind, you may want to increase your product prices to cover the shipping costs of the initial order, or ensure that prepaid amounts do not meet the amount to qualify for free shipping.

Please note that this issue has been escalated to Shopify.

Shopify discount codes

Discount codes that offer x amount off each order can only be applied to the entire prepaid amount rather than each individual order in the subscription. This means a discount code of $10 off will discount the initial prepaid amount one-time for $10, as the future orders generate at $0.00.

Canceling prepaid subscriptions mid-cycle

Only admins are allowed to cancel a customer's prepaid subscription mid-cycle — before all the orders have been generated in the prepaid cycle. It's important to note that if this is done, your customer is not automatically refunded for any remaining orders. Refunds must be completed separately in the Shopify admin.

Adding products

Customers and admins can add products both as one-time purchases or recurring orders to an existing prepaid subscription.

Products added as a one-time purchase are charged only once, when the next subscription order is generated. Products added as recurring orders are charged each time a subscription order is generated.

It’s important to note that any products added to an existing prepaid subscription mid-cycle will not incur shipping charges until the prepaid subscription is set to renew.

Product edits

Only admins can make the following edits to an existing prepaid subscription:

• Remove products

• Update quantities

• Swap products

It’s important to note that when any of the above changes are made in the mid-cycle, your customers are not automatically charged or refunded any differences in the shipping or price on the remaining orders in the prepaid period. The shipping and price of the prepaid subscription updates once it renews.

Shopify orders

When a prepaid subscription is purchased, the order generated in Shopify is for the full cost of prepaid subscription, however, it’s important to be aware that Bold creates a refund of $0.00 for the additional orders in the prepaid subscription. This message can be disregarded. Its purpose is to allow future orders to be generated by Bold Subscriptions, rather than Shopify, giving you and your customers more flexibility with prepaid orders. Your customers are not notified of these initial refunds.

To see how this appears on the order in the Shopify admin, expand the Order example below.

Setup

To create a prepaid subscription group, please follow the steps below.

If you would like to add prepaid options to an existing subscription group, you can edit the existing group to add the prepaid options beginning at step 12 below. For the best experience, products should only belong to one subscription group at a time.

1. From within Bold Subscriptions, navigate to Subscription groups.

2. Click Create subscription group.

3. Enter a Group name.

   Note: This is an internal name, your customers do not see it.

4. Click Select products.

5. Check the box next to the products or variants you'd like to include in the group.

   Note: Variant level subscription groups are compatible with Online Store 2.0 themes only. To install Bold Subscriptions on a 2.0 theme, please visit our Installation Guide for Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

6. Click Confirm.

7. In the Subscription frequency section, use the following steps to create the frequencies you want to make available to your customers:

   1. Under Add new frequency, enter a number, and expand the dropdown menu to select Day, Week, Month or Year.
   2. Click Show advanced options and select one of the following options to configure when subscription orders should recur:
      • On purchase day: Orders recur based on the date of the initial purchase.
      • On specific day of the week/month: Orders recur on a specific day every week/month, regardless of the date of purchase.

      • Custom occurrence: Allows you to set up custom logic for when orders recur, such as on the first Monday of every month.

        Note: The last two options offer Cutoff days. Read more about using cutoff days.

   3. Enter a Frequency name.
   4. Click Save Frequency.
   5. Optional: Click Add new frequency and repeat steps 7a-7d for additional frequency intervals.

8. Enable the toggle next to Allow customers to prepay for subscriptions.

9. Enter the Number of orders you would like to offer for prepayment.

10. Optional: Enter a discount.

    Note: Use the dropdown menu and choose Percentage off (%) or Amount off ($).

11. Optional: Click Add prepaid length to add additional prepaid lengths and repeat steps 9-11.

12. Optional: Check the box next to Only offer this subscription as a prepaid subscription.

13. Optional: Check the box next to Extend the subscription once all prepaid orders have completed, and choose one of the following options:

    Note: If this box is not checked, the subscription ends once all the prepaid orders have been fulfilled.

    • The prepaid subscription is renewed for the same length of time

    • The subscription continues as a non-prepaid subscription (i.e., monthly) based on the frequency initially selected

14. Optional: Toggle on Offer a discount for subscribing, and enter a discount.

    Note: This discount is applicable to the non-prepaid subscription.

15. Optional: In the Customer Tagging section, enable the toggle to Apply tags to subscribers, and select your tags.

    Note: Read more about this feature in Customer Tagging in Subscriptions for Shopify Checkout.

    1. Optional: Check the box next to Apply to previously created subscriptions if you want these tags added to existing subscribers right away.

       Note: If left unchecked, tags are applied to existing subscribers the next time their subscription order recurs.

16. Click Save Changes.