Subscription Management V1: Customer Perspective

Bold Subscriptions V1 offers a robust customer management system, called the Manage Subscription Page, to allow your customers to manage their own orders.

The Manage Subscription Page can be seen by all of your customers on the Shopify customer account page. After a customer has logged in with the email that's tied to their subscription, they are able to view and manage their active subscriptions.

Adding products to an existing subscription

Bold Subscriptions V1 allows customers to add products that are also part of an active subscription group.

Customers can add a new product to their active subscription by navigating to the desired product page while logged in to their account (that's tied to their subscription). Only then the Add to Existing Subscription button appears, which allows customers to add new products to their existing subscription.

When a new product is added to an existing subscription, the new product shares the same renewal frequency that the previous product was using. As a result, the original subscription product and the newly added product is on the same recurring orders moving forward.

The Add to Existing Subscription button only displays on products that are within a standard subscription group. It is not compatible with convertible subscriptions, build-a-box subscriptions, or dynamic discount codes.

Setup

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Navigate to a product that you would like to add to an existing subscription.
Select Add to Existing Subscription.
Select the existing subscription you would like to apply the product onto (if more than one active subscription exists).
Select a new shipping rate.
Select Add.

Applying discount codes to existing subscriptions

Discount codes can only be applied to the following subscription types:

Standard
Build-a-box
Convertible

Discount codes are not compatible with prepaid subscriptions.

Enabling discount codes for subscribers

From the Bold Subscriptions V1 app admin , select Settings, then General.
Select Enable beside Customers Can Change Their Discount Codes.
Select Save.

After this is enabled, customers can start applying discount codes to their subscriptions.

How customers can apply a discount code to an active subscription

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Select the Manage Subscription text (this may appear differently if you have changed the link text).
Select View Details under the subscription that you would like to apply a discount code onto.
Select Discount codes.
Enter the discount code into the input box.
Select Apply discount.

Once a discount code has been applied to an existing subscription, the discount code is applied to all of the customer's future orders until it's been removed or expires.

Cancelling subscriptions

There are a lot of different reasons why a customer would want to cancel their subscription:

The product is too expensive.
They require an address change.
They're unhappy with the product.
They're receiving too much of the product.
They'd rather order one of the product rather than a subscription.

Customers can otherwise cancel and manage their subscription via the Manage Subscription Page.

Setup

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Select the Manage Subscription text (this may appear differently if you have changed the link text).
Select View Details under the subscription that needs to be cancelled.
Select Cancel Subscription.
Choose a cancellation reason.
Note: Cancellation reasons only appear if a Cancellation Flow has been created in Bold Subscriptions V1. Please visit Cancellation Management in Bold Subscriptions V1 for steps on setting up a cancellation flow.
Select Cancel Subscription.
Select Cancel Subscription again.

Once a customer cancels their subscription, there is no way for the customer to re-activate the subscription on their own. The customer then either needs to re-purchase the subscription, or have you (the store owner) re-activate their subscription for them.

Please visit Subscription Management: Merchant Perspective for more information.

Changing order frequencies

Changing the order frequency affects how often a customer's orders generate as well as how often they're charged. Customers can adjust their order frequency to daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

This can sometimes be a two-step process as the customer's upcoming order date has to be altered as well.

Subscription groups that have a fixed order interval cannot be adjusted by customers.

Setup

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Select the Manage Subscription text (this may appear differently if you have changed the link text).
Under Order frequency, select Change frequency.
Select a new Frequency and a new Interval.
Note: The frequencies and intervals available to select are based on the frequencies that have been selected in the subscription group within the Bold Subscriptions V1 app admin. Subscription groups that have a fixed order interval cannot be adjusted by customers.
Select Save Changes.

Once the order frequency has been updated, it is best practice to check the customer's upcoming orders and re-do any changes made to their upcoming orders, such as skipping future orders and re-selecting build-a-box choices.

Changing order renewal dates

Note: Changing a customer's next order date erases any changes both you, or the customer, has made to their orders. Changing the next order date wipes out the following information from your customer's subscription(s):

Future skipped orders
Quantity adjustments / exceptions

Allowing your customers to change their own order dates gives your customers full control over how they receive their order as well as if they would like their upcoming orders to land on a specific day of the week or month.

Once enabled, your customers are able to adjust their subscription's next order date within the Manage Subscription Page. Choosing a new order date forces all of the customer's upcoming orders to recur around the newly selected date.

If a customer has skipped one of their future orders, the word Skipped displays under Status while on the Upcoming Orders page of the Subscriptions app admin. If you are adjusting the next order date of a customer who has chosen to skip an order, it's advised that you reach out to the customer before adjusting their upcoming order date to ensure their chosen orders are skipped properly.

Allowing customers to change their next order date reduces the churn rate of cancelled subscriptions on your store.

Step 1: Enable setting in Bold Subscriptions V1

From the Bold Subscriptions V1 app admin, select Settings, then General.
Select Enable next to Customers Can Change Their Next Order Date.
Select Save.

Step 2: Change next order date in the Manage Subscriptions Page

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Select the Manage Subscription text (this may appear differently if you have changed the link text).
Under Next Order Date, select Change date.
Select the date input box and choose a new date.
Select Save Changes.

Pausing and resuming aubscriptions

Allowing your customers to pause and resume their subscriptions gives them the ability to put their subscriptions on hold whenever they need to, for as long as they need.

During the time that their subscriptions are paused, your customers are not billed or receive any orders that have not already been sent.

Enabling this feature is a great way to reduce churn, as it gives your customers the flexibility to pause their subscriptions instead of cancelling it.

Step 1: Enable setting in Bold Subscriptions V1

From the Bold Subscriptions V1 app admin, select Settings, then General.
Select Enable next to Customers Can Pause and Resume Their Subscriptions.
Select Save.

After this setting has been enabled, your customers are able to pause their active subscriptions when logged into the Manage Subscription Page.

Step 2: Pause/Resume a subscription in the Manage Subscriptions Page

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Select the Manage Subscription text (this may appear differently if you have changed the link text).
Under Subscription Status for the subscription that the customer would like to pause, select Pause Subscription.

If a customer would like to resume a subscription, repeat Steps 1-3, then select Resume Subscription.

Removing discount codes

If a discount code has been applied to a customer's subscription, the discount code remains active until one of the following occurs:

The discount code expires.
The subscription is cancelled.
The discount code is manually removed from the subscription.

If a customer applies a different discount code to a subscription, the newly added discount code overwrites the previous discount code.

Customers do not have the ability to manually remove a discount code. Instead, the discount code either needs to be removed by you, or the customer needs to add another discount code.

Skipping orders

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Select the Manage Subscription text (this may appear differently if you have changed the link text).
Select View Details under the subscription you would like to skip an order for.
Select Manage upcoming orders.
Select Skip Order beside the order you would like to skip.

If a subscription order needs to be reversed, please follow steps 1-6 and select Recover Order to reverse the change.

Swapping products

When Swap Product is enabled, customers only are able to swap between products that are in the same subscription group.

Please visit Step 8 under Setup in Standard Subscriptions for more information on enabling the Swap Product feature.

Setup

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Select the Manage Subscription text (this may appear differently if you have changed the link text).
Select View Details under the subscription that you would like to swap a product for.
Select Products in your subscription.
Select Swap product.
Choose Select next to the desired product you would like to swap with.
Choose a new shipping rate.
Select Save Changes.

After the product has been swapped out, all future orders generate with the newly selected product.

If a customer would like to receive a different product on every order, the customer needs to repeat the same steps above before their next order is set to renew in order to have a different product.

Updating payment methods

If a customer's payment method has expired or changed, customers can update the payment method for existing subscriptions on the Manage Subscription Page.

It's important to note that customers have the ability to update their payment details for an existing subscription because the subscription eventually becomes inactive once the Failed transaction handling requirements (set in the Bold Subscriptions V1 app admin) have been met.

Setup

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Select the Manage Subscription text (this may appear differently if you have changed the link text).
Select View Details under the subscription that you would like to update the payment method for.
Select Payment information.
Select Edit.
Enter the new payment credentials.
Select Save Changes.

Once the payment credentials have been saved, these new credentials are used on the customer's next recurring order interval.

Updating shipping / billing information

If a customer has recently moved to a different address, they need to update their billing and / or shipping details.

If neither the billing or shipping information has changed, there's a strong possibility that the customer's future recurring orders automatically fails due to a payment error with the payment method being used.

Setup

From your storefront, select the Account Management Icon.
Log in to the account that has the active subscription.
Select the Manage Subscription text (this may appear differently if you have changed the link text).
Select View Details under the subscription that you would like to update the payment method for.
Select Address and shipping information.
Select Edit under either Shipping Method, Shipping Address, or Billing Address.

Note: If updating the Shipping Method or Shipping Address, you are prompted to select a new shipping rate.
Select Save Changes.

Once the shipping / billing details have been updated, all of the customer's future recurring orders automatically reflects the new information.