Setting up a subscription group on your store will allow your customers to purchase any of your products on a recurring basis.
When creating subscription group, you can select which products you would like to offer to your customers as a subscription, set the frequency options they can choose from, and offer a subscription discount as an incentive to subscribe.
At this time, only standard subscriptions can be created within Bold Subscriptions V2.
Caution
Please note that this article only relates to Version 2 of Bold Subscriptions. If you have Version 1 of Bold Subscriptions installed on your store, please visit Standard Subscriptions for V1.
If you are unsure of which version of Bold Subscriptions that you currently have installed to your store, please visit Identify Your Version of Bold Subscriptions.
Once a standard subscription group has been created and activated within Bold Subscriptions, a subscription widget will appear on the product page that customers will use to select their options to purchase.
If you would like to remove the One-time purchase only option in the widget, you can enable the setting on the product page within Shopify to Only allow purchase of this product as a subscription. This will ensure the product can only be purchased as a subscription.
When a subscription product is added to your customer's cart, they will be able to continue shopping. This means that multiple items can be added to the cart prior to your customer checking out. This is referred to as Multiple Cart Mode, as it allows both subscriptions and one-time purchases to be purchased at the same time.
At this time, Single Cart Mode is not available for Shopify's checkout.
The Subscription frequency options allow you to choose how often your recurring orders are generated. These options will be available for your customers to select when they purchase a subscription on your store.
Non-Fixed Subscription Frequency
With non-fixed frequencies, orders will recur based on the day of your customers initial purchase. Because of this, each customer can have a different date at which their order will reoccur.
Daily subscriptions will recur every number of days you select, starting from the time of your customer's initial purchase.
Weekly subscriptions will recur every number of weeks, on the same day of the week that the original order was placed. For example, if an initial order is placed on a Thursday, the recurring order will complete every following Thursday on a weekly basis. If it is placed on a Monday, it will recur every Monday.
Monthly subscriptions will recur every number of months you select, on the same day of the month as the original order. If an order was placed on the 15th, it will recur every month on the 15th. If an order was placed on the 31st, the order for the next month will use the next closest date. For example, an order placed on Jan 31st will recur on feb 28th, or in the case of a leap year, it will recur on the 29th.
Yearly subscriptions will recur every number of years you select, on the month and day that the original order was placed.
Fixed Subscription Frequency
Fixed subscription frequencies are subscriptions that recur at fixed intervals. For example, they could recur each month on the 15th, every week on Monday, or the first weekend of each month (custom occurrence). This is different from non-fixed subscription frequencies because regardless of when the order was placed, all orders recur at the same time.
When using a fixed subscription frequency, you may want to use cutoff days. This feature is useful to ensure that the recurring order does not take place too soon after the initial subscription purchase on your store.
Cutoff Days
When a customer subscribes to a product from your store, the initial charge is taken immediately at the time of their purchase. When using a fixed date for your recurring charges, this could mean the second charge could fall too close to the customer's initial charge. Cutoff days allow you to set a particular number of days as a buffer - to prevent the second recurring charge from occurring too soon. If the second recurring payment is set to occur within that number of cutoff days, that charge will instead move to the next subscription cycle.
Cutoff days are used to prevent a subscriber's initial and second order from occurring too close together. This will help better match your billing cycle to your fulfillment cycle and ensure your customer is not charged twice before they have received their first order.
Example
If your billing date is on the 1st of every month, setting your cutoff days to 15 means that all initial orders placed 15 days before the 1st, will not be charged again on the next recurring date. That charge will instead move to the next subscription cycle. If you need more time to fulfill your orders, you can increase the number of cutoff days.
Typically, we recommend 15 cutoff days for monthly subscriptions, but it can vary across different cases.
The cutoff day controls are available depending on the recurrence type you select under the Advanced options, such as specific day of the month or custom occurrence.
Advanced options such as RRULES are available for those who have Bold Cashier installed on their store. For more information on using RRULES with Cashier, please visit Create RRULES for Bold Subscriptions V2.
When creating your subscription, you will be presented with multiple features that can be enabled within the group.
Alert
Once you create a subscription group, you are able to also create a Test Order for that product through Shopify Payments. For more information, please visit Shopify's article on Creating a Test Payment on your store.
For an explanation of these features and a step-by-step on creating your subscription group, please follow the steps below.
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Within Bold Subscriptions, select Subscription Groups.
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Select Create Subscription Group.
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Enter a Group name.
Note: This is an internal name, your customers will not see it.
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Select Select Products.
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Select the checkbox beside all of the products you'd like to include in the group.
Note: At this time, digital products will not require a shipping address be entered in the checkout.
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Select Confirm.
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Set your Subscription Frequency. Select Days, Weeks, Months or Years.
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Select Show advanced options. There are a few different options to choose from depending on the frequency you have selected. These are as follows:
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On purchase day: This will cause the customer's subscription to renew based on the date of their initial purchase.
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On specific day of the month: This will cause the customer's subscription to renew on the same day every month; regardless of their date of purchase.
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Custom occurrence: This allows you to set up custom logic for when your customers subscriptions will renew. Additional choices will show after selecting this option.
Note: If either of the last two options are selected, you will have the ability to Use cutoff days. For more information, please see Subscription Frequencies above.
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Enter Frequency name.
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Select Save Frequency.
- Select Add new frequency and repeat steps 7 - 10 for additional frequency intervals.
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Select Offer a discount for subscribing. (optional)
Note: This provides a Subscribe & Save! incentive to your customers. Discounts applied within this area for Bold Subscriptions V2 will be reoccurring on every order for this product.
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Select Save Changes.
Pro-Tip
Once your subscription groups are set up, please visit Customize Subscription Widget for more information on adjusting the language or styling on your product pages.
Subscription Only Products
By default, all products added to subscriptions groups will be available as recurring purchases and one-time purchases. Within your Shopify admin product page, you can enable the setting to only allow purchase of this product as a subscription. This will remove the option for a one-time purchase on the product page widget.
If you would like your items to be available by subscription only, please follow the steps below once you have finished creating your subscription groups.
- Navigate to the Shopify admin.
- Select Products > All Products.
- Find a subscription product.
- Select Only allow purchase of this product as a subscription.
- Select Save.