Under the Settings tab in Bold Subscriptions, You will see several settings from where you can set permissions for your customer's subscription management, edit your notification emails, and manage your customer's cancellation flow.
For more information on each setting, select one of the headings below.
This article is for Subscriptions on BigCommerce. If you are using a different platform, please visit the articles for Shopify or commercetools.
Store Settings
This area will show the details of your store, such as the timezone, currency, and daily processing time. This information is pulled from BigCommerce, and will display within the settings to give you more information.
Subscription orders will be processed each cycle at 12AM, based on your time zone.
Fixed shipping rate settings
This area will allow you to choose a fixed shipping rate for a country. When fixed shipping rates are enabled for specific countries, only those rates will be available at checkout.
Within the Customer Portal tab in your settings, you have the ability to enable a switch that adjusts how your customers manage their subscriptions.
Customer can pause and resume their subscriptions
If this feature is enabled, this setting will give your subscribers the ability to put their subscriptions on hold whenever they need to, for as long as they need. This can also be used to skip an individual order. During this time, they will not be billed or receive any orders that have not yet been set.
This feature is different than skipping an order, since your customer will have to be sure to manually resume the subscription.
If you prefer not to give your customers this functionality, please keep the toggle turned off. You will still be able to pause and resume your customers' subscriptions from within the app.
Customer can change their next order date
When this setting is enabled, your customers will be able change their next order to date within the Customer Portal. This is helpful for customers who would like to order more of your product, or delay their next order.
Customers will have a choice to either update all future orders from the new date selected, or only change the next order.
Alert
This setting only applies to subscriptions that are not on fixed intervals. E.g. every Monday or the 15th of the month.
Customer can cancel their subscriptions
This feature will allow your customers to cancel their own subscriptions through the Customer Portal on the store front, once it is enabled. This is ideal if you want to give your customers the flexibility in choosing when to cancel their subscriptions.
If this feature is not enabled, then this option will hide the cancel subscription option from your customers within the Customer Portal. Customers will only be able to cancel their subscriptions by contacting your store directly.
Customer can change their order frequency
When this setting is enabled, your customers will be able to change the frequency of their orders within the Customer Portal. This is helpful for customers who find they need more or less of your subscription product on an ongoing basis.
Customers will only be able to choose from the available frequencies that are already available on the subscription product.
Customer can create an additional order
This setting will place an Order Now button beside the active subscription products in the Customer Portal. This will allow your customer to create an additional order at anytime. When the Order Now button is selected, the order will generate within the hour. The next order dates will automatically be adjusted to the frequency they had already selected.
Bold Subscriptions offers several email templates that can be customized to match your site's branding and design. These templates allow you to use custom merge fields to include information about the customer, your store, and their subscriptions.
When setting up your Email Settings in Bold Subscriptions, your contact name and email address for the notification email can be updated. There are also five options for customers' notifications built into the app, so you can select when to notify your customers of upcoming orders, credit card updates, and new subscription purchases.
For more information on the functionality and setup, please visit Edit your Email Notifications.
To select your cancellation settings within the app, go to Settings > Cancellation Management.
Provide cancellation instructions
Customers will only be able to cancel their subscriptions by contacting your store directly based on the information that you provide in the cancellation instructions box. This information will be displayed to your customer if they select Cancel from within the Customer Portal.
Example
Customer retention flow
This feature will provide a list of cancellation reasons that a customer must choose from when cancelling their subscription from within the Customer Portal. This is ideal if you want to allow your customer the flexibility to cancel and gain insight to their reasons why.
Common reasons to cancel a subscription could be:
- Don't need a refill on the product.
- Will resubscribe in the future.
- Cost is too high.
- No longer interested.
You can also select Other to be displayed as a reason. This will bring up a text field for your customers to submit their own feedback.
Example
Pro-Tip
To view your customer's cancellation reasons, you can create a Cancelled subscriptions report. For more information, please visit Dashboard Analytics, Reports & Activity Logs in Bold Subscriptions.
Cancellation Instructions Setup
- From the BigCommerce admin, select Apps.
- Select Bold Subscriptions
- Select Settings, then Cancellation Management.
- Select Provide cancellation instructions.
Note: This will bring up an area that will allow you to add a list, or paragraph of instructions for how your customers will cancel their order.
- Add the desired text.
- Select Save.
Customer Retention Flow Setup
- From the BigCommerce admin, select Apps.
- Select Bold Subscriptions.
- Select Settings, then Cancellation Management.
- Select Customer retention flow.
- Select Add cancellation reason.
- Add the text for a Cancellation reason. For example, "I have too much of this product".
- Select Add reason.
- Add more reasons (optional).
- Select Save.
Bold Subscriptions offers a few different options to help manage situations on your store in regards to transactions failing. You're able to customize your dunning process to help reduce the number of subscription cancellations you receive due to failed transactions.
When a customer's credit card is declined, you can opt to send an email to notify them. This email can be enabled in the Settings > Email notifications > Transaction Failed. When receiving this email, your customer will be guided to the Customer Portal to update their payment information.
If the card used to make the payment is successfully updated, the order will process at 12AM for your stores specific time zone. If the payment is unsuccessful, the app will attempt to re-charge the credit card every 24 hours until the charge goes through or the order is cancelled.
To select your dunning management settings in Subscriptions, please review the sections below.
Pro-Tip
Your customer's failed transactions can be found in the Failing payments report. You can download a CSV file of this report from the Bold Subscriptions V2 Dashboard > Reports. For more information, please visit Dashboard Analytics, Reports & Activity Logs in Bold Subscriptions, and view Reports.
Step 1: Set a Max Number of Retries
With this feature, you are able to set how many times a subscription payment gets retried after the transaction has failed. You can select from 1 to 15 retries.
To adjust these settings, please follow the steps below.
- From the BigCommerce admin, select Apps.
- Select Bold Subscriptions.
- Select Settings, then Dunning Management.
- Within the Manage failed payment flow, set the maximum number of retry attempts.
Step 2: Set What Happens when the Orders Fail
Once the maximum number of retries has been hit, Bold Subscriptions will automatically cancel the subscription. You can adjust these settings so that the order is paused instead, and when your customer edits their payment information, the order will resume.
To adjust these settings in Bold Subscriptions, select one of the following options under Once the subscription reaches the maximum number of failures:
- Cancel Subscription: This will move your subscriber to the inactive subscriber's list. When your customer's orders are moved here, they will not count towards the in-app analytics for active subscriptions. Please note that you will have to reactive the subscription to allow your customers to update their payment information.
-
Pause Subscription: The paused subscriptions will still count towards your stores subscriptions analytics until they are cancelled. At any time your customers can update their payment information for this paused subscription.
Note: If you choose to pause the subscription after it reaches the maximum number of retries, the order will resume after the customer has edited their credit card. Alternatively, you can resume the subscription in the admin.
- Skip Failed Order: Skipping an order on your store is beneficial to give your customer more time to adjust their credit card information.
Step 3: Set the Number of Days Between Retries
Bold Subscriptions allows you to set the time in-between retries for your customers' credit cards after they fail. This gives your customers a change to update their credit card information without risking the subscription being cancelled.
The number of days chosen is the number of days between retries. This doesn't include the order date.