Managing subscriptions
After you have a third-party subscription app installed and set up in your store, you might need to search your orders or customers to manage information about upcoming orders, or payment information.
You can use the subscription status filter to sort your customers to find active, paused, canceled, and expired subscriptions. You can also use the subscription status filter to search for and update a customer's saved payment information if their payment method is expired or if they want to add a new one.
Offering a subscription product means your customers have orders that repeat on a recurring basis. You can sort and manage your orders, update your customers' subscription information, and manage scheduled fulfillments in your Shopify admin.
On this page
Managing customers
When you offer subscriptions to your customers, you might need to search, sort, and edit your customer profiles. For example, if any customers need to update their payment information to continue their subscription, then you can filter your customers by Failed payment to check.
Subscription statuses
- Active product subscription
- Paused product subscription
- Canceled product subscription
- Expired product subscription
- Never subscribed
- Failed payment
Filtering the customer list
You can sort your customer list by subscription status using customer segments.
For example, filtering your customers to display only those who have an active subscription would use the product_subscription_status = 'SUBSCRIBED' filter.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Customers.
Click Filters, and then click Product subscription status.
Click the customer segment editor, add
Is equal to.Select the subscription status that you want to filter your customers with.
Click Apply filter.
-
Optional: You can do any of the following:
- If you want to save your filter as a customer segment, then click Save segment.
- If you want to clear your filter selection, then click Discard.
View your customers' subscriptions
When a customer purchases a subscription product, their subscription information is displayed in their customer profile. You can view the products that a customer has subscribed to and when their next order is scheduled for in the Active product subscriptions section.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Customers.
Click the customer you want to view subscription information for.
-
In the Active product subscriptions section, click the information that you want to view:
- To go to the subscription order that the customer placed, click View order.
- To go to the subscription information in your subscription app, click View subscription.
Managing your customers' payment methods
If you sell subscription products and need a customer to update their payment information because of a failed payment, then you can update the customer's profile in your Shopify admin.
From your Shopify admin, go to Customers.
Click the customer that you want to view payment information for.
In the Payment methods section, click the pencil icon.
-
Optional: If you want your customer to update their payment information themselves, then do the following:
- For the relevant saved card, click … > Send link to update card.
- In the dialog, check the details and then click Send email.
-
Optional: If you want to update your customer's payment method manually, then do the following:
- For the relevant saved card, click … > Replace card.
- In the dialog, complete the relevant details and then click Confirm.
Customers might be asked to confirm their payment method for additional security. Your customer's bank can challenge recurring billing attempts, which means your customer needs to manually confirm their purchase and payment method.
If a customer needs to confirm their payment method for an order, then Shopify sends your customer an email which includes:
- The subject line "Confirm payment for your subscription".
- A link to your store to confirm the payment information.
- The order summary for the subscription purchase.
The email includes your logo and accent color, but can't be customized further.
Managing orders
You can manage pay-per-delivery orders and prepaid subscription orders from your Shopify admin.
Pay-per-delivery orders have only one subscription item per order. At regular intervals, new pay-per-delivery orders are created by your subscription app, and are displayed on your Orders list. Pay-per-delivery orders are managed and fulfilled the same as non-subscription orders.
Prepaid subscription orders are paid for with a lump sum in advance, but have multiple scheduled fulfillments over a period of time. Prepaid subscription orders display as a single order with a Scheduled status until a fulfillment date is reached. When the fulfillment date is reached, the order status updates to Unfulfilled and you can then fulfill the order. The order's status then changes back to Scheduled until the next fulfillment date is reached, and the cycle begins again. When an order has a Scheduled status, you can track the order on your Orders page, but no action is required.
On the order, you can review all items for the prepaid subscription orders, sorted into Fulfilled, Unfulfilled, and Scheduled fulfillment cards. The next scheduled fulfillment for the order is listed in the Scheduled fulfillment card. Click View all fulfillments to display all scheduled fulfillments.
Filtering and sorting your prepaid subscription orders
You can filter your Orders page by the Scheduled fulfillment status to display upcoming fulfillment work that doesn't require immediate action.
To display prepaid subscription orders that are ready to be fulfilled, filter your Orders page by the Unfulfilled status. By default, the Orders page is sorted by date. This means that prepaid subscription orders that are ready to be fulfilled might drop to the bottom of your list of unfulfilled orders. To display these orders, you can sort your Orders page by oldest date.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Activate Search and filter by clicking the button with the magnifying glass and trigram icons.
Click Add filter +.
Click Fulfillment status, and then select Unfulfilled.
Click
⇅to open the Sort menu.Select Date and ↑ Oldest to newest.
Optional: Click Save as to name and save this order list view.
Editing prepaid subscription orders
You can edit an order that contains a scheduled fulfillment item to add and remove non-scheduled items, but you can't edit items with scheduled fulfillments. For example, if an order contains a subscription product and a product without a subscription, then you can edit the product without a subscription but you can't edit the subscription product.
You can't duplicate a prepaid subscription order.
Canceling and refunding prepaid subscription orders
You can cancel a prepaid subscription order that has not yet been fulfilled. If any scheduled items have been fulfilled, then you can't cancel the order, but you can issue full and partial refunds for fulfilled and scheduled items.
If your customer cancels an order, then you might still need to refund the order manually. A message displays on an order when this happens.
When you refund an order from the Orders page, you might need to cancel the order in your subscription app as well.
Reserving inventory
Inventory for each prepaid subscription order cycle is reserved when the fulfillment date is reached. The inventory for the entire subscription order isn't reserved when the order is created. To reserve inventory for a scheduled fulfillment before the fulfillment date, you can fulfill a scheduled order early.
Fulfilling subscription orders
Fulfillments on subscription orders can be split up in a single order based on a product's fulfillment location or shipping profile.
Fulfilling a prepaid subscription order
When a scheduled order reaches its fulfillment date, the status of the order updates to Unfulfilled and you can fulfill the order.
Fulfilling a prepaid subscription order early
You can't reschedule scheduled fulfillments, but you can choose to fulfill an order early.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Select the order that you want to fulfill early.
In the Scheduled section, click Fulfill early.
Review the order fulfillment information, and then click Mark as unfulfilled. The order status is updated to Unfulfilled and you can fulfill the items.
Managing inventory
If you have products in your active subscription contracts that track inventory, and the products aren't set to oversell, then you'll need to make sure that your products are in stock at the time of an upcoming delivery to prevent issues with your subscription orders. Learn more about inventory tracking.
If you're using the free Shopify Subscriptions app, then you can review and manage subscription contracts with inventory issues, and manage billing attempts for subscription contracts with insufficient inventory.