Managing subscription contracts

After a customer purchases a subscription product from your store, a subscription contract is created within the Shopify Subscriptions app.

You can modify the products, product quantity, and delivery frequency of a subscription contract. You can also edit a customer's contact information or shipping address, manage payment methods, skip an upcoming order, and pause, resume, or cancel their subscription contract.

To organize the list of contracts, or to narrow down the displayed list of contracts, you can filter contracts by status. By default, your contract list is sorted by last purchased date from newest to oldest.

Edit a contract's products or delivery frequency

You can update the included products and the delivery frequency of a subscription contract. Updating the delivery frequency automatically updates the billing frequency.

Steps:

  1. In the Subscriptions app, click Contracts.
  2. Select the contract that you want to edit.
  3. Edit the products, product quantity, or delivery frequency.
  4. Click Save.

Skip an upcoming subscription order

You can skip an upcoming subscription order from the Shopify Subscriptions app.

Steps:

  1. In the Subscriptions app, click Contracts.
  2. Select the contract with the upcoming order that you want to skip.
  3. Under Next Orders, click Skip next to the order you want to skip. A Skipped badge is displayed next to the order date.

If you want to resume an upcoming order that's scheduled to be skipped, then click Resume next to that order.

Pause, resume, or cancel a subscription contract

You can pause, resume or cancel a subscription contract on a customer's behalf. If you have turned on subscription management, then your customers can also manage their own subscription contracts.

Steps:

  1. In the Subscriptions app, click Contracts.
  2. Select the contract that you want to pause, resume, or cancel.
  3. Make any of the following changes to the contract status:
    • To resume the contract, select Resume.
    • To pause the contract, select Pause.
    • To cancel the contract, select Cancel.

After a contract is canceled, the cancelation can't be undone. The customer will need to place a new subscription order from your storefront, which will create a new contract.

Edit customer contact details and shipping address

You can update the contract shipping address to another shipping address from the customer's profile. You can also navigate to the customer's profile page from the app to manage the available shipping addresses for that customer.

Learn more about editing customer profiles.

Steps:

  1. In the Subscriptions app, click Contracts.
  2. Click the contract that you want to edit.
  3. Next to the Shipping address section, click the pencil icon.
  4. Do one of the following options:
    • To change the customer address for the contract, click Select a different address, and then click Update.
    • To manage the customers addresses, click Manage addresses on customer page. If you add a new address, then you can return to the contract details page to select the new address.

Manage customer payment methods

You can do the following to manage your customers' payment methods:

  • Email your customer a link to update their credit card information.
  • Manually update a customer's credit card information from their customer profile.
  • Delete a payment method.

Steps:

  1. In the Subscriptions app, click Contracts.
  2. Select the contract with the payment method that you want to manage.
  3. Next to the Payment methods section, click the pencil icon.
  4. Do one of the following options:
    • To email your customer a link to update their credit card information, click Send link to update card, and then click Send email.
    • To manually update a customer's credit information, click Manage payment on customer page.
      • Under Payment methods, click More actions next to the payment method that you want to update, and then click Replace card.
      • Complete the Replace credit card form, and then click Confirm.
    • To remove a customer's payment method, click Delete card. Outstanding charges won't process on that payment method. Deleting a payment method can't be undone.

Learn more about editing customers' subscription payment information.

Managing contracts with insufficient 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. Learn more about inventory tracking.

If one or more products in a subscription contract have insufficient inventory at the time of an upcoming delivery, then the order won't be created. You'll be notified by email with the Not enough inventory notification.

You can review any subscription contracts that have failed because of inventory issues in the Contracts section of the Shopify Subscriptions app.

Subscription contracts with failed inventory have a caution icon next to the contract id, and you can also filter contracts by Inventory error.

On the contract details page, the following additional information is displayed:

  • A banner displays the date for the upcoming order, the number of products that are missing inventory, and a Create order button.
  • A Bill contract button displays in the action items.
  • In the Subscription details section, products that caused insufficient inventory are labeled with ⓘ Not enough inventory during last billing attempt.
  • in the Upcoming orders section, any orders that haven't been completed are flagged with ⓘ Order not created.

You can adjust how to automatically handle billing attempts for subscription contracts with inventory issues from the Shopify Subscriptions app settings.

Steps:

  1. In the Subscriptions app, click Contracts.
  2. Select the contract that you want to review.
  3. On the contract details page, take either of the following actions:
    • If you want to create the order without updating your inventory, then click the Create order button in the warning banner. This oversells the products.
    • If you have restocked the products, then click Bill contract to create another billing attempt. Depending on your settings, you can also wait for the next automatic billing attempt. If there's enough inventory to create the order, then the next billing attempt will succeed.

If order creation and billing attempts fail because of inventory issues, then your customer will be notified. The customer can check their account, and on their order status page they're notified that there might be a delay on their next order because of stock issues.

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