Offering customers the ability to skip their next order is a great way to retain customer satisfaction and reduce churn.

This guide explains how you can skip an order for customers,  and outlines how you can empower customers to manage their subscriptions in their customer portals.

How it works

Customers may want to skip an upcoming order when they have a surplus of product, or as a budgeting tactic. Depending on your store settings, both you and your customers can skip an upcoming order:

• You can reschedule the next order for a customer in the merchant portal
• Customers can use the skip button in the customer portal

Recharge ensures that recurring orders for a subscription are updated accordingly when the customer skips their next upcoming order to prevent customers from receiving duplicate products in the same time frame. When an order is skipped, the charge dates for future orders are updated based on the upcoming order’s new date.

Skip a prepaid shipment

You can edit the charge date for a prepaid shipment within the merchant portal to skip an order that a customer has prepaid for. Depending on the reason a customer wants to skip their order, you may also need to reschedule the next order date to prevent the customer from receiving multiple products in the same timeframe.

Skip an order through the merchant portal

To skip an order for a customer, update the next charge date for the upcoming order in the merchant portal.

1. Click Customers in the Recharge merchant portal and select the Customers tab.
2. Click the specific customer's name to open their customer profile.
3. Navigate to the subscription that the customer wants to skip.
4. Click the Actions dropdown menu.
5. Select Reschedule next order.
6. Click on the existing order date and select the new order date from the calendar dropdown.
7. Click Reschedule to change the order date.

The subscription charge dates for future recurring orders are updated when you reschedule the customer’s next order through the merchant portal. 

Skip an order through the customer portal

You can configure your customer portal settings and provide customers the option of skipping their upcoming order from within the customer portal. 

Future orders that are scheduled for delivery can also be skipped. Review the “Delivery schedule number of days in future shown” customer portal setting to control how many future dated orders a customer will be able to view and edit. By default, Recharge will display all orders within a 90-day period but you can adjust this number to show all scheduled deliveries up to 180 days.

The skip button is visible on the first page of the Affinity customer portal.

Customers can navigate to their upcoming subscription product and select Skip this order if you use the Prima theme.

Customers can navigate to the delivery schedule page and Click Skip next to the delivery they would like to skip if you use the Novum theme.

When a customer selects the skip button in the customer portal, a new order is created that follows the subscription product’s order frequency. For example, if your customer is set to receive a product every thirty days, and they skip their November 8th order, they will receive their order on December 8th.