Skipping a customer's order

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 subscription orders are updated when a customer skips their next order, preventing duplicate products within 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.

Future skipped charges

Recharge ensures that when a customer skips an order, the skip is retained in most cases, even if the subscription is later updated. This prevents unintentional removal of skipped charges when you or your customers make changes.

Future skips are only removed if:

• The subscription’s next charge date has been changed
• The subscription’s order frequency is updated
• The subscription has been moved to a different address

When a subscription is removed from a skipped order, Recharge emits a subscription/removed_from_skipped_charge The webhook allows you to take action if needed (for example, re-skipping the order).

For tracking purposes, Recharge adds a skip removed event to the customer’s timeline with the original skip date.

You can view the Actions Report in the Analytics Suite to review skip metrics for your store.

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. Hover over the subscription and click the three vertical dots menu.
5. Select Reschedule next order.
6. Click the existing order date, then select the new order date from the calendar dropdown.
7. Click Confirm: reschedule to reschedule the order.

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 to allow customers to skip their upcoming orders from within the portal. 

When a customer selects the skip button in the customer portal, Recharge creates a new order 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, their next order arrives on December 8th.