Offering prepaid subscriptions

Prepaid products let you collect payment upfront for multiple deliveries, offering flexible options for selling and managing subscriptions.

This guide explains how to set up and manage prepaid products.

Before you start

• Prepaid enhancements are not compatible with Shopify’s fixed product pricing for specific markets. See Multi-currency under Considerations for more information.

How it works

Recharge offers two versions of prepaid products:

• Prepaids with Variant Level Plans: Enhanced prepaid product experience available to stores using Variant Level Plans. See How to enable Prepaids with Variant Level Plans for more information.
• Prepaids without Variant Level Plans (Legacy): The original prepaid product experience available to stores not using Variant Level Plans.

Recharge recommends upgrading to Variant Level Plans to offer prepaid products, improving the user experience and making product management easier.

Prepaids with Variant Level Plans

Variant Level Plans let you offer multiple plan types, one-time, subscription, or prepaid, for the same product, variant, or SKU, all within a single product listing in Shopify. This unified setup eliminates the need to create duplicate products for different plan types, reducing SKU bloat and streamlining store management.

Once configured, you can:

• Offer the same product with different plan types to customers on your storefront
• Allow customers to add the product to an existing subscription in the customer portal
• Add the product to an existing subscription on a customer’s behalf in the merchant portal
• Offer customers the option to upgrade their existing subscriptions to prepaid subscriptions directly from the Affinity and Unity customer portals

Product pricing

Recharge calculates the prepaid price by multiplying the standard product price by the number of deliveries. If a discount is applied, Recharge calculates the price first, then applies the discount.

Example: A $10 product offered as a 3-month prepaid subscription results in a $30 charge. At 10% off, the customer pays $27.

Shipping

Recharge recommends using price-based shipping.

Prepaids without Variant Level Plans (Legacy)

Prepaids without Variant Level Plans is Recharge’s original prepaid offering. With this method, you must create different products with different price points that represent the prepaid delivery cadence.

Product pricing

Prepaid subscriptions required a separate product with a price reflecting multiple deliveries.
The product price should reflect the total cost of all shipments upfront, multiplied by the number of prepaid months you plan to offer.

For example, if you want to charge customers every three months for a product that typically costs $10 per month, set the prepaid product price to $30 to cover all three shipments. This ensures that customers are charged the amount upfront to cover future prepaid shipments.

Shipping

Costs associated with prepaid subscriptions, such as shipping and taxes, are charged only when the initial order is processed. It is important to offer a shipping rate that covers the cost of shipping each product included in the prepaid cycle.

To ensure accurate shipping charges, you may want to set the weight to the individual product's weight multiplied by the number of shipments.

See Shipping by Weight for more information.

Customer portal experience

For stores using the Affinity customer portal with the home page builder, customers will see updated messaging for prepaid subscriptions.

This includes:

• A banner explaining that the product is prepaid
• Shipment progress (for example, Shipment 2 of 3)
• Updated pricing display on the Next order page when a shipment has already been paid for

Cancelled or expired prepaid subscriptions remain visible until all prepaid shipments are fulfilled. Once all shipments are completed, the subscription moves to the inactive tab.

Prepaids for Variant Level Plans

How to upgrade to Variant Level Plans

Before enabling Prepaids for Variant Level Plans, you may need to upgrade to use Variant Level Plans. You can upgrade to Variant Level Plans at any time if you use Product Subscription Plans:

1. Select Products in your merchant portal and click Products from the dropdown.
2. Open a product from the Products page.
3. Click Manage variant plans. 
4. Click Update my experience to upgrade to Variant Level Plans.

How to enable prepaid upsell in the customer portal 

Once you upgrade to Variant Level Plans, you can enable the prepaid upsell feature in the customer portal. This allows customers to switch from a regular subscription to a prepaid plan:

1. In the Recharge merchant portal, go to Storefront and select Customer portal.
2. Under Customer portal functionality, click the checkbox next to Show prepaid upsell.
3. Save your changes.

How to set up a prepaid plan when using Variant Level Plans

1. Select Products in your Recharge merchant portal and click Products.
2. Click on the product you want to offer as a prepaid subscription.
3. Select Add another plan.
4. Choose the Prepaid plan type.
5. Configure the Plan details prepaid subscription:
   • Ship this product every: Specify how often customers will receive the product.
   • Charge the customer every: Specify how often customers will be charged. This value must be a multiple of how often the product ships. 
     • For example, if Ship this product every is set to 2 months, Charge the customer every can be 4, 6, 8 months, and so on.
   • Expire after a certain number of charges: Optional setting for expiration after a number of charges.
   • Offer a discount on the purchase of this subscription plan: Check this option if you want to offer customers a discount.
   • Plan name: Enter a name for the prepaid plan.
6. Optional - Open the Charge and cut-off schedule menu to charge customers on a specific day.
7. Optional - Open the Channels menu to configure channel settings. Use these settings to manage where customers can purchase the subscription product.
8. Click Save to add the prepaid subscription.

After saving the plan, customers can choose one-time, subscription, or prepaid purchase options depending on the plan setup.

Prepaids without Variant Level Plans (Legacy)

How to set up prepaids without Variant Level Plans

Step 1 - Create the product in your ecommerce platform

Begin by creating a new product on your ecommerce platform. These steps vary depending on the ecommerce platform you are using:

• Add a product in BigCommerce
• Add a product in Shopify

Step 2 - Add a plan to the product

1. In the merchant portal, click the Products tab and select Products.
2. Search and select the product you wish to create a prepaid subscription plan for.
3. Select Create plans.
4. Select Add another plan.

Step 3 - Configure the prepaid subscription rules

1. Use the Plan type to define the subscription type, as well as any order schedules that should apply to the subscription.
2. Select Prepaid/gift under Plan type.
3. Configure the order schedule to reflect when to charge customers upfront for their scheduled shipments, and how often those orders are shipped to your customers.
   • For example, the following settings ensure customers receive a product monthly, and pay once every three months:
     • Ship product every: 1 month. This ensures that customers receive one order every month.
     • Charge customer every: 3 months. This ensures that customers are charged for their monthly shipment once every three months. This value must be a multiple of how often the product ships.
4. Optional - Set an expiration for the prepaid subscription by clicking the checkbox for Expire after a certain amount of charges. This setting can be used for setting up a basic prepaid gift subscription. For example, if this setting is set to 1, this indicates that the customer will be charged once for the entirety of the order and the prepaid cycle does not repeat.
5. Optional - Apply settings to charge customers on a specific day of the month under the Advanced settings dropdown.
   • By default, the product is sent on the same day the initial checkout occurred. For example, if the customer checks out on the 14th for a monthly subscription product, all subsequent orders are processed on the 14th. Alternatively, you can select a specific day of the month from the charge on this day of the month dropdown to charge customers on a specific day for their recurring orders. See Charging on a specific day of the month for more information.
6. Click Done, then Save plans to create the prepaid plan.

Prepaid subscriptions allow customers to pay for multiple orders upfront while still ensuring they receive their products on a regular cadence. You can also set up prepaid gift subscriptions that include an expiration date to ensure they expire after a certain number of charges.

Add shipment and manage prepaid orders

When you add a shipment to a prepaid subscription, Recharge creates a $0.00 (free) order for that shipment within the prepaid cycle.

Use this action to send an additional shipment that has already been paid for under the prepaid plan.

There are two ways to add a shipment to a prepaid subscription.

Method 1 - View charge details

Use this method if you are reviewing a specific prepaid charge.

1. Navigate to the subscription details page for your customer's prepaid subscription.

2. Expand the prepaid order using the dropdown menu.

3. Select View charge details.

4. Click Add prepaid order.

5. Enter the date for the new shipment.

6. Select Add order.

Recharge creates a $0.00 order for the selected date. This order represents the prepaid shipment and does not charge the customer again.

Method 2 - Renewal order

Use this method if you are working directly from the renewal charge.

1. Navigate to the subscription details page for your customer's prepaid subscription.

2. Locate the renewal charge and expand it using the dropdown menu.

3. Select Add shipment.

4. Enter the date for the new shipment.

5. Select Add order.

Recharge creates a $0.00 order for that shipment within the prepaid cycle. The customer is not charged again because the shipment was already prepaid.

Adjusting the prepaid order frequency

The order frequency setting manages how often the customer receives their prepaid subscription. Review Adjusting the order schedule for details.

Adjusting order and charge dates

You can adjust prepaid order dates to customize the order schedule. Review Editing prepaid shipment dates for details.

Adjust the charge date to change when the next prepaid cycle is charged and begins. Review Editing upcoming charge dates for details.

If the customer wants to switch from a standard recurring subscription to a prepaid subscription review Converting from monthly to prepaid.

Changing the product or variant

The product is set for the entire prepaid cycle when the prepaid subscription is created. If you need to adjust the product selection follow Changing the product for an existing prepaid subscription.

If the customer makes a change to their prepaid subscription, it will only affect the next charge and not the scheduled shipments of their current prepaid cycle. You will need to manually update the remaining orders in the already created set of shipments.

Cancelling prepaid subscriptions

Prepaid subscriptions require additional steps if you want to cancel the created prepaid orders.
When you cancel a prepaid subscription, the customer portal will show the product as cancelled, but the queued prepaid shipment orders will not be cancelled.

Review Cancelling a prepaid subscription for further details.

Considerations

Consider the following when using prepaid products: