Pause, cancel, or delete a subscription
While customers can cancel subscriptions from the customer portal, you can pause, cancel, or delete subscriptions on their behalf from the merchant portal.
This guide provides instructions on pausing, cancelling, or deleting an existing subscription for a customer and steps for requesting a bulk cancellation.
Before you start
- The pause subscription feature is a storewide setting and applies to all products and collections. This setting cannot be configured for specific products or collections.
- Customers can cancel their subscriptions in their customer portal. Only store admins can delete subscriptions from a customer account.
- If you need to remove a subscription product from your storefront, you must remove it from the Products section in the merchant portal. Deleting a product from Recharge will not affect your existing subscribers. This only ensures that new customers cannot buy a subscription for the product from your storefront.
- If you want to restrict your customers from cancelling a subscription for a set number of charges, visit Allow customers to cancel after a set number of charges.
- Watch Recharge's video on managing customers and answering subscriber questions to manage customer support for subscribers effectively.
Pause a subscription
Note: This feature is available for Novum, Prima, Affinity, and Theme Engine (Novum v5.1.0) customer portal themes. If you use a legacy theme such as Novum v4.2, you must upgrade your Theme Engine theme to the current version.
The pause subscription feature allows customers to pause their subscriptions in the customer portal and gives merchants control over pause interval options.
This feature lives within the cancellation flow. If a customer chooses Cancel Subscription in the customer portal, a prompt offers the option to Pause Subscription instead. The customer can choose to either pause or cancel the subscription.
Enable the pause subscription option
Enable the pause subscription option in your merchant portal:
- From the merchant portal, click Storefront and select Customer portal.
- Navigate to the Subscription cancellation and customer retention settings and toggle on Enable pause as a retention step before cancel.
- Select your pause interval options. Options include Day, Week, or Month.
- Click Save.
For instructions on using the feature to pause subscriptions from the customer portal, see Instructions for your customers.
Cancel a subscription
You can cancel a subscription for a customer on the customer details page, or through the Subscriptions tab.
Customer details page
- Select Customers in the merchant portal and click Customers from the dropdown.
- Use the search option to locate a specific customer and click on their name to open their subscription details.
- On the customer's Subscription details page, click the Actions dropdown next to the subscription you would like to cancel and select Cancel subscription.
- Select the cancellation reason and click Cancel my subscription.
Subscriptions tab
- Select Customers in the merchant portal and click Subscriptions from the dropdown.
- Search for the subscription to cancel.
- Click the Actions dropdown and select Cancel.
- Provide a cancellation reason, choose if you want to send a cancellation email, and select Next.
- Any active subscriptions associated with the address will display as an option to be cancelled. Check the box for all subscriptions you’d like to cancel and click Cancel subscription to confirm.
Available cancellation reasons
The cancellation reasons displayed in the merchant portal default to the legacy customer portal cancellation reasons, and will not automatically align with any new reasons configured in your Cancellation Prevention template. You can update the cancellation reasons available through the merchant portal through these steps:
- Temporarily deactivate the Cancellation Prevention template.
- Navigate to your customer portal settings and update the listed cancellation reasons to match your Cancellation Prevention template.
- Reactivate the cancellation prevention template.
Cancellations performed in the merchant portal are not reflected in the Cancellation Prevention analytics.
Delete a subscription
You can delete a subscription for a customer on the subscription details page, or through the Subscriptions tab.
Subscription details page
- Select Customers in your merchant portal and click Customers from the dropdown.
- Use the search option to locate a specific customer and click on their name to open their subscription details.
- On the customer's Subscription details page, click the Actions dropdown next to the subscription and select Delete.
Subscriptions tab
- Select Customers in the merchant portal and click Subscriptions from the dropdown.
- Search for the subscription to delete.
- Click the Actions dropdown and select Delete.
- Any active subscriptions associated with the address are available as options to delete. Check the box for all subscriptions you’d like to delete and click Delete subscription to confirm.
Cancel or delete a prepaid subscription
Cancelling a prepaid subscription does not automatically cancel the queued shipment orders. You must complete an additional step to cancel the queued orders in the current billing cycle.
Refer to the following steps to cancel upcoming shipment orders:
- Select Customers in your merchant portal and click Customers from the dropdown.
- Use the search option to locate a specific customer and click on their name to open their subscription details.
- Select the prepaid subscription from the Subscription details page.
- In the Upcoming orders section, expand each queued $0.00 order and click Cancel.
- After cancelling the scheduled shipment orders, click Actions and select Cancel or Delete subscription.
Cancel multiple subscriptions for a single customer
You can cancel multiple subscriptions for a single customer in bulk:
- Select Customers in your merchant portal and click Customers from the dropdown.
- Use the search option to locate a specific customer and click on their name to open their subscription details.
- On the customer's Subscription details page, select the subscriptions you want to cancel. You can select all of the products in a subscription by clicking the Product checkbox, or you can select products individually to update in bulk.
- Click Actions and select Cancel.
- Select a reason for cancelling and click Proceed.
Bulk cancel subscriptions
There are two methods for cancelling your subscriptions in bulk. Review the methods below and select the method based on your needs and preferences.
Method 1 - Multi-select tool
You can use the Multi-select tool to cancel individual subscriptions on the Subscriptions page:
- Select Customers from the merchant portal and click Subscriptions from the dropdown.
- Use the checkboxes to select the subscriptions you want to update.
- Click Actions and select Edit properties to open the edit properties pop-up modal.
- Select Status as your update type and choose Cancelled from the dropdown list.
- Optional - Click the Add another update button to add Cancellation reason or Cancellation reason comments.
- Click Next to confirm your update and select Prepare your update to continue.
Review the Multi-select tool guide for detailed instructions and next steps.
Method 2 - Import tool
You can use the Import tool to cancel subscriptions. To process this type of update you must prepare a CSV template with the following required columns:
subscription_id
-
status
- Values are ACTIVE or CANCELLED
-
cancellation_reason
and/orcancellation_reason_comments
(optional) -
send_email
(optional)- Set to False if you do not want the cancellation email to send to your customer.
- Set to True to send the cancellation email to the customer.
Include the send_email
column to prevent the Send Cancellation Notification from triggering.
Refer to the following steps to make an update using the Import tool:
- Use the Export Builder to generate either a Subscriptions - All or Subscriptions - Active export.
- Delete any unnecessary columns and ensure you have all of the columns listed above in your file. Add and fill in the
cancellation_reason
andsend_email
columns as needed. - Once your CSV file is prepared, follow steps 2 and 3 in the Bulk update subscriptions with the Import tool documentation to complete the update.
- To delete the subscription from the customer's profile see Bulk delete subscriptions
- To remove prepaid shipments see Cancel or delete a prepaid subscription
RechargeSMS or Klaviyo integration
Follow Klaviyo's instructions to pause your cancellation flow or use the following instructions to pause notifications from RechargeSMS:
- Select Tools & apps from your Recharge merchant portal and select Installed apps.
- Locate the RechargeSMS integration and select Manage.
- Select Settings from the left-bar navigation and ensure you are on the Features tab.
- Locate Concierge Features under the Messaging tab.
- Toggle the option to Send Cancellation Confirmation Messages to off.
Bulk delete subscriptions
You can use the Import tool to delete subscriptions. To process this type of update you must prepare a CSV template with the following required column:
subscription_id
To make an update using the Import tool:
- Use the Export Builder to generate either the Subscriptions - All or Subscriptions - Active export.
- Delete any unnecessary columns and ensure you have all of the columns listed above in your file.
- Once your CSV file is ready to import, follow steps 2 and 3 in the Bulk update subscriptions with the Import tool documentation.
- Select Delete Subscriptions as your update type.
You must cancel subscriptions before deleting them if you wish to prevent the Send Cancellation Notification from triggering.
Considerations
- This feature is unavailable for custom customer portal themes but works with all other customer portal themes. For more information on customer portal themes, see Comparing the customer portal options.