You may need to add a new product, swap to a different product, or swap SKUs on a prepaid subscription for a customer. You can easily add or swap products or SKUs in the customer account in Recharge. This guide provides an overview of how to change the products in a subscription.

Before you start

• SKU swapping and variant swapping are terms that are used interchangeably and represent the same action. 
• When swapping a product manually or in bulk, consider the following for stores using Bundles: 
  • Swaps will only work for the parent bundle product. To swap bundle contents, use the bundles swap tool.
  • Swapping to customizable bundles does not automatically carry over bundle contents. The contents will be empty until either the customer logs in and makes selections or you manually make selections within the merchant portal. It’s recommended to set fallback contents so these orders won’t be empty if selections aren’t made.
• To understand all available bulk update opportunities, refer to our course Updating subscriptions at scale.
• You cannot add or swap a product that is configured with dynamic pricing.
  • Consider adding additional plans that are not utilizing dynamic pricing to allow for product adding or swapping.
  • If adding additional plans that are not utilizing dynamic pricing, be sure to set the product plan settings to not available on the Storefront widget.

Add a product

1. Click Customers in the merchant portal and select Customers from the dropdown.
2. Search for and select the customer.
3. Click Add product.
   
4. Search and click Select on the desired product.
5. Click Next and enter the subscription details. 
6. Click Add product.

Swap a SKU

You can swap SKUs from the merchant portal by updating the variant on an existing subscription.

Customer details page

1. Click Customers in the merchant portal and select Customers from the dropdown.
2. Search for and select the customer.
3. Click the Actions dropdown next to the product and select Edit subscription product.
   
4. Change variant in dropdown. The variant will be used to swap SKUs. 
5. Click Save.

Subscriptions tab

1. Click Customers in your merchant portal and select Subscriptions from the dropdown. 
2. Search for the subscription to update variant.
3. Click the Actions dropdown and select Edit subscription product.
4. Update the variant and select Save.
   

Swap a product

Rather than removing or cancelling a product and adding a new product, you can use the swap option to switch to a different subscription product.

Customer details page

To swap a product:

1. Click Customers in the merchant portal and select Customers from the dropdown.
2. Search for and select the customer.
3. On the customer details page, click the Actions dropdown and select Swap.
   
4. Choose Swap from the menu.
5. Select the product and click Next.
6. Change the variant if required. Otherwise click Swap product

Subscriptions tab

1. Click Customers in the merchant portal and select Subscriptions from the dropdown.
2. Search for and select the customer.
3. Search for the subscription to swap.
4. Click the Actions dropdown and select Swap.
5. Select a product to swap the subscription to and click Next.
   
6. Choose a variant and select Swap product to confirm. Optionally, you can edit subscription details of the product you’re swapping to.
   

Note the following when swapping products:

• You can enable the ability for customers to swap products within their customer portal settings. This is disabled for your customers by default. You can also update the Edit frequency so that your customers have the ability to choose the date of the next charge when they are swapping products on their own. 
• The next charge date of the swapped product is not changed by default. This is to keep the original subscription settings customers checked out with, though the frequency can be edited if needed.
• The expiration settings will carry over if your swappable product is configured to expire after a certain number of charges if you are using Product Subscription Plans.

Swapping SKUs on a prepaid subscription

If you'd like to swap SKUs of upcoming shipments during a prepaid subscription cycle, the process is different than a standard product swap.

For more information on changing the variants on prepaid subscriptions, visit Changing the product or SKU for an existing prepaid subscription. 

Handle a product swap in bulk

There are two methods for updating a product swap in bulk. Review the methods below and select the method based on your needs and preference. 

Method 1 - Multi-Select tool

You can use the Multi-select tool to update the product for individual subscriptions on the Subscriptions page. To process the update search and select the subscriptions to be updated on the Subscriptions page and use the Product title, Variant title, and Variant ID in the Edit properties menu on the Actions dropdown.

• The Product title and Variant title are optional. If the titles are remaining the same, you only need to fill in the Variant ID.
• Updating the variant ID does not automatically update other product attributes, such as price or title. If you require other updates, be sure to add these additional properties. To locate IDs, visit find a Shopify variant ID or use find a product ID for BigCommerce.

Review the Multi-select tool guide for detailed instructions.

Method 2 - Bulk Managing Subscription tool

You can use the Bulk Managing Subscriptions tool to make a product swap update. To process this type of update you will need to complete the Importing Subscriptions template with:

• subscription_id
• product_title
• variant_title
• external_variant_id - Variant ID is a mandatory column. To locate variant IDs, visit find a Shopify variant ID or see find a product ID for BigCommerce.

The product_title and variant_title are optional columns. If the titles are remaining the same, you only need to fill in the variant_id column. Updating the variant ID will not automatically update other product attributes, such as price or title. If you require other updates, be sure to add these additional columns. 

To make an update using the import tool: 

1. Use the Export Builder to pull the Subscriptions - All or Subscriptions - Active export. 
2. Copy and paste the required fields noted above from the Subscriptions export into the template file. All other columns in the template can be removed.
3. Once your CSV file is ready to import, follow steps 2 and 3 in the Bulk managing subscriptions guide to complete the update.