Adding or swapping a product or variant

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

Before you start

• Variant swapping and SKU swapping are used interchangeably and mean the same thing. 
• Consider using the Bulk update subscriptions with filters tool to swap products without creating a CSV file.

Add a product

Use the Subscription Details page to add a subscription product for a customer:

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. Add the product to the customer's subscription.
5. Click Next and enter the subscription details. 
6. Click Add product.

Swap a variant

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

1. Click Customers in the merchant portal and select Customers from the dropdown.
2. Search for and select the customer.
3. Hover over the relevant subscription to open the Actions menu.
4. Select Edit subscription product.
5. Choose the new variant from the Variant drop-down box.
6. Click Save product.

Swap a product

Rather than removing or canceling a product and adding a new product, you can use the swap option to switch to a different subscription product. 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. Hover over the relevant subscription to open the Actions menu.
4. Choose Swap from the menu.
5. Select the product and click Next.
6. Enter the subscription details and select Swap product.

Note the following when swapping products:

• You can enable customers to swap products in their customer portal settings. This is disabled by default for your customers. You can also update the Edit frequency so that your customers can choose the date of the next charge when they swap 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 specified number of charges when using Product Subscription Plans.
• When using Product Subscription Plans, you must select a Plan to ensure the incentive discount applies after the product swap.

Swapping variants on a prepaid subscription

If you'd like to swap variants of upcoming shipments during a prepaid subscription cycle, the process differs from a standard product swap.

For more information on changing the variants on prepaid subscriptions, visit Changing the product or variant 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 multiple subscriptions on the Subscriptions page.

1. Select Customers from the merchant portal, then click Subscriptions in the dropdown.
2. Use the checkboxes to select the subscriptions you want to update. 
3. Click Swap from the Bulk Actions bar.
4. Choose the new product and variant and select Next.
5. Choose how you'd like to handle product pricing and select Next.
6. Click Confirm: prepare update and then select Check update progress.
7. Click Process update for the Bulk updates row with the current date. 
8. Click Update subscriptions.

If your store is using multi-currency, you cannot update subscription prices using the Multi-Select tool. 

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, see finding and exporting Shopify variant IDs
• 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. 

Considerations

Consider the following when swapping products in bulk: