Customers may subscribe to a product and get tired of it after months of receiving the same product. To prevent customers from churning, you can offer customers the option of updating their subscription product.

Customers may want to swap to a new product altogether, or to a different variation of the same product they are currently subscribed to. While customers subscribed on a month-to-month basis can swap their products through the customer portal, customers subscribed to prepaid products must contact you to update their subscription. 

This guide explains how you can update the prepaid subscription product for a customer on their next queued order.

Step 1 - Add the new product to the subscription

To update a prepaid product for an existing subscription, you must begin by adding the new prepaid product to the customer's subscription. Adding the new prepaid product ensures that the customer is subscribed to the right product on their next recurring order.

1. Select Customers from your merchant portal and click Customers from the dropdown.
2. Select the customer from your customer list. 
3. Click the + Add product.
4. Click Select to pick the product to add and select Next to proceed.
5. Review the product properties, select your variant, and the charge date.
   • The charge date set should be at the end of the previous prepaid cycle.
6. Click Add product to add it to the subscription.

If the subscription has already expired

Some prepaid subscriptions are set to expire after a certain amount of charges. You will need to immediately cancel the subscription for the new product as well if the customer's subscription has already expired and they still would like to update the product for any remaining shipments. This ensures that the product is reflected correctly in the customer portal. 

Step 2 - Cancel the old product

You must cancel the old product to prevent the customer from receiving multiple charges. Cancelling the old product ensures that Recharge uses the new product for all future recurring charges.

1. Click Actions on the old subscription line and select Cancel subscription.
   
2. Provide a reason for cancellation. You can use the "Other" option and leave a brief comment to describe the situation before cancelling the subscription.
3. Click Cancel to confirm.

Step 3 - Swap variants for the existing queued shipment

When a customer purchases a prepaid subscription, all of the shipments for that subscription are created at one time and are scheduled based on the subscription rules set. Each of these queued shipments includes the original product customer prepaid for.

Once you have cancelled the original product, you must update the remaining shipments for the current prepaid subscription from the original product to the new product by performing a variant swap. This ensures that the customer receives the new products on all remaining queued shipments.

1. Click the cancelled prepaid product and select the first order in the Upcoming orders section.
2. Click See details, then select the three dots under Order details to Add product.
   
3. Click Select to choose the new product and click Next to proceed.
4. Select the correct variant and quantity then click Add product.
5. Once the new product is added, click the trash can icon beside the old product to remove it from the shipment.
6. Click Remove to confirm.
7. Repeat these steps to adjust the product for any remaining queued shipments. 

Step 4 - Confirm the change with your customer

Review the customer's subscription once you have added the new product to the remaining queued shipments as well as removed the original product:

• Confirm that all queued shipments contain the new product variant.
  • Add the new product and remove the original product from a queued shipment if the shipment contains an incorrect product.
• Confirm that the next queued charge has the correct charge date. 
  • Update the charge date on the order if necessary. 
• Confirm that the product variant on the shipments for the upcoming queued charge is correct.
  • You may need to repeat the first two steps if the old products are still included in the next prepaid charge.

If everything appears as expected, inform your customer that the changes have been made to their subscription.

Handle a product swap in Bulk

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.