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Subscriptions Guide
Learn about Subscription features and best practices for your store
Subscriptions are supported natively in 29 Next, and represent the concept of an automated, periodically recurring checkout for a customer. Subscriptions can contain any combination of products and quantities from your store catalogue, with a scheduled billing interval configurable by day, week, or month.
Subscriptions may also be modified, updated, or canceled at any time to change the next renewal date, adjust billing frequency, update the products, or apply a promotion or discount to avoid cancellations.
From the Subscriptions menu you can view and access all subscriptions.
Search by Subscription ID, and filter subscriptions by
- Subscription Status
- Products
- Next Renewal Date (before / after target date)
- Order Number
- Customer Email
- Customer Phone
Subscriptions
Click View to see the Subscription Details, which displays an overview of the Subscription, the items contained in it, the orders history, any events that have taken place during its lifecycle, and available actions to manage it.
Subscription Detail view
From the subscription detail view, there are several actions available to manage the subscription:
- Change Next Renewal Date Manually specify the next renewal date to expedite or delay the next recurring order.
- Change Schedule Change the billing frequency to better match the customer’s needs for recurring intervals.
- Process Renewal Process the next recurring order immediately.
- Cancel Cancel the subscription and specify a cancellation reason.
Products and quantities included in the subscription, along with prices can be viewed in the Items table along with a shipping cost and total subscription renewal amount.
Subscription items can be updated and removed using Actions on each item. Updating a subscription item allows you to change the quantity and price of the item.
Actions > Update Product
All subscription renewal orders can be viewed on the Orders table, offering easy access to view and manage each order.
Orders Table
Every update to a subscription is logged, with Events providing a full audit log of details for a subscription’s history, changes, and orders. View and track all user initiated changes to a subscription, whether initiated by the customer or a Dashboard user.
Subscription Events Table
Subscription Statuses represent various points in a Subscriber’s lifecycle.
Status | Description |
Pending | Initial order is pending payment. Once payment is confirmed the status will update to Active. |
Active | Subscription is Active and is scheduled to renew at the set Next Renewal Date. |
Retrying | Subscription could not be renewed and is currently in an automated recovery process state. |
Past Due | Subscription could not renew due to a failed recurring payment attempt. |
Canceled | Subscription is canceled and will not renew. |
When a subscription fails to renew due to a failed payment, 29 Next helps you recover the payment and retain your customer with automated retry capabilities.
Subscription renewal payments may fail for various reasons that are temporary, and often the best course of action is to simply retry the renewal at a later time and date. When a renewal payment failure occurs, 29 Next categorizes the reason to determine whether the issue is temporary and the renewal should be reattempted.
To enable subscription renewal retries and control the settings, navigate to Settings > Settings > Subscriptions from the store Dashboard.
Payment Decline Types
Soft Declines - may be reattempted again in the future. Soft declines carry payment failure reason codes in the 2000 range.
Hard Declines - not recommended to retry, no automated reattempt occurs. Decline reason codes in the 3000 range.
For more information, see Transaction Response Codes
Subscriptions that fail renewal payment will be retried if Automatic Retry Mode is enabled. While a subscription is retrying, the status will be “Retrying” and the “Next Retry Date” will be displayed in the subscription details.
The optimized “Smart” retry schedule is based on aggregate data from industry leaders, tuned to provide the highest chance of recovery for subscribers, while minimizing decline transaction fees and ratios on your merchant account.
Decline Salvage Schedule
- Attempt 1 - Retry 3 days after first decline at 2 PM in store timezone
- Attempt 2 - Retry on 1st or 16th of the month at 3 PM in store timezone
- Attempt 3 - Retry on the next upcoming Friday at 2 PM in store timezone
To customize subscription cancellation reasons, navigate to Settings > Settings > Subscriptions
Create customized subscription cancel reasons
Add, Edit, or Remove custom Cancel Reasons to track the reasons why subscribers choose to cancel their subscriptions.
Note that only cancel reasons set to “Public” will be available for selection by customers when canceling subscriptions within their storefront Customer Accounts. For Dashboard users, when manually canceling a customer’s subscription, all cancel reasons will be viewable and available for selection.
Subscription Cancellation by Cancel Reason is available as a reporting widget on the Subscribers Dashboard for easy reference and tracking.
Customers may access their subscriptions to edit or cancel them from their storefront Customer Accounts. Customers have the option of changing the next billing date, the billing frequency, and the quantity and items contained in their subscriptions. (Note, this is optional depending on your storefront theme).
When a customer chooses to cancel their subscription, a customizable
In the above example of the customer-facing self-serve subscription cancellation path, the store has set up three Cancel Reasons as Public.
An example of a non-public cancel reason could be Recurring Billing Failed. Under Failed Payments Handling you can set an automatic catch-all cancellation reason to be used when all subscription renewal attempts fail, if you have chosen to automatically Cancel rather than set such subscriptions to Past Due.
Last modified 3mo ago