How to Manage Subscriptions (Essential Subscriptions app)

The Subscriptions page is where you view and manage every subscription on your store. While customers can manage their own from the portal, you can also step in to make changes, skip orders, update details, or help a customer with a payment issue. You can also create a subscription from scratch with the Create subscription button in the top right, see How to Create a Subscription for a Customer Manually.

Note: You can pause, resume and cancel a subscription yourself, from the buttons at the top of its detail page. What You Can Change, and What Only Your Customer Can Do lists what you and your customer can each do.

The Subscriptions List

Open Subscriptions in the sidebar. Each row shows:

Filtering and searching

Filter by status using the tabs along the top:

• All
• Active
• Paused
• Expired
• Cancelled
• Failed, for subscriptions with the Failed status. The app never sets it. After the last retry, a subscription is paused or cancelled instead.
• Failed last payment, where the most recent charge was declined but the subscription may still be retrying

The difference between those last two matters when you are chasing a payment. It is explained in When Customers Are Charged, and What Happens When a Payment Fails.

Use the search box to find a subscription by customer name, email, or contract ID (type at least 3 characters).

Click any row to open the subscription's detail page.

If you have imported subscriptions that are still paused, a banner at the top reads, for example, 3 imported subscriptions are paused and waiting for review. Open each one and click Activate subscription when you are ready. You can dismiss the banner for 12 hours.

The Subscription Detail Page

The detail page shows everything about one subscription and lets you make changes.

Pause, resume, activate or cancel

The buttons at the top of the page:

• Pause subscription, on active subscriptions. No orders are created until you resume it.
• Resume subscription, on paused subscriptions. Orders start again from the next billing date.
• Activate subscription, on imported subscriptions waiting for review. No email is sent to the customer.
• Cancel subscription, on active, paused and failed subscriptions. You confirm in a pop-up. This cannot be undone. A minimum number of payments set for the customer does not stop you.

Pause, resume and cancel send the customer the matching email if it is on in your email notification settings. The Timeline records that you did it, for example Merchant paused subscription.

Subscription details

The main card shows the status (and an Imported badge for imported subscriptions waiting for review), the products with quantities and prices, the delivery and billing policy, the discount, and a pricing summary (subtotal, shipping, total). It shows no tax amount, only the note Taxes calculated at each billing.

Editing the products and prices Click Edit in the top right of the main card:

• Change a variant, change a quantity, remove a product, or click Add products. You can add any product.
• Change a price: click it and type the new one. A new price removes the contract discount on that product. See How to Edit Products and Prices on a Subscription.

Changes apply to future renewals only. Orders already created are not affected. Edit is greyed out on subscriptions that are not active or paused, and on subscriptions already charged for deliveries they have not received yet. Hover over it to see why.

Editing the policy Click Edit in the delivery and billing box to open Edit billing and delivery policy. From here you can change:

• Deliver every: the delivery frequency.
• Charge customers on: for weekly, monthly and yearly plans.
• Subscription expires automatically after: end after a set number of payments.
• Customers can cancel: require a minimum number of payments before the customer can cancel.

Click Save to apply.

Note: The policy Edit button is not shown on prepaid subscriptions bought through the widget, or on subscriptions that are cancelled, expired or failed. A prepaid customer has already paid for deliveries they have not received, so the plan is fixed. A prepaid subscription you created by hand does show Edit. Do not save that window. Saving it turns the subscription into pay as you go. See Prepaid and Pay as You Go Subscriptions Explained.

Orders

The Orders card has two tabs:

• Upcoming: the next scheduled orders. Click Skip to skip an upcoming order, or Unskip to restore one you skipped. A retention discount shows as a green badge, for example 15% off, on the orders it covers.
• Past: orders already created, with their date. Each links to the order in your Shopify admin. Skipped orders do not appear here.

Timeline

The Timeline card is a running history of the subscription. It records who did what and when:

• Created, and whether that was the customer at checkout or you
• Imported, with the app it came from and its old ID, and when an imported subscription was activated
• Paused, resumed, cancelled or expired, with the reason the customer gave if you run a cancellation or pause survey
• Frequency, billing, address and payment method changes
• Product and price changes
• Orders placed, skipped and unskipped
• Failed payment attempts, with the card, the reason and the next retry date
• Retention offers the customer accepted
• Customer emails that were sent, with the recipient

Click an email address in the timeline to copy it.

Customer Details (Sidebar)

Customer

Shows the subscriber's name and email, linked to their Shopify customer record.

Shipping address Click the edit icon to open Edit shipping address and update the name, address, city, postal code, country, and province/state.

Payment method

Shows the card brand, last four digits, and expiry. If the customer needs to update their card, click Send link to update payment. Shopify then emails the customer a secure update link. This is Shopify's email, not one of the app's, so it is not affected by your notification or email design settings. If no card is on file, this shows No payment method.

Common Tasks